Co-operatives of small-scale tea growers in Kenya are part of a carbon credit scheme – they are paid to plant and nurture trees such as avocado and nut, which also give them a cash crop, while stabilising the soil and helping mitigate climate change.
Yorkshire Tea, which buys most of its tea from these smallholders, funded the project to ensure its future supply of tea but also to become carbon neutral, which it achieved this summer and will be rightfully celebrating on tea packs from this month. Climate change means these Kenyan smallholders’ tea gardens in the foothills of Mt Kenya will be unviable by 2050; as the climate warms they’ll need to move to higher altitudes but it’s not possible to grow tea on the steeper slopes. The rains are…
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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2019