Starter Kit. Idea 217 of 500. Cluster 10
Tea leaf fertiliser and compost sold to the upcountry vegetable growers
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
Ask a tea factory manager what happens to the leaf waste and refuse, then take 5 sacks, compost them for a trial, and give bags to 3 upcountry vegetable growers for one planting. Go back at harvest and ask what they would pay per sack for more. The proof is a price per sack from a grower who has used it.
- Who pays first
- An upcountry vegetable grower who buys fertiliser every season and would pay less for a local compost that a nearby factory produces.
- What leaves today
- Tea factory waste is burned or dumped while vegetable growers nearby buy fertiliser, so value leaves at both ends of the same valley.
Ask first
- Department of Agriculture. Ask whether a compost sold to vegetable growers needs registering or testing.
- Central Environmental Authority. Ask whether composting factory waste on a site needs environmental approval.
Check before you spend
Whether your compost needs testing before sale as a fertiliser, and whether the factory agrees in writing to supply its waste regularly.
Find out these three numbers
- What do upcountry vegetable growers pay for compost or fertiliser now?
- How much waste does one tea factory throw away each month?
- Does the trial plot grow more than the field next to it?
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.