I had a wonderful day! I went to a wonderful Tea Bar in Denver today! I had my first tea soda, it was so good! I told the employee behind the counter that about 6 weeks ago I shared a story on my blog about a Community in Bangladesh that was bringing women out of poverty with an organic tea Garden in Bangladesh, he mentioned that sounds very much like our story! So I got home tonight looked at my food blog and there it was! How Organic Tea transformed a Bangladesh Community same tea Company Teatulia By Alice Feiring, Newsweek To transform the parched, arid Bangladeshi soil into a lush organic tea garden took dung. Tons of it. How to acquire the massive amounts needed was the sticky problem facing Kazi Anis Ahmed, the 41-year-old cofounder and president of Teatulia. After all, it was not exactly part of the doctoral thesis in comparative literature that he had completed at New York University. The story of Teatulia, the only organic tea garden in Bangladesh, started in 2000. Ahmed’s father, Kazi Shahid, was preparing for his three sons to join the family business Gemcon Group, which at the time was focused on media and construction. It was Kazi Shahid who came up with the idea of expanding into tea in the northwest of the country, a mere 97 kilometers from India’s famed Darjeeling tea region. The little-known fact is that Bangladesh is one of the world’s 10 largest tea-growing locations. But with no international reputation, all the tea is consumed within the country’s borders—and almost all the tea is grown in the east. Ahmed loved the concept, though when he moved home after graduate school to run the company in 2004, his caveat was that the farming had to be organic. “At the time we started the garden,” he says, “no one took organic seriously. They said it was impossible. The traditional tea experts of Bangladesh told us tea in the northwest would not be quality.” Still, the family only needed to produce adequate tea, as their major mission was to provide jobs to the region. They were convinced they could make it work. Purchasing 1,215 hectares of desert-like land in Tetulia (the tea’s name is a nod to the region), on the wrong side of the country for tea, where annual income per family is a mere $800 and there is a constant threat of seasonal famine, they started the Kazi & Kazi Tea Estate. They circumvented the lack of regional tea expertise by bringing in consultants to train staff and farmers, with an eye toward self-reliance. Related Product: Teatulia Ayurvedic Tea Sampler The lack of agricultural tradition proved a blessing because the land was virginal, not ravaged by the government-supported, synthetic fertilizer-dominated “Green Revolution.” After reading the poetic One Straw Revolution by the master Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, Ahmed went one step beyond organic and tried to do low-intervention farming. The tea garden functions on minimal irrigation. They installed a plethora of plants next to the tea plants to feed and aerate the soil. What now exists is a breathtaking vision. The barren area has been transformed into an Eden with a resurgence of wildlife never seen before—recently, a pair of monkeys was spotted. The animals had not been seen in the area for decades. “The garden, which supplies 100 percent of the tea and infusion production, has over 250 kinds of plants, many rare, and all indigenous,” Ahmed explains. All are planted for their usefulness—the neem double as shade trees and natural pesticides, for instance, and are made into medicinal teas. Ginger, peppermint, and lemongrass are cultivated for the herbal infusions. The main ingredient needed for this metamorphosis was cow poop: 200 metric tons a month of it. So they needed quite a few cows. And that’s where the story of Teatulia’s transformation gets even more interesting. Initially, the estate cared for its own bovines. But as each year brought another 40.5 hectares into production, the herd swelled to 600 animals. The situation became overbearing. “We didn’t want to be a dairy—that wasn’t where our expertise was,” Ahmed says. In addition to cows, the family also nurtured the community. Already established at the tea estate were centers for language and computer literary, parks for kids. “As nice as all of this was to do,” Ahmed says, “here was an opportunity to engage in a deeper way.” “I always believed that enterprise, not charity, was the real driver of growth. I had this continuous thought, that if we could solve the problems of the land, of the fertilizer, we could solve the problems for many people.” The solution Ahmed came up with: to let the neighboring villagers care for the cows. In 2005 they formed a cow co-op. The plan was to let it be run by the women. The estate would loan them an animal. In two years, after one liter of milk and a certain amount of cow dung a day, the members paid back their debt and were free to use whatever revenue was generated by the cow for themselves. “Almost 99 percent of the members have re-enrolled to take more cows. Some are on their third or fourth cow,” Ahmed says. As it turns out, a cow in rural Bangladesh can change a life. With around 1,400 cows to date, and with the area looking forward to 3,000 in the next two years, many futures have been impacted. Families have pulled themselves out of poverty. It is reported that a woman named Fahima has even managed to use the revenue from cows to outfit her dirt-floored hut with real floors, solar power, a good kitchen, and plumbing. Her brood has grown to four cows; her husband quit his job and went to work for her. Robert
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 04:19:45 +0000
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