Solidarity Trust Next Steps: Where Your Money is Going

How We Operate 

Something that was requested in the 2024 year-end consumer survey was more information about how we operate the solidarity-fund and where that 15% of our income is precisely going. This newest blog update can hopefully answer any existing questions and inspire for suggestions and feedback from the global community.

Uprooted Tea Plants in Maiyingtai Village

In my mind at least, One River Tea’s commercial legitimacy and competitive advantage is derived not from conventional price-point competition, unequal access to information, gatcha gimmicks, or influencer hype, but from delivery on our unique commitments to customers and producers. In addition to well curated tea, we give consumers a quantity and quality of information, a level of access to Chinese tea production that few conventional firms would ever want to do; we serve producers through these same efforts. It is the same ethos that has let Spain’s Mondragon or China’s Nanjie Village shine in prosperity, stability, and solidarity despite an increasingly unstable and polarized world. Like these beacons of success, it is our hope to be a market actor that achieves these social goals within the tea industry. 

This demands a differentiated relationship to all the other actors we interact with. Over the past century, despite greater means of technological potential for interaction between food consumers and producers, it has not happened, and there has paradoxically been a greater concentration of value in the hands of merchants. Globally, the share of the final price that goes to farmers has declined, and continued to decline even as food prices have started to rise in absolute terms. For drinks like tea and coffee, it can be common for 80, 90, or even 95% of the price that consumers pay to never reach farmers, and this is especially true for boutique vendors that serve the wealthiest segment of global consumers. That is not to deny that rents, wages, and shipping costs are higher downstream, but it remains true that it is merchants and not farmers or processers that can see the greatest return on their labor. We are thus obligated to move against that tide. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, by redistributing 15% of our income to growers, processors, and consumers. One River Tea, is taking a small and sustainable step to creating a different tea value chain.   

Table 1： Basic Impact on Tea Value Chain

It is essential we speak of income, not profit. On paper, China’s 2 million plus cooperatives are stipulated to share 40% of profit between member households. 99% of them never do, and for a simple reason, there is just no “profit” to share. Cooperative directors, who are usually private business owners, are usually under pressure from debt and private investors to provide the greatest possible return as quickly as possible. Thus, any and all operating surplus needs to be reinvested into more “profitable” ends, be it new machinery, soil amendments, promotion, tourist facilities, etc. Unburdened by debt or private investors, we face no such pressure. By speaking in terms of total income, and not profits, we prevent any suspicion in the misuse of funds that sadly remains common in the social economy globally. As we grow and produce more tea ourselves, we will continue to move up the value chain.

Table 2：Qualitative Impact on Tea Value Chain 

Qualitatively, we are in a dual service role. In return for our emancipation from wage labor, One River Tea member-owners are obligated to be a bridge between Chinese producers and international consumers. We provide a range of services that are not explicitly or directly profitable, be it our rapid and high quality customer support, meticulous attention to accuracy in content creation, careful curation and comprehensive farm visits, facilitation of direct exchanges between producers and consumers, as well as a degree of accountability that no private vendor would ever accept. This is a model that must be safeguarded and elaborated as One River Tea continues to grow, lest our integrity becomes a victim of commercial success. 

Table 3: Evolution of the Solidarity Trust 

What We Have Done

For the first three years of our journey, when ORT was not yet bringing in enough money to be little more than a self-financing hobby, our impact on Chinese and Laotian tea farmers was quite minimal. Over the last four years in Hefeng’s Maiyingtai Village, we have contributed to a complete transformation of the village. You helped make that happen. The media attention that came along with 13 foreign volunteers and our own continued presence in one of the most isolated counties in Central China has brought massive government investment. Dirt paths are now concrete roads lit with street lamps; derelict wild tea fields have now largely been converted to a new low-maintenance textile crops, mostly on the government dime’s. Our own funds have built a new village gate, converted 2 acres to new high-yield cultivars, provided direct dividends to farmer households and transformed one traditional Tujia home into a modern domicile with running water, electricity, and internet that will hopefully serve as a village guest house for decades to come.    

Our success in Maiyingtai was and is limited by internal and external factors. Internally, the local co-operative factory and bank account is controlled by one family, while  another family owns the cabin and heirloom tea bushes. Ever since late 2023, a feud has emerged over how both our funding and government projects should be utilized among the local actors. While the village will continue to grow and prosper, the future of tea there has come into question. Even with all of our hitherto profit sharing, the oversupply of tea has crashed local prices such that the six households that still have sizeable tea fields continue to uproot bushes and look for other livelihoods. The hope for an income stream tea tourists has not materialized, and likely will not materialize until the construction of a high-speed rail stop in Hefeng sometime in the next decade.

  2025 Solidarity Trust Monthly Breakdown

What We Will Do

There is a need to find a new situation and tea growing site in China that can continue to serve as the site for our profit sharing and volunteer hosting. This will be an ongoing mission for the next 1-2 years. Other the past few years, following the Laiyang Model, every village in China has now been empowered to initiate and operate village-owned cooperatives, which are collectives in the traditional sense of the word. Although almost every village now has a plaque hung at its village office for a joint-stock cooperative, most are dormant. Ideally, we can find a village that is willing to work with us, bringing the collective to life, and becoming a neutral arbiter of the resources we bring into a village. In the course of four or five years, we could then make our contribution and do everything in our power to improve the social and ecological sustainability of tea production through a village collective.   

2025 and 2026 are years of transition for us. The more than 100,000 RMB we have allocated so far this year is the most we have ever been able to share, and is serving a number of benefactors. Maiyingtai refers to the village in Hefeng where we have hosted volunteers and made tea these last few years. Although the village is moving away from tea, we still have about 10,000 RMB to send their way at the end of the year. Tunbao refers to the volunteer site in Enshi co-operated with Flowinverse Tea. At the minimum, they will take the lead on hosting volunteers in Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 as we weigh our options for a more permanent site. Baotang is a village in Menghai where we are working to help Master Tan sell off their excess Puer stock as they face a downturn in demand. We are designing profit-free products, freebies, and other promotional initiatives to help him out of the present crisis. We hope to effectively help all three communities as we continue to grow this year.

We are all in this together, and this what we have done so far to make a positive difference with your continued support.