rethink sustainability
All the tea in… Thailand – meet Monsoon: the firm making traceable, forest-friendly tea
Tea is the world’s second most consumed beverage after water1 – around the world an estimated 5 billion cups of tea are drunk every day2. Tea’s huge market value – USD 120 billion in 20233 – is matched by its outsized environmental impact. In the world’s major tea growing regions, monoculture tea plantations are responsible for deforestation, high freshwater withdrawals, and pesticide and fertiliser use that undermines soil health and harms local biodiversity.
Tea, like other crops grown in tropical regions, is also acutely vulnerable to climate change. Research suggests that as the world warms, some regions currently suitable for growing tea could become unviable, and that changes in rainfall patterns will reduce the quality and change the flavour profile of the final product.4
Thailand’s Monsoon Tea Company takes a very different approach to its industry peers. In place of the intensive monoculture plantations that dominate most production, Monsoon cultivates exclusively forest-friendly tea, combining traditional knowhow with modern technology to create tea that has a positive impact on its environment and is more resilient to the threat of climate change. Kenneth Rimdahl is founder and CEO.
Why did you decide to form Monsoon Tea Company?
My journey in the tea industry started in the early 90s when I worked for the Tea Shop chain, opening shops in Madrid. While working there I got to travel all over the tea-producing world, learning about tea history and culture.
In 2012 I decided to leave the company and move to Thailand to be much closer to the source of the tea, to work as directly as possible with the growers in the mountains, and to develop an idea I had for producing high-quality tea in harmony with nature. I wanted to create an alternative to the conventional monoculture plantations that dominate global tea production today.
How do you ensure traceability to guarantee the deforestation-free origin of your tea?
Our credibility rests on the fact that we work closely with our tea growers and local tea factories. We visit the farmers in our network regularly, photographing, documenting and talking with our partners. We are not just buying a product from the other side of the world, instead we are based at the location of production.
As we expand, we want to make sure we have more traceability functions in place. With funding from The GSMA Innovation Fund for Climate Resilience and Adaptation, we are developing a mobile biodiversity traceability application together with the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok. This will trace the origin of each of our teas and document their impact on biodiversity.
Read also: Supporting the transition towards a nature-based economy
This will be a fantastic journey for us to enter the tech world and use AI solutions to complement traditional farming methods. The application is developed in collaboration with our farmers and producers, who will be rewarded financially for their contribution to preserving nature and biodiversity. This data will also be communicated to our customers so they can receive a deeper insight into the benefits of forest friendly tea and better understand the source of their tea.
In what ways do you go further than the Fairtrade model that already exists for tea production?
First and foremost, Fairtrade and organically certified tea, in almost all cases, come from monoculture tea plantations where the natural forest has been removed a long time ago. Fairtrade and organic requirements are not as stringent as our requirement that tea production must protect forests and preserve biodiversity. While a Fairtrade standard can be positive for producers in certain instances, we pay producers at least three times more for growing tea in harmony with nature, rather than in monoculture plantations.
We want to be very transparent with how our tea is made, and showcase the areas where our tea is grown and the people who put in the hard work to produce it. The fact that our tea is grown in harmony with nature, without any pesticides, fertilisers or irrigation systems, shows buyers that it’s a natural product actively contributing to the livelihoods of people in the mountains. Our customers understand why our tea is more expensive than many other teas found on the market, and they want to contribute to our work changing the tea industry from the ground up.
How does your business model incentivise farmers to protect and restore forests?
It’s actually pretty simple. We don’t own any land ourselves, we simply pay farmers and producers more money to make tea in a healthy, preserved forest than they could earn if they were to cut down the forest to create monoculture farms. This way we can create opportunities for better futures for local people, who can send their children to school, avoid having to migrate to cities to work in factories, and preserve their local culture.
Read also: Meet FarmED – the farm putting soil first
You ensure that the initial drying and processing phase of the harvested tea takes place in the communities that grow your tea. Why is this important to you?
