The factory known as Organic Orthodox Tea Factory is located in Suryodaya Municipality of Ilam. Run by local farmers, the factory aims to outdo others in short time period, stated the president of the Ilam Tea Cooperative, Krishna Subedi.
According to him, 61 farmers have invested in the factory and its total worth is Rs 60 million. "So far, Rs 10 million has been invested in setting up the factory. The factory building, machines and area to dry the tea have been set up," he informed. Subedi added that few machines are yet to be installed along with constructing infrastructures for storing tea, guest rooms, among others.
"The machines have already reached in Calcutta, India and will be soon in Kathmandu from where we will bring them here. Along with that we trying to lower custom taxes on the machines, as it's a cooperative," Subedi said. He informed that the cooperative has planned to bring the factory that's stretched over 10 ropani of land into operation from the Nepali month of Chaitra (March). "Hope the government will support us start it.
Encouraged by the development, growing number of farmers have been investing for the factory. Some have increased the investment value. "Those who were investing not more than Rs 1000 or just Rs 500 earlier are now coming up with Rs 500,000. They have strong faith in cooperative. They are confident that all accounts and transactions would be transparent since it's their own cooperative," Subedi stated.
He informed that the farmers had sought help of several government bodies for the establishment of a tea factory. Since nobody was interested to listen to their plea, the farmers themselves later decided to form cooperative and run factory. "When repeated pleas to different state authorities were not heard, the farmers decided to do it on their own. It was not easy for them to invest, but it's a matter of will," Subedi said. He added that if the government still wants to help, it can monitor the progress and help the farmers expand it. He claimed that even though the Ministry of Agriculture has allocated some aid for the cooperative, it has not yet been released.
For their tea leaf, local farmers pay negligible amount. Farmers in Ilam has several time tried to draw attention towards this 'unfair' deal, however, this is the first ever attempt to 'show' the private and government factories that farmers themselves can run a factory, too, said Subedi. Farmers are quite confident that the new factory would break the monopoly of other tea factories. "Farmers remain unknown of the profit made by the factories, where they sell their tea leaf. On the other hand, they are paid so less that the farmers can hardly get returns of their investment made in tea farming. This won't be the case when their factory comes into operation," Subedi maintained.
Farmers in Ilam get Rs 15 to 46 per kg for the tea leaf normally. If tea is organic, factories pay between Rs 55 to 60 per kg. However, this is not enough to cover farmers' investment amount, said Kumar Neupane, a member of the cooperative. "Farmers work so hard but are paid so little in return. The payment does not even return their farming cost. But when our own factory comes into operation this will not happen," he said. He added that the farmers have taken much pain and made quite an effort to establish the factory.
Elaborating on the efforts made by the farmers to bring the factory into operation, Neupane expressed happiness that their efforts will soon materialize when the factory comes into operation.
There are around three dozens of tea processing factories in the district. Even though the price of tea is high in the international market and huge amount of tea from Ilam is exported, farmers are not given their due return, Neupane claims. "Our cooperative would be working differently. In order to ensure quality of tea, its minimum price would be set at Rs 60 per kg," Subedi said further adding that there's huge demand of organic tea and it can fetch good prices for the farmers. "Our factory has not yet come into operation but sample tea has already been demanded by tea traders in USA and Europe," he said.
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