Quality premiums do not automatically reach tea workers or smallholders.

Pierre Johnson’s central argument is not that the tea trade should feel guilty.

It is that quality, economic viability, social justice, and environmental resilience are interconnected—and that a higher-priced tea is not necessarily a more equitable tea.

In this Tea Biz Spotlight, ecological economist Pierre William Johnson, author of Thé: l’envers de la tasse, examines the structures that shape how tea is grown, processed, traded, and valued.

We discuss why paying more for quality does not necessarily mean more income for workers or smallholders; how colonial-era plantation systems continue to influence wages and working conditions; why monoculture creates economic as well as environmental risk; and whether producer organization, agroforestry, stronger quality incentives, and shorter value chains can lead to a fairer distribution of value.

His responses distinguish the price a factory or estate receives from the compensation received by the people who grow and harvest the leaf.

Bio: Pierre William Johnson is an ecological economist specializing in

fair and sustainable development of agricultural and artisanal value chains.

His latest book, Thé: l’envers de la tasse — The Other Side of the Cup: Social and Environmental Issues in the Tea Sector — examines the tea industry through the lens of labor relations, trade structures, producer organization, environmental pressures, and the distribution of value.

Johnson argues that many of the structures governing tea production in South Asia and East Africa remain rooted in the plantation economies established during the colonial period. He also examines emerging alternatives, including producer organization, agroforestry, higher-quality production, improved knowledge sharing, and more direct commercial relationships between producers and buyers.

He is also the author of Biopiracy: What Alternatives to the Plundering of Natural Resources and Ancestral Knowledge? Published by ECLM in 2012, and Fair Trade: Proposals for the 21st Century, published by ECLM in 2004 and translated into 5 languages.

A more sustainable tea sector will require new relationships among producers, brands, buyers, and distributors.

Why doesn’t a quality premium necessarily reach the producer?

Dan Bolton: Specialty tea buyers often assume that paying more for an exceptional tea also produces a fairer outcome at origin. Why doesn’t a premium quality necessarily reach the people who grow and pluck the leaf?

Pierre William Johnson: The main reason is that the people producing the fresh leaf are often not the people who process the tea or sell it to the market.

There are several steps. Tea must be plucked, handled, processed, and sold. In most cases, the actual producers — plantation workers or independent smallholders — are not directly in contact with the buyer.

On plantations, workers are generally paid a daily wage, sometimes with an additional payment when they harvest beyond a specified quota. The payment is linked primarily to the quantity harvested, not to the eventual quality or selling price of the finished tea.

The situation for independent smallholders is similar. Smallholders, who account for a large share of world tea production, typically harvest fresh leaves with their families and sell them to a bought-leaf factory. They receive a price for the fresh leaf. The factory then creates much of the additional value through processing and controls the relationship with the market.

So, if the factory succeeds in producing a higher-quality tea and receives a higher price, that does not necessarily mean the farmer who supplied the leaf receives more money.

That is one of the fundamental differences between the price of a tea and the distribution of value behind it.

The clearest connection between a higher selling price and higher producer income occurs when independent producers — or democratically governed cooperatives that belong to them — are directly engaged in commercial transactions with the buyer. The value chain becomes shorter, the relationship becomes more transparent, and price improvements can more readily translate into higher income.

What is hidden inside the “black box” between fresh leaves and processed tea?

Dan: You describe the transition from freshly harvested leaf to processed tea as a black box. What should buyers be asking about that stage?

Pierre: The first question is very simple: Who owns and controls each stage?

Is the same economic unit producing the fresh leaf and processing it? Or are there two separate units — perhaps a family farm supplying a bought-leaf factory?

Then you need to understand the business agreement between them.

How is the price of fresh leaf determined? Are producers paid a fixed price? Is there a quality incentive? How are workers paid? Who owns the factory? Who determines when prices change? How much negotiating power does the producer have?

These are basic questions about the structure of the value chain, yet the buyer of the finished tea often does not see them.

Even certification systems concerned with Fairtrade, social responsibility, or sustainability need to examine these relationships in greater depth. Tea cannot simply be treated as a finished commodity. Certification needs to look at how the fresh leaf is produced, how it enters the processing system, and how the value created through processing is shared.

Buyers can ask these questions as well.

A specialty tea company interested in maintaining a supply of good tea year after year should be interested in whether the production system itself is balanced. If the system is economically unsustainable for the producer or the workers, it will eventually become unsustainable for the buyer as well.

I would like to see these questions introduced into tea education. When people learn where to buy tea, how to evaluate tea, and how to select suppliers, they should also learn how to investigate the social structure behind production.

