Starter Kit. Idea 209 of 500. Cluster 10
The estate-workers' co-operative brand, where the pickers own the pack, sold to buyers who care who picked it
The mechanism, from the book
The Colombo auction sells tea by the lot to a buyer who blends it under his own name. Every step after the auction is where the money is, and every step can be done here by somebody who is not a plantation company.
The first step
Talk with a group of estate workers you already know, on their own time, about whether they would put their names and faces on a pack they own together. If they agree, buy a few kilos from their estate at the normal price, pack it with their photographs and a line each, and offer it to 3 fair-trade or ethical shops abroad. The proof is a shop's reorder.
- Who pays first
- An ethical grocery shop abroad whose customers pay more to know who picked their food, and can find almost no tea that tells them.
- What leaves today
- The people who pick the tea own none of its value, and no buyer abroad can see who they are or pay them directly for the leaf.
Ask first
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask which company or co-operative form lets workers own a brand together.
- Sri Lanka Tea Board. Ask what a workers' brand needs to be approved for export.
Check before you spend
Whether the estate management agrees in writing to the workers' brand, and how the leaf is bought for it, before anyone's name goes on a pack.
Find out these three numbers
- What do buyers abroad pay for tea with the pickers named?
- How many workers would sign up and stay for years?
- What share of the price would reach each picker?
A comparison from the book
Denmark. Chapter Eleven
"a co-operative without an enforceable contract is a committee."
Write the members' contract first; without it the brand falls apart in the first lean season.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.