Five incomes, one leaf

In Mabian, growing tea pays dividends in more ways than one.

Li Min, a local official with rural affairs, points out that a farming family can earn five separate incomes from working on a tea plantation — renting land, selling fresh leaves, wages from labor-intensive work, collective village dividends, and tourism spillover from neighborhood homestays, where tourists buy directly from farmers and some villagers find work.

"A family of four, including grandparents in their 60s and 70s, can pick tea and earn 800 or 900 yuan a day," He says. "That's better than leaving town to work, and they can look after the children and pick them up from school."

Across the county, about 80,000 people are directly or indirectly employed in the tea industry, with per capita fresh-leaf income of about 6,000 yuan, according to local authorities.

"One leaf enriches one people," says Like Haomao, deputy head of Mabian, adding that the tea industry truly plays a leading role in increasing farmers' income.

However, the major bottleneck constraining local tea development is the lack of market recognition."Our tea output in Sichuan is very high, but our brands are not much," He says bluntly, adding that a large part of Mabian tea is sold as raw material or processed leaves to brand owners in other provinces.

Additionally, the underutilization of summer-autumn tea has traditionally been the county's weak spot. After the spring harvest, many gardens are left fallow.

Summer heat speeds up the tea plant's growth, producing leaves that are larger, tougher and higher in bitter compounds, He explains.

The resulting tea is more astringent and fetches lower prices, making it hardly worth the labor to pick, he adds.