About Kumaon Tea
Kumaon Tea is a unique partnership between smallholder farmers in the Kumaon region of the Indian Himalayas and U.S.-based Young Mountain Tea (YMT). Kumaon Tea is launching a groundbreaking new model for tea production that signifies a new chapter for the Indian tea industry, which has operated under antiquated colonial practices for hundreds of years. With Kumaon Tea, factory ownership is shifting from government ownership into the hands of hundreds of rural, smallholder farmers, along with land ownership, creating economic resiliency. This new model will help increase both incomes and autonomy for farmers in this rural Indian region, and help create sustainable livelihoods for its farmers.
The idea for Kumaon Tea was sparked in 2013 when Raj Vable, a first-generation Indian-American, was in Kumaon on a Fulbright scholarship. With a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and master’s degree in environmental studies, he was seeking ways to create bridges between American resources and rural Himalayan communities.
Traveling by buses crammed with people and goats, Raj passed through empty villages surrounded by fallow farmland and washed out roads. He learned that the deserted towns were a result of urban migration, a problem shared by villages across the Himalayas. The region’s younger populations were fleeing to cities in search of career opportunities, and the once rich farmland was becoming unworkable and unstable due to overworking the land and unsustainable agricultural practices. The remaining rural villagers were skilled growers, but they were unable to earn an income for their work, due to a combination of land degradation and low income opportunities. While the U.S. specialty tea market was taking off, Raj learned these local farmers were interested in reviving the abandoned and weakening tea gardens in their villages. Raj saw a widening opportunity in the tea industry that could be filled by the farmers in Kumaon, and with this in mind he founded YMT in 2013.
Fast forward a decade, and that idea is now a reality. Raj has worked with farmers and partners to introduce a new ownership model. In January 2024, they broke ground on a new, state-of-the-art, Food Safety Modernization Act-compliant tea factory. This joint venture that’s both farmer-owned and internationally supported will produce its first batch of regeneratively grown teas in spring 2024, and the tea will arrive in the U.S. ready for sale by September 2024.
The project is funded by several local and international partners including the USAID Cooperative Development Program. Locally, Desmond Birkbeck, a multi-generational Kumaon tea farmer, is the primary champion and investor. Additional funding has been provided by Frontier Co-op, Acumen, and YMT. The tea is exclusively imported into the U.S. and sold by YMT.
Kumaon Tea’s loose-leaf collection of black, white and green teas offers bright, complex flavors and premium quality, similar to more well-known neighboring regions of Darjeeling and Assam. Kumaon is one of the few regions in India where tea is grown at 4,000-6,000 feet above sea level. The high elevation contributes to the distinctive flavor profile of the tea, as cooler temperatures allow stronger flavors to develop thanks to slower growth, more “beneficial” environmental stressors, and greater biodiversity.
