Why We Built a Cooperative Instead of Just Buying From Farmers

FlowinverseTea hasn't been around long. To be exact, I only decided to start this brand in 2023. Before that, I was a data analyst, and I did what a data analyst does. I went through every brand selling Enshi tea online, their Reddit threads, their social accounts. Every single one of them claimed to buy direct from farmers.

So at first I figured that would be my path too. I grew up in Hubei, I speak the dialect, I understood the culture better than most people ever could. I thought that gave me an edge.

But once I actually got to the villages, that same edge is what changed my mind. Because it let me see more.

A Year Living in the Villages, Not Visiting Them

In 2024 I spent a whole year going village to village. Not visiting. I was living with them, eating with them, until I knew everything about their situation.

That's when I found three things, at least here in Enshi.

1. “Buying from farmers” doesn't actually hold up. Most real growers are just regular people. They don't make tea at all, they only pick leaf or grow the bushes, then sell to a tea factory. If you asked them to process it themselves, they'd have to do it in the same pot they cook dinner in. No proper tea pan, no factory, nothing.
2. Processing tea is, in a way, a knowledge privilege. It's always tied to some master, some lineage of training, or some real capital, because that's what it takes to afford the equipment, learn the craft, and not get hassled by every local interest along the way. It's like a bible only open to certain people in medieval times.
3. The good tea garden land, especially organic land, is usually in the hands of big companies or a few well-connected people. Sometimes they just want the land and have no interest in actually running it. Sometimes they hold onto it for reasons that have nothing to do with making good tea or getting more money to the farmers.

Where Does the Money Actually Go?

So if it's really “direct from farmer,” how much of that money actually reaches the farmer? The picking wage, the processing profit, how much of any of it is actually fair?

I never got an answer on any brand's website. I never got a full answer from the farmers either. All they get, every year, is the most basic picking wage, and that wage isn't even paid by the brand selling the tea. It's paid by the factory.

That wage doesn't move with the market either. Every factory quietly agrees to cap what a picker can earn in a day. Here in Enshi, that's about 10 to 15 dollars a day, 6am to 7pm.

I found a lot of the money trail is gray, not clean. “Buy direct from farmer” has become a slogan. “Buy direct from tea factory” would honestly be more accurate.

So I decided to change that. I built my own cooperative.

Not an Accusation, Just a Question I Wanted to Keep Asking

I'm not writing this to accuse anyone of anything specific. The whole industry got this way over time, and plenty of people are already trying to fix it, even just by talking about it. In a market this small, choosing to sell tea at all is already rare. Loving tea enough to sell it is already a form of advocacy.

But I wanted to go one step further. If you say you bought “from a farmer,” who is that farmer? How much has their income actually grown? Years later, how's their life? What did this project actually change for them? Those are questions you have to track for years, not just say once.

This isn't just a business. It's a social question.

Ten Years Ago You Bought Tea From a Farmer. What's That Farmer Doing Now?

We chose the slower path. We can't source tea from a dozen places, and we can't push hard into every market. Building up one village takes real time, real money, real energy, more than most people expect. I know every person's story in our village. Their grandparents' stories. Eventually I even learned parts of the village's own history that they themselves had forgotten. I've been there for their birth parties, weddings, and their funerals.

That's also how our village became a place that openly welcomes foreign visitors. I remember our first one. A French woman, just came from Longjing village. She told us that in Longjing, nobody talked to her, and she didn't understand any of it either. Our village is different. Because the cooperative sticks together, people here bring visitors right into their daily life. Digging potatoes, playing the local card game, going wherever they're going that day. Building a real connection, not a staged one.

Every package we ship has a villager's signature on it. Our website has their names and their stories.

It took me a full year to build the cooperative. First getting everyone on the same page, then teaching them how to pack, teaching them the basics of processing tea. We went from zero to actually running. Half the village couldn't read or write when we started. Now they can sign their own name, pack an order, and upload a packing video from their phone.

What's Different Now

Every one of them is carrying some amount of debt. But now they have more hope than they did.

Even their kids are more willing to go to school now, because they can see the hope too.

But reading and studying isn't so they can leave the village. That was never the point.

Becoming a farmer who knows things. Learning to process tea. Breaking through the limits of what they were taught they could know, and using that to keep making better tea. That's what I actually want to pass on.

They call me the farmer who knows things.

Ten Years From Now

Ten years from now, I know the person who bought our tea won't have that tea anymore. But the bookmark with a farmer's name signed on it might still be sitting somewhere.

Ten years from now, I hope every one of them has become a farmer who knows things, and you can still come back here and see their name.

Read more about how our cooperative works →

This article is part of the Wildbrook Village stories by FlowInverseTea. Written by June, tea farmer and cooperative member in Enshi, Hubei.