Agriculture and Environment: Tea

Environmental Impacts of Production: Habitat Conversion

As with any crop that is grown by itself in monocultural production systems on a large scale, habitat conversion and associated biodiversity loss are an issue.

In Uganda and Kenya large areas of natural forests were cleared to make way for tea plantations.

Tea-growing regions in India were once covered with a variety of grasslands, marshes, and forested areas that hosted a wide range of flora and fauna that included such species as elephants, tigers, and deer.

Direct impacts on local ecosystems
Today the landscape is dominated by vast tea fields (Chaudhari 2002). Tigers are no longer found in tea-growing regions. In addition, single tea crop cultivation does not support the same ecosystem functions as natural habitat.

For example, it has less water retention and increased water runoff and soil erosion than more biodiverse natural habitats.