Against All Odds: Small Farmer Grown Tea with Ashwini Sashidhar
Live Zoom Event Friday, October 30
11:30am-1pm Eastern | 10:30am-12pm Central | 8:30am-10am Pacific
For decades, Equal Exchange has partnered with Tea Promoters of India (TPI), a third-generation, family-owned business and a pioneer in environmental and social reform in the tea industry. In a sector frozen in time and still dominated by large plantations established during the colonial era, TPI is proving that a small-farmer model is possible. TPI brings small-farmer-grown teas to the international market while investing in farmer organizations, sustainable agricultural practices, and continually adapting to an ever-changing climate, especially after devastating flash floods hit their tea gardens and farming communities last year.
Please join us for a conversation with Ashwini Sashidhar, Director of Tea Promoters India, to learn more about the important work TPI is doing to build a better future for the tea industry.
“For generations, tea growers have relied on rhythm—the dependable arrival of the first flush, the reassuring build-up of the monsoon, the cool winter dormancy that restores the bushes. Tea has always been an intimate dialogue between plant, soil, rain, and time. Today, that dialogue is changing. The rains come in bursts instead of blessings. Heat lingers where mist once held the slopes in softness. Dry spells stretch longer than memory recalls. Pest cycles are shifting. Soil behaves differently. Even the timing of plucking rounds feels altered. Climate change, for us, is not a distant headline—it is a daily negotiation with uncertainty.”