ABSTRACT
The organic agriculture in Kandy area (Sri Lanka) was initiated in the 1990s by two different pathways: the NGO Gami Seva Sevana (GSS) started credit and savings groups among poor smallholder farmers in 1994 and insisted that new members converted to organic agriculture and diversified their small land-holdings. Farmers in this area had neglected tea production because of low prices but GSS encouraged organic tea cultivation. The GSS has kept a holistic household approach to the development support and offered a number of training courses and extension services to the members in order to empower women and men. In 1993 another initiative in organic tea production was launched as a combination of small farmers’ organizations (SOFA) and a processing and trading company, Bio Foods, which specializes in tea and spices purchased from small-holder farmers and exported. Since 2002 the village-based SOFA groups have been formally independent of Bio Foods though farmers supply all their organic tea to the company. While the organic price premium is paid directly to individual farmers the fair trade premium is channelled to the SOFA farmer groups via the head office. The premium consists of 40 rupees per kg tea, which amounts to approximately 3 million rupees every year. These funds are used mainly for community-level support such as tree planting and for non-agricultural support to families such as scholarships for students. Together, Biofoods and SOFA organize training of farmers (including specialized courses for women). Not surprisingly the Bio Foods company has had a stronger focus on the marketing of the products (tea and spices) compared with GSS. Thus, in order to benefit from the stronger market links through Bio Foods the GSS farmer groups recently transformed into associations and became suppliers to the Bio Foods factory.