I sometimes think of the ecological economist as a piano tuner. You open the instrument and look for the strings that are out of tune. A value chain can be similar. Unless you open it and examine the relationships inside, you may hear that something is wrong without understanding where the imbalance lies.

How does the colonial plantation model continue to shape the economics of tea?

Dan: Tea is often marketed through images of gardens, mist, heritage, and hand-plucking. But many of the economic structures behind that landscape were created during the colonial period. How does that history continue to affect tea production?

Pierre: In countries such as India and Sri Lanka, wage structures and labor relations still reflect systems developed under British plantation agriculture.

Minimum wages are generally established through mechanisms involving employers, workers’ representatives or unions, and government. But in practice, minimum wages can approach maximum wages because there is often little room for individual workers to increase their income.

Plantations have also historically provided housing, childcare, and other services to their workers. That arrangement created communities in which the employer was responsible not only for employment but for much of the worker’s social infrastructure.

This structure has advantages and disadvantages, but it also creates dependency.

Historically, elements of this system replaced earlier wage arrangements during the colonial period, and many of those relationships remain recognizable today.

Harvesting quotas are another important feature. Workers may be required to pluck a specified quantity of leaves each day, with wages or bonuses tied to meeting that target. Again, the incentive is primarily directed toward volume.

Tea’s labor structure also cannot be separated from ethnic and social history. In Sri Lanka, for example, much plantation labor was historically supplied by Tamil workers brought to the estates under British rule. These communities have faced long-standing social and economic disadvantages.

Kenya developed under different circumstances, but it also faces problems of low agricultural wages and limited bargaining power.

So, when we speak about the competitiveness or viability of plantations today, we are not starting with a blank page. We are dealing with institutions that evolved over a very long period.

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Can the plantation model be reformed without abandoning workers?

Dan: The plantation often provides more than employment. Housing, childcare, healthcare, and community services may also be tied to the estate. What would a credible transition look like if the goal is to increase worker autonomy without destroying that social infrastructure?

Pierre: It needs to be approached as a transition, not simply as a closure.

The first requirement is a timeline and a shared vision — perhaps over two or three years — so everyone understands where the organization is going.

One possibility is to diversify the activities of the plantation.

I visited a plantation in Sri Lanka where additional activities such as tourism were being introduced. Workers could become guides, participate in processing, or undertake other responsibilities rather than women remaining permanently confined to plucking.

Diversification gives people additional skills and can create income outside the main harvesting season.

Responsibilities can also rotate among smaller teams according to individual interests and abilities. Gradually, workers develop more knowledge of the entire enterprise.

A much more radical transition occurs when a plantation company decides production is no longer economically attractive and withdraws.

Land may be transferred to workers or former employees may become independent smallholders. But simply giving someone a parcel of land and telling them to become an entrepreneur is not enough.

People who have spent their working lives as agricultural employees may have excellent production skills but little experience managing a business, negotiating with factories, arranging finance, marketing tea, or managing accounts.

They need training, support, and an economic plan.

We have seen comparable transitions in other industries where employees have taken responsibility for enterprises after former owners withdrew. It can succeed, but worker ownership alone does not automatically solve the management challenge.

Is the famous manicured tea landscape a warning sign?

Dan: The classic image of tea is a perfectly combed green hillside. You argue that this landscape can also signal ecological vulnerability.

Pierre: Yes. The landscape many people associate with tea is essentially a landscape of monoculture.

In the second half of the 19th century, large areas were cleared to establish tea plantations in regions such as Assam and Sri Lanka. These were originally highly biodiverse forest environments.

When one crop dominates a landscape, several things happen.

You create greater pressure from insects and fungi. Soil fertility becomes more difficult to maintain. Producers may become increasingly dependent on synthetic fertilizers and crop-protection products.

This is not simply an environmental concern. It is a business risk.

If your production system requires increasing quantities of fertilizer, pesticides, or other inputs, or if climate change increases pest and disease pressure, the economic resilience of the garden declines.

There are other models.

Closer to tea’s geographical origins, in southern China and Southeast Asia, tea can be found growing within much more diverse landscapes. Tea trees may be taller, other trees may provide shade or nitrogen, and farmers may integrate fruit or annual food crops.

Some small producers — and some plantation owners — deliberately introduce biodiversity into their gardens.

When designed intelligently, diversification can reduce pest pressure, improve soil fertility, provide additional crops, and sometimes even impart interesting characteristics to the tea itself.

The landscape may appear less orderly to an outsider. But ecological complexity should not be confused with neglect.

Perhaps we need to rethink what a beautiful tea garden looks like.

How can a buyer tell whether a diversified tea system is genuinely resilient?

Dan: A monoculture is visually obvious. A complex agroforestry system is harder for a buyer to assess. How should importers and brands evaluate it?

