Read an unsolicited review of our Zomba Pearls by a Polish Wine Writer http://blog.polishwineguide.com/2010/12/30/white-tea-from-malawi/ It really is such an awesome tea. I haven’t had some for a while now – Saturday late morning, think it might just be the right time to enjoy a cup of Malawi’s finest!
We had a visit from Imani Consultants this week. They wanted to get an idea of our environmental management program and to get ideas of how we could work together on issues of Climate Change mitigation. One of the issues we discussed was how they could partner with Satemwa in the existing program we have for outgrowers in encouraging them to plant trees.
Our program with the outgrowers this year was rather humble, yet we managed to get the following trees planted out on their smallholdings; 622 Avocado Pears, 5,380 Eucalyptus spp, 27 other allsorted species. This was alongside their tea expansion program which saw 13,330 tea plants being put out by a number of growers.
The program for 2011 /12 season is yet to be defined in terms of the number of agroforestry species and fruit trees. However, Satemwa is preparing nurseries that will allow for 100,000 tea plants to go out to smallholder farmers.
Yesterday we had a meeting with Mr. Wilfred Kustomu, the Chairman of Msuwadzi Tea Growers Association whose members Satemwa buys green leaf from. The main purpose of the meeting was discuss some funding from the Farm Income Diversification Program (FIDIP) that has been identified to fund expansion and rehabilitation of smallholder tea fields.
We will be meeting again with FIDIP to try and work out the technicalities of this support program, with a view to the first plants being planted in May / June 2012.
This morning we received our Rainforest Alliance certificate, certifying Satemwa for tea production. Unfortunately the auditors visited in October when we were not harvesting coffee as a result they were unable to do their ‘chain of custody’ audit and we can’t be certified for coffee production at this stage.
This will compliment our existing Utz and Fairtrade certificates both in different markets, but also our operations on the ground. Rainforest as the name suggests, as well as covering workers rights issues, health and safety etc has a bias towards protection of the environment. This is expressed in strict waste management standards etc
Still waiting for the little frog logo that we can include on our site!
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