Turkish tea growers brewing up solutions to virus travel curbs

As restrictions due to the novel coronavirus prevent seasonal workers especially from Georgia from traveling to Turkey, this year tea producers in the region may well have to turn to their neighbors to help haul in the leaves.

"Farmers in the region will have to go back the old days and do their own work due to the coronavirus epidemic," Mustafa Yılmaz Kar, secretary-general of the Trabzon-based Tea Industry and Business Association (CAYSIAD), told
Anadolu Agency.

Around 26,000 seasonal workers, especially from neighboring Georgia, are unable to travel to Turkey due to coronavirus restrictions as the borders have been closed since March.

As Turkey also imposed travel restrictions from province to province to stem the spread of the virus, farmers who own famed Black Sea tea fields but live in Turkey's largest city Istanbul are also having trouble getting to their farms.

According to Kar, around 65% of the people working on tea production already arrived in the region: "They already fertilized their fields and will also pick the tea."

But there are still farmers who live especially in Istanbul unable to make it to the Black Sea region yet due to travel limitations, he added.

"They couldn't get permission but we believe they will get the necessary documents," he said. "We expect that the permission will be given for those people."
Waiting for travel permission

One of those farmers in Turkey's northeastern province of Rize, known as the tea capital of the country, is Fatma Batumoğlu, who told Anadolu Agency that she doesn't know if her son living in Istanbul will be able to get permission to go to Rize to help with the harvest.

"We'll do our best to do the harvest this year,"...