Pierre: You cannot understand these systems simply by looking at them.

You have to talk to the producers and walk through the fields with them.

Ask: What is this tree? Why is it here? What does it contribute? Does it provide shade? Does it improve the soil? Does it produce food? Has the producer noticed changes in insects, disease, or leaf quality?

Small farmers often have considerable experiential knowledge of their land, but they will not necessarily describe it in academic terms.

It is vernacular knowledge.

The buyer needs to listen.

Obviously, an importer cannot visit every individual smallholder. But representative farms can be visited, producer organizations can document their practices, and suppliers can explain how agricultural systems are managed.

That tells you far more than simply seeing a photograph containing a few trees and calling the garden biodiverse.

What would a better tea industry look like at scale?

Dan: Specialty tea demonstrates that hundreds of origins and styles can coexist. But most of the world market remains highly standardized. What would you like to see change?

Pierre: I would like to see much more diversity enter the mainstream market.

When you look at specialty tea, only a small proportion of the total business, you discover hundreds of origins, styles, cultivars, and methods of manufacture.

When you look at most of the global market, consumers see something much narrower: black tea, CTC tea, tea bags, and standardized blends.

I do not expect mainstream consumers to choose among hundreds of teas. But there could certainly be dozens, rather than just one or two, generic styles.

That would encourage greater emphasis on origin and quality and give producers more possibilities for differentiation.

It may initially appear that better tea would cost consumers more.

But good loose-leaf tea can often be infused several times. Two or three grams of tea do not necessarily represent one beverage. They may make three, four, or sometimes many more infusions.

That changes the economics of the cup.

It also changes the relationship with tea. Tea takes time.

The idea of the slow movement fits tea very well because good tea is not really designed around instant consumption. Learning to prepare tea, taste differences, and understand origin can encourage consumers to accept a wider range of products and prices.

What should a tea company change first?

Dan: Contracting, pricing, traceability, producer participation and long-term purchasing all matter. Where should a company begin?

Pierre: I would begin with the way it buys tea.

The companies I know that purchase good tea and maintain reasonably fair relationships with producers tend to visit those producers regularly — perhaps every year or every two years.

They talk with them.

Their contracts are more horizontal.

The relationship becomes something more than simply buying whatever tea is available at a particular price.

Auction systems make this type of relationship more difficult because the transaction separates the buyer and producer. Auctions have their function, but they are also part of a trading structure inherited from an earlier period.

Direct relationships allow trust to develop.

That is especially important because tea changes.

The same garden will not produce exactly the same tea every season or every year. Climate changes. Weather changes. Agricultural conditions change.

If the buyer expects a perfectly standardized product every time, the producer is under pressure to eliminate variation that is, in fact, natural.

A longer-term relationship allows flexibility. Perhaps the buyer purchases a little more from one producer this year and somewhat less from another, but both parties understand why.

There must be discussion, mutual understanding, and respect.

That is why contracting is not only about the legal document. It is about the relationship behind the document.

Does consumer education have a role in redistributing value?

Dan: Buyers may understand why teas differ in price, but many consumers do not. How important is explaining the economics of tea?

Pierre: It is very important because tea has an enormous range of prices.

A consumer may see one package for €6 and another, much smaller, for €50, and ask why.

The answer cannot simply be, “This one is better.”

Consumers can learn why white tea requires particular harvesting, why yields differ, why certain teas come from older trees or particular cultivars, why processing is more demanding, or why one tea may produce many infusions.

The more educated people become about tea, the easier it becomes for them to understand that tea is not a single standardized product.

There is a very wide range of teas, and logically there is also a wide range of prices.

Education therefore becomes part of the business model. If consumers understand what creates value, producers have more opportunities to create and retain that value.

Why did you write this book?

Dan: You have been interested in tea since you were a teenager. What made you turn that interest into an investigation of the industry?

Pierre: At some point, I realized that although I loved tea, I knew very little about how it was produced and about the people who produced it.

Were they happy producing tea? What were their lives like? What was the social reality behind the product?

I had traveled to some producing countries, but there was still much I did not know.

At the same time, I saw that these questions had been investigated for other commodities.

There were books, research, and campaigns concerning palm oil, cocoa, and coffee. Coffee in particular became closely associated with the Fair Trade movement from the late 1980s onward.

Tea had largely escaped this attention.

Instead, tea retained this very attractive image of beautiful green hills and women plucking leaves.

But what was behind the image?

You cannot know unless you go there and investigate.

I felt somebody needed to do that work. My publisher was willing to support the project, and that is how the investigation began.

I am an ecological economist, but I also love tea. I did not write the book to make people stop drinking tea.

I wrote it because understanding the people, landscapes, and economic relationships behind tea is part of understanding tea itself.

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