Our goal has always been to be as local as possible, and that as much work as possible should be done close to where the tea is grown – this provides extra job opportunities in local communities. An important extra benefit is that the drying lowers the weight of tea leaves by 80 percent, so doing this initial processing close to the origin also lowers transport costs and emissions.
How does a return to forest-friendly tea farming impact local biodiversity?
We want local plants and animals to be able to co-exist freely with the tea our farmers are growing. Normally, when producing tea in monoculture plantations, weeds are removed, pesticides are applied to kill insects, and the tea is grown in the sun, using irrigation systems and fertilisers to maximise production.
We do none of this. The only interventions we make are to prune the tea plants and cut paths so the tea can be picked. We try to achieve a perfect balance between nature conservation and production that generates income for local communities.
Is climate change impacting tea production in Thailand? And how do you reduce your water usage and climate impact?
Climate change is a big problem, not just in Thailand but in all the tea producing countries of the world. Historically, there was minimal need for irrigation because the climate was more balanced and the rainy and dry seasons were more predictable. Today, there are major issues with rising temperatures and longer lasting dry seasons, leading to tea plants dying in the plantations unless they are heavily irrigated.
When our tea is grown in the shade in a forest, the temperature is a lot lower. Thanks to the protection of the trees, we have never had issues with drought, even when it has heavily affected tea plantations elsewhere in the mountains.
We reduce carbon emissions by having everything as local as possible, making sure the tea travels shorter distances before it arrives at our stores. Tea in Europe is often flavoured in Hamburg, for example, meaning that tea arrives there from all over the world and then has to travel onwards to its final destination. Instead, we produce, flavour and package tea locally. We are also in the final stages of a grant application to develop a tea factory run completely on solar energy.
You avoid fertilisers and pesticides – how does this impact crop yields?
Since we are growing tea in the forest alongside native plants and animals, there is a sort of natural “pesticide” already in place. If an insect wants to eat our tea, there is always something else in the forest that wants to eat that insect. There is a natural defence system in place in a balanced ecosystem.
Secondly, leaves from the surrounding trees provide the ground with leaf cover where a multitude of plants, animals and fungi thrive. Soil health is much improved when you leave the forest floor in its natural state and allow the local ecosystem to take its natural course. So we receive both our fertiliser and pest protection for free from nature.
Read also: Regenerative farming promises Nature revolution at Davos 2024
It is true that this method can lead to less tea being produced each season than in monoculture plantations, but since our starting point is to think about nature conservation rather than maximising production, we are happy with what we can produce as long as the forest is well maintained. When we need more tea and want to increase production, we start working with more farmers and producers, and bring people along with us on this journey.
Are you able to achieve any co-benefits, such as carbon credits for carbon sequestration or biodiversity credits for restoring forests?
This is something we have been looking into and we are sure could be developed, but so far we have focussed on expanding the business and have not yet developed this. Our biodiversity traceability project includes systems for collecting data that can be used for carbon or biodiversity credits in future.
Monsoon Tea Company is growing fast. What do you see as your biggest growth areas and drivers for expansion?
In Thailand we currently run eight tea shops and are looking to open several more commercial high-end locations in the next three years. We plan to develop our retail concept by offering new products around tea with mocktails, ready-to-drink offers and accessories for making tea at home.
In 2022, we started Monteaco, the international expansion of Monsoon Tea Company, to work in international markets outside of Thailand. We are currently seeing a lot of interest in the product and for our work in Europe and especially in the U.S, which is a quickly growing market for specialty teas and sustainable products. We have the opportunity to change the entire approach for growing and producing the second most consumed beverage in the world.
1 Chart: Who Drinks Tea? | Statista
2 UK Tea & Infusions Association - News and Events
3 Global: tea market size 2018-2028 | Statista
4 Global Warming Changes the Future for Tea Leaves | Scientific American
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