Eight bigha of tea: 5,500 kg of leaf in two months last year, none this year

A 55-year-old tea grower in Amarkhana union of Panchagarh Sadar upazila has an eight-bigha tea garden. The previous year, in the first two months of the season, he had sold 5,500 kg of green leaf. But that season leaf prices were so low that, for lack of money, he could not look after the garden. A tea garden needs fertiliser twice a year, irrigation every 15 days in a drought and pesticide at least six times a year; because none of this was done, pest attacks increased, and on top of that no new buds came because of the heatwave. In his words, ‘This time two months of the season have gone by, but I haven't been able to sell a single leaf.’ The report says that up to 2020, with factories competing, growers got Tk 33–39 a kilo. The previous year this fell to Tk 10–15; with up to 40 per cent of the weight deducted on the grounds that the leaf was wet or poor, not even Tk 8 a kilo was left, while the production cost is about Tk 18 a kilo. For lack of leaf, more than half of the 28 factories in the northern region did not even start operating. Because there are no skilled workers, leaf in Panchagarh is cut with sickles, which makes the buds come late, and the price is also cut on the grounds of poor quality.