Tea Promotion Perspectives For Poverty Eradication

Drinking water is necessary for people in daily life. People can get it not only from drinking water but also from soup or other beverages. In China, Tea is another choice for people in modern society today. In such a violent competition in the market of tea drinks, there are many places sell tea drinks, such as convenient store, tea house, tea shop and so on.In Phongsaly Province, which is located near Xishuangbanna Yunnan China, there are old tea trees distributing around and based on field survey found that 500 hectares of old tea trees with more 500 years old are still existed in Phongsaly District Phongsaly Province Laos. The tea culture, tea economy and tea plantation, especially tea education were undeveloped in the areas.Most of the local people here are doing with shifting cultivation, depending on the natural recourses and techniques of Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing were applied to assess the land use change in this studied area during 10 years from 1992 - 2002. It is found that forest and grassland were decreased but farmland is increased.The investigation into impact of the land use change on ecology based on Costanza 1997, showed that forest land was declined 15463.35 hectares or 12.39% from 1992 to 2002, which is equivalent to USD 31050406.80. The principle component analysis (PCA) were applied to identify the driving forces of land use changes and the result showed that economic and population factors were the main causes of the land use change.When compared with the plain land development, mountainous development areas are more difficult than plain land development area, because agricultural land is limited and transportation in some areas are not convenience etc. Although mountainous development has many difficulties, tea industry is more possible to develop the studied area: Tea cultivation and processing can apply flexibly to developed and, adapted where irrigation development is not so easy available when compared with other crop cultivation. The profitability of brand tea is higher than other agricultural productions. Characteristics of tea have smaller size and more lightweight. Therefore, conveyance of tea is easier and convenient. Tea garden with the tea cultural landscape of rich natural diversity and natural areas could provide villager with more making money opportunities. Tea prefers to grow in an acidic soil where many other crops could not grow well.Through field work and model analysis, it has been found that the Phongsaly tea industry could be developed through co-operation with China's Yunnan province. The authors' tea industry model for Phongsaly province has been proposed to the authorities of Phongsaly and Yunnan as a co-operation project. Chinese investors have since been invited to Phongsaly to set up tea businesses and to exchange agricultural technology.Through the tea cultivation in studied area, most of the villagers were engaged in tea growing and annual household income has risen to about USD 300 in 2006. According to report of the opium poppy cultivation in 2007, it showed that the average annual cash income of opium poppy growing household is about 139 USD but the average annual cash income of not opium poppy cultivation is about 231 USD (UNODC, 2007). When compared with these households and tea growing household, income of the tea growing household is the highest of the three kinds.To support the Phongsaly tea industry, mountainous tea education promotion for Phongsaly province should be developed. It is suggested that establishing a remote university could be leading to improvement of economy, human resource and conserving enriched culture, environment and others. The effect of this developing model was analyzed by SWOT method.