Tea farmer Thamara Weerasena, 43, is married to Sugath Nuwarage, 52. They have three sons, Chaminda Ruwan Kumara, 22, Janaka Namal Kumara, 18, Rohan Pushpa Kumara, 17, and a daughter, Kaushalya Rasadiri, 13.

Mrs Weerasena is vice president of SOFA’s Nillamba Organic Branch Society (Block No 14). It has 18 members and is one of three societies that make up the Gurukele Branch Society which has a total of 97 members located around Gurukele village.

The family tea farm is a ten-minute walk from the nearest dirt road and is approached through the jungle by a narrow track that winds up and down several steep valley sides. At two acres, their farm is larger than most other SOFA members. The land was bought from the government by Mr Nuwarage’s father in 1952. Mrs Weerasena came to live here as a 19-year-old when she married her husband in 1980.

Mrs Weerasena is responsible for the tea farm and works on it most days. Her husband works as a driver for the Central Transport Board and helps on his day off, and the children help in their spare time.

On a typical day, she gets up at 4am and wakes the children who study before leaving for school. She prepares breakfast and a lunch curry with bread or rice which the other family members take with them to have at school or at work. She spends four or five hours working in the fields and looks after the two cows and goats that provide milk for sale and dung for her compost heap. She also has her work visiting farmers involved with SOFA agricultural and welfare programmes. At around 8pm the family sits down for a dinner of vegetable curry and rice or stringhoppers, a type of noodle prepared from rice and millet flour. After watching TV for a while, the family are in bed by 10pm.

Times are improving for the family but for many years they struggled to survive on Mr Nuwarage’s wages as a driver. In the past, Mrs Weerasena’s sparse tea bushes were neglected and provided little income for the family. The bushes were old and not very productive and in any case the price paid by middlemen was too low to make investment in time and money worthwhile.

Healthcare has always been a problem and keeping their children in school is expensive. Sometimes she has had to borrow money from neighbours or from the bank and pawn her gold jewellery to pay the interest.

But things have greatly improved since SOFA was established. The farmers now sell all the green leaf they can grow directly to Bio Foods at a much higher price - Rs31/kg compared to Rs15 paid by local intermediaries. And then Bio Foods provided free clonal tea plants paid for by the premium money from Fairtrade sales. Mrs Weerasena proudly pointed to the areas that were cleared and replanted. The new plants are now strong and healthy and have enabled her to increase green leaf production from 10 kilos a month to 90 kilos.

It took a lot of hard work to convert to organic production; Mrs Weerasena had to learn to make organic compost heaps, the essence of organic agriculture, and manual weeding has replaced the use of chemical weed killers. But she is enthusiastic about the benefits that six years of organic agriculture have brought; she is now an expert in making high quality organic compost, especially now that she has her own animals to provide dung. This organic fertiliser and the agricultural extension training provided by Bio Foods are the main factors behind the improved yields from her tea and spices. The green leaves on the tea bushes are heavier, of higher quality and command good prices from Bio Foods. Mrs Weerasena knows exactly the best time to harvest her crops to ensure the optimum quality and enjoys being able to pass this expertise on to other farmers. She remembers how using chemicals could make you ill so would never consider using chemical inputs now and is also keen to protect her environment.

Mrs Weerasena is enthusiastic about starting more small-scale income generating schemes with SOFA’s support. She already grows spices such as cinnamon and now plans to plant turmeric as well. These enterprises are mutually beneficial: SOFA provides plants or seeds to start the business and farmers from Bio Food’s spice projects give agricultural advice; eight months later when the crop is harvested, payment for a small part of the crop is returned to SOFA to cover the costs of the plants or seeds, and thereafter the business is in profit. Bio Foods pays Rs30 per kg for turmeric - Rs7-10 more than other buyers - which it processes, packs and exports to organic markets, providing additional valuable employment for local people.

And this is only the start. Mrs Weerasena was inspired by a neighbour who applied for a loan from the Fairtrade premium fund. He has started a business to bulk-buy and pack peanuts and will receive marketing support from SOFA. She has spotted an opportunity to purchase loose black tea in bulk from a nearby factory, then pack it and sell it locally, starting with neighbours. She is in the process of putting her business plan to SOFA. She hopes to take out a loan to get the enterprise off the ground in 2004 and will repay it with packet tea.

Fairtrade has helped by providing low interest loans for these schemes - bank loans are hard to get and the interest is higher. She has also taken out loans to purchase cattle and goats to sell their milk commercially and use their dung for composting. The loans have also helped her to buy roofing sheets and other materials to improve and extend her house. But to her, the most important factor in increasing her income has been the opportunity to expand production and diversify her crops. She is grateful for the part that Fairtrade has played in making these improvements to her family’s lives.

The SOFA board makes policy decisions and establishes new projects to benefit its members. These range from agricultural improvement programmes to making sure members are aware of loan schemes. It’s Mrs Wanaweera’s responsibility, as vice president of her branch society, to pass this information on to members at their monthly meetings. She also organises awareness programmes for other farmers in the area to explain the benefits of belonging to SOFA. She is committed to spreading the word about organic farming and is enthusiastic that more farmers should have the opportunities that she has had.

Despite the recent improvements to her family’s lives, Mrs Weerasena still worries about her children’s futures. Her oldest son left school at 17 but, like many local youngsters, can only find occasional casual work. The extra income from Fairtrade means she can afford to continue her other children’s education. She just hopes there will be more job opportunities by the time they leave school.

Fairtrade Foundation December 2003

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