Tea growers in Sri Lanka are fighting for their lives

• Sri Lanka’s tea industry is being hit hard by the country’s economic crisis.
• Tea is the island’s biggest export, bringing in $1bn a year.
• Exports are down 40% to $500m due to lack of fertiliser and fuel.

Tea from the verdant green estates that span the central; Sri Lankan highlands is consumed in cups all around the world.

The largest export from the island is tea, which typically generates more than $1 billion annually; but the sector is being severely impacted by the exceptional economic crisis.

Smaller farmers like Rohan Tilak Gurusinghe, who has two acres of land near to the village of Kadugunnawa; are responsible for the majority of Sri Lanka’s tea production.

But he’s still feeling the effects of the government’s rash; ill-considered move to outlaw chemical fertiliser last year.

He says glumly, “I’m losing money. “I can’t even think about the future of my firm without gasoline or fertiliser.”

The prohibition was one of several terrible policy mistakes enact by the now-ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa; with agricultural output sharply declining. The restriction was in enforcement to try to safeguard; the nation’s decreasing foreign reserves.

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Although it was later reversed, the price of fertiliser has gone up and it is now impossible to get; and the government is no longer able to pay to import sufficient amounts of gasoline and diesel.

Delays might result in the leaves drying out and losing quality for farmers like Mr. Gurusinghe; who depend on trucks to deliver tea leaves from his farms to factories for processing.

He tells that “our politicians are not concerned; about giving us the fundamental essentials.”

They are to blame for our debt since they stole our money; and spent it whatever they pleased. At the moment, Sri Lanka resembles a ship at sea.

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