Day 7. The local “fools”, or why grow tea in Bolivia instead of coca?
But let’s start with coca.
It is quite an interesting phenomenon there, and a considerable share of agriculture in the tropical regions revolves around growing coca. Broadly speaking, Bolivia is also the only country where anyone has the right to grow coca leaves, subject to certain restrictions. Two-thirds of the world’s legal coca comes from Bolivia. Peru also has a state monopoly that buys and packages leaves for chewing, and very small amounts are permitted on indigenous reserves in Colombia.
Most coca cultivation worldwide (over 90%) is, of course, illegal. The largest producer overall is Colombia, followed by Peru, and around a third of Bolivia’s production also ends up with drug cartels quietly operating deep in the jungle. Bolivia is nevertheless a clear exception in the broader picture, with the right to grow coca and chew its leaves enshrined in the country’s constitution. Chewing the leaves, by the way, is not addictive and is not comparable to taking cocaine. Having now tried it myself, I can say that chewing them gave me no particular pleasure, no high and, in fact, no noticeable effect at all. In theory, the effect should be similar to a strong coffee or an energy drink. Since I am not particularly sensitive to those either, I cannot really add much here. It is more of a longstanding local tradition that people are trying to adapt to a changing world.
The drug trade does, of course, exist in Bolivia too, and although coca cultivation is officially permitted on 22,000 hectares, the actual area under cultivation is 50% larger. Various programmes have therefore been introduced over the years to reduce illegal cultivation and encourage farmers to plant other crops. Both the carrot and the stick have been tried. The problem is that growing coca leaves is easy and profitable for farmers. There is a market, the plant needs little attention, and the harvest hardly spoils. Almost anything else requires more effort and knowledge to grow. And often brings in less money too.
There have been some rather absurd episodes along the way. Thirty years ago, various fruits and berries were promoted in Cochabamba as alternatives to coca. Seedlings were handed out and farmers were told about the benefits. But it then turned out that the canning factories that were supposed to buy all those pineapples and granadillas had never been built. And with such poor infrastructure, getting the pineapples out of the jungle sometimes cost farmers as much as they earned from selling them. While the pineapples rotted in piles, the farmers quietly started planting coca again.
Promoting tea as an alternative to coca was also very much on the agenda some 50 years ago. Chinese experts were brought in, a few experimental tea factories were built, and hundreds of hectares of tea plantations were established together with local farmers. Today, it seems that all that remains of the project is a few factory ruins, a few dozen hectares of abandoned tea plantations and, lo and behold, 1.5 hectares of tea fields that are still being looked after.
Tea cultivation was tried in both the tropical part of Cochabamba and Yungas. Today, each region has exactly one remaining tea farmer who still actually produces tea. I visited both plantations myself, and since neither producer knows of anyone else making tea in their region, it is probably safe to say that these two are the experiment’s only living remnants. Interestingly, the surviving plantation in Cochabamba grows the assamica variety (the tree form of the tea plant), while the one in Yungas grows sinensis sinensis (the bush form), just as we do in Georgia. In Cochabamba, all production is currently done by hand. The farmer in Yungas also had a small factory equipped with the essential machinery. The Cochabamba farmer produces just a couple of hundred kilos a year, while the one in Yungas produces almost a tonne.
You might ask why these two “fools” still bother with tea instead of throwing in the towel, as everyone else has done. I doubt they could quite put their finger on it themselves. A renegade mindset and a natural tendency to do things differently from what is considered normal? An attachment to plantations they have poured years of work and effort into? A real interest in tea and the process of making it? Business potential, given that there is certainly a local market for tea “grown in Bolivia”? Or perhaps all of the above. The tea itself is pleasantly mellow, with one of the closest flavour profiles to Georgian tea that I have ever come across.
Why did I drag myself all the way to these tea plantations? Life has taught us that any renegade venture tends to come with more obstacles and surprises than we initially expect. So, for now, all I will say is that renegade projects, farmers and products always get the ideas flowing. Whether Bolivian tea will ever make its way to Europe, though, I cannot yet say 🙂
