As Fisk said in 1989, “routine lives require routine pleasures”- tea is one of these. Tea is most popular beverages that give us that pleasure. Various traditions ascribe diverse meanings to tea; from a Japanese tea ceremony to the salty tea in Mongolia, or even the Rize tea of Turkey, served in a narrow-waisted tea glass.
Rize, a city located in the East Black Sea region of Turkey, is one of the main areas of tea production in the country. Turkish tea is internationally known as Rize tea – but it is important to note that tea is made in other cities in the East Black Sea region of Turkey as well.
These cities are Artvin, Trabzon and Giresun. The total tea gardens in these four cities are nearly 830 thousand decare area,with one million producers. Approximately, between 1.1 million and 1.3 million tonnes of tea is obtained annually. Moreover, an average of 240,000 tonnes of dry tea is acquired every year. Thus, Turkey takes fifth place in the list of the world tea production after China, India, Kenya and Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, Turkey takes first place in tea consumption, with the average person consuming 3.5kg of tea per year.
Turkish tea is black tea and served with a cube of sugar. Traditional Turkish Tea is served in a ‘semaver’, (Figure 1) with a narrow-waisted tea glass (Figure 2), base plate and a teaspoon. The ‘semaver’ mainly consists of three parts: a place to burn small wood pieces at the bottom; water in the middle; and ‘dem’ (Turkish tea in boiled water) at the top. Dem, followed by boiled water, is poured into the tea glass. Sugar can also be added afterwards if preferred. Furthermore, there is another unique technique to consume Turkish tea in Erzurum, which is a province in the Eastern Anatolia of Turkey. The method that the people in Erzurum use is called ‘kıtlama çay’, which is a way of ‘[drinking tea] with a lump of sugar in one’s mouth’ with a particular type of sugar called ‘kıtlama şekeri’.
“According to records, approximately 2 million people keep food on the table from tea production.”
Covid-19 has affected most of the areas of everyone’s daily lives enormously. But what many people don’t know is that coronavirus has negatively impinged on tea producers as well. One of the most noticeable adverse effects was and still is the deficient workers in the harvest season. Tea harvesting happens four times every year.
Currently, the third harvesting period has started, and most of the people who have tea lands do the cropping own their own. In past years, the landlords were working with both Turkish and foreign workers to crop the tea bushes; nonetheless, Covid-19 has also induced apparent changes in tea agriculture. Previously, Turkish workers from other Turkish cities and foreign workers from Georgia were coming to the East Black Sea Region of Turkey to earn money from harvesting tea. According to records, approximately 2 million people earn a living from tea production.
But now, travel restrictions and social distancing rules have prevented the seasonal workers from working as usual. Under these circumstances, the workloads of landowners have increased, and they have barely met the deadline to sell their product to both state-owned factories and private factories. The issue is that the waiting period for harvesting tea affects the quality of tea. So, tea producers have experienced issues like their tea being cropped too late, which means that they struggle to get business because none of the tea factories will take aged tea leaves when there are fresh tea leaves available somewhere else.
Further to this, the economic crisis adversely affects the tea producers and workers as to how various people in different Turkish sectors have affected. The massive erosion of the Turkish lira obliges the salary increase of the sale price of the Turkish tea per kilogram. However, tea producers haven’t received any palpable support from the government. The supporting bounty of the Turkish government to the tea producers remains 13 piastre/’kuruş’ for five years. Nonetheless, the decrease in value of the Turkish lira against the American dollar has expanded in the last five years (Figure 3). One Turkish lira was equal to 2.9154 dollars in 2015; however, the same amount of Turkish lira is currently equivalent to 7.6639. The dollar is an important indicator of the value of Turkish lira because importation and foreign debt play a crucial role in Turkey’s economy. Apparently, the Turkish government has been incorrectly measuring the economic inadequacy for years, which has continued to put the farmers and agriculturists in a difficult situation.
“If that happens, the remaining agriculture in Turkey might get weaker, and may even disappear for good.”
So, the Turkish government’s economic failures have already caused the decline of the income of producers for years. This means that Covid-19 has become an additional adversity to these people, leading them to a poorer lifestyle. It has led to an increased workload which has then affected tea producers physically. It is the responsibility of the Turkish government to give an alternative solution to the agriculturists and farmers; otherwise, these people will be forced to stop producing and look into other industries. If that happens, the remaining agriculture in Turkey might get weaker, and may even disappear for good.
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