Farmer to
Consumer
Tea

Tea may feel synonymous with India—especially as "chai tea lattes" trend in the West and names like Darjeeling or Assam are treated as global gold standards. But tea was not always central to India's identity or economy. While Assamese Indigenous communities used tea leaves for medicinal and cultural purposes, the crop only became economically and socially entangled with India under British colonial rule.

In the 1800s, determined to compete with China's dominant tea trade, the British turned to their prized colony. After discovering that eastern and southern India were ideal for cultivation, they cleared vast forests and forced Indians into indentured servitude to cultivate a crop they could not consume, while famines ravaged the subcontinent. Though political decolonization and agrarian reforms have occurred, the underlying structures persist.

Centuries of monocropping, corporate land consolidation, pesticide dependency, and climate vulnerability continue to define tea-growing regions. Much of the exported tea remains entangled in exploitative labor conditions and ecological degradation, while farmers who attempt regenerative alternatives face financial precarity.

Tea may be yet another product in the Global North. But for those at the peripheries of the global supply chain, it is their entire life—and survival. This is why Bagaan exists: to honor the communities behind tea and build more equitable, sustainable supply chains.