Farmers' Voice Radio is live in Sri Lanka!
- Hannah Clark
- 19 minutes ago
- 3 min read
In the heart of Sri Lanka’s low-grown tea production regions of Ruhuna and Sabaragamuwa, twelve smallholder farmers are revolutionising the way in which their peers access and share knowledge about quality tea cultivation, climate change adaptation and entrepreneurship.
Thé Yaya—‘Tea Garden’ in Sinhala, the language spoken by 85-90% of smallholder tea farmers in the region—is the first Farmers’ Voice Radio programme in Sri Lanka and has been launched with the support of Twinings Sourced with Care Programme following similar successful radio initiatives with their smallholder supplier communities in Kenya and Nigeria.
As with other Farmers’ Voice Radio programmes, the farmers themselves identify the issues they would like to discuss and generate the content for the 30-minute weekly programme, coordinated by implanting partner Chrysalis and with technical input from officers from Sri Lanka’s Tea Research Institute and Tea Small Holdings Development Authority. The first episode was broadcast on Rangiri Radio in early September 2025 and since that time the series has covered important topics including tea plucking, tea pruning, weed control, fertiliser application, shade management, dealing with drought, the role of women in the tea sector and how tea prices are set.
According to ETP, tea production in Sri Lanka relies heavily on female workers, with women making up around 65% of the total tea workforce. In the smallholder sector, however, our baseline research indicates that female farmers have smaller plots, lower yields and income and less access to training and inputs compared to their male counterparts. They are also underrepresented in leadership roles, contributing to their lack of visibility and voice. In response, half of the twelve reference group members who are driving the radio programme direction and content are women. This is providing a vital public platform for their voices and perspectives to be heard and inspiring female listeners to follow in their footsteps.
Mrs Renuka, an experienced tea farmer from Rathnapura and member of the Thé Yaya Programme Reference Group, is passionate about her achievements and the opportunity she now has to share these with others:
“I never thought I will have this kind of opportunity. I have small tea field, and it gave me the life and achieved my goals as a woman. While I maintain my tea cultivation, I went for plucking in other lands too.
"The economic downturn in last few years hit hard on our lives. As women we have faced social challenges. We should address them too. I have a daughter and son. I raised them with the income of tea. We have very limited channels and resources to follow to gain knowledge. I hope we can take collective initiatives which benefit all of us smallholders.”
One significant difference between Sri Lanka and Twinings’ African origins is that while ownership of radios is widespread in rural areas, radio listening is less frequent and intentional – with 46% of survey respondents reporting daily listening compared to 88% in Kenya’s North Rift Valley. There is, however, greater access to and reliance on smartphones for information and entertainment; therefore as well as promoting the weekly Ringiri Radio programme through 48 Radio Champions running weekly communal listening sessions, audio and video content is also being repurposed as podcasts and reels and distributed via WhatsApp, YouTube, Facebook and other social media platforms commonly used by farmers.
Thé Yaya will run for a year until September 2026 so look out for future stories and insights on this feed!
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