Wild Rooibos teaThe leaves and young shoots of the rooibos bush (Aspalathus linearis) have been used by indigenous peoples of the Western Cape since pre-history to produce a health giving beverage known as rooibos tea. It was only in the early 1900s that the species began to be cultivated on a commercial basis. The commercialy grown "Nortier" variety of rooibos tea is fast-growing and high-yielding, but less resistant to pests and drought than wild varieties. Because of the increasing market for rooibos, much of the specie's natural habitat has been ploughed up and put under intensive mono-crop cultivation. There are very few areas remaining where wild tea plants can still be found -- in marginal and mountainous areas. Like the wild tea, small-scale "coloured" farmers were also pushed into these mariginal areas by successive apartheid laws. Two communities of small-scale rooibos farmers, currently organised as the Heiveld Co-operative and the Wupperthal Tea Association, have been harvesting wild and cultivated rooibos, and have become the de facto guardians of the wild rooibos genetic stock. The importance of managing and protecting this wild genetic stock cannot be overstated, particularly as climate change may put new pressures on the cultivated variety and threaten the viability of the industry. EMG facilitated a programme of action-research with small-farmers of the Heiveld Co-op and Wupperthal Co-op to identify, characterise and map populations of wild tea. Wild rooibos is much in demand by European markets and attracts a high price, and the farmers were keen to develop a sustainable harvesting strategy -- but also to better understand the ecology of the plant in the wild and its response to a changing climate. The knowledge built up in this action-research programme has been collected in a publication. The English version of "The Sustainable Harvest of Wild Rooibos" is now available online (2MB PDF). Afrikaans hard-copies are available through EMG.
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