Rooibos (Aspalathus linearis)

by Rachel Wynberg

A brief contextual history of the industry

Rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) represents one of South Africa’s oldest and most successful indigenous natural product industries. With its growth restricted to areas of the Western and Northern Cape provinces, the plant is widely available globally in the form of a caffeine-free tea, with its bioactive compounds holding great promise for the health food and beverage, cosmetic and pharmaceutical sectors. First commercialized at the turn of the 20th century, the local rooibos industry is today valued at about ZAR300 million, employing some 5,000-8,000 people and trading amounts of up to 15,000 tons per annum, with about 8,000 tons for the local market and 7,000 for the export market[1]. Although rooibos tea constitutes less than 0.3% of the global tea market, it represents 10% worldwide of the growing herbal tea market and 30.9% of the South African tea market.

The rooibos industry has developed against a geographical and political backdrop of dispossession and adversity. The well-documented genocide of indigenous San and the virtual enslavement of Khoi in rooibos-growing landscapes centuries ago was coupled to the dispossession of their traditional lands. This persecution continued with apartheid policies through the relocation and disenfranchisement of so-called Coloured and Black people in the area and the ongoing marginalization of such groups.

From 1954, and for nearly 40 years, the rooibos tea industry operated as a government monopoly, serving as the sole buyer from producers and the sole seller to approved exporters and tea processors. Through the establishment of the Rooibos Tea Control Scheme in 1954, the rooibos industry was assured of direct government protection and support, including subsidies for affiliated producers, research and the provision of extension services. This explicitly excluded coloured producers.

The Control Board monopolised the industry for nearly 40 years, but in 1993, for a variety of reasons including the democratic process that occurred in South Africa and increased recognition of the need to add value to the product, the Control Board was abolished and was replaced by a public company, Rooibos Tea Natural Products. The company, which changed its name to Rooibos Limited in 1995, took over the processing and packaging facilities at Clanwilliam as well as responsibility for production, marketing and quality control. With deregulation the industry changed dramatically. Privatisation opened it up not only to new processors, packers, distributors and producers, but also to new marketing channels and investment opportunities. The rooibos industry expanded, entering a period of substantial growth and development – from an average of 500–600 tons in the 1950s and 1960s, some 3,000–4,000 tons in the 1970s-1990s, up to 15,000 tons today.

An overview of the rooibos industry and key actors

The rooibos value chain

Like many other commodities, the rooibos value chain is characterised by the variety of ways in which the original product, which is the leaf of the rooibos plant, can be processed, blended, packaged and distributed.

Key steps include:

• the cultivation and harvesting of the tea, and its transport to a tea court;

• the cutting, fermentation and drying of the tea in a tea-drying lane;

• the sterilisation, sieving and grading of the tea;

• tea packaging;

• the distribution of the tea, either to local wholesalers and retailers, or through its export and import;

• further processing, blending, packaging and distribution;

• retail of the tea; and

• its final consumption.

Of course, these steps vary considerably depending on the final product (e.g. tea, extract, cosmetics), the different role players and commercial actors involved, the location of producer and processing facilities, the different types of value adding that occur in varied locations, and the varied markets (e.g. organic, conventional and fair trade) across the world. Green tea, for example, will bypass the fermentation stage, and material for the cosmetics industry will typically pass through an extraction process. Bulk tea exports will likely change hands more frequently than packaged tea. The fact that tea is almost all exported in bulk has a large impact on the value chain and curtails local value-adding and beneficiation.

Producers 

In general, three types of farmers produce rooibos tea:

• Large, commercial farmers (typically farming over 100 ha), some of whom are also involved in the processing and trading of tea, and others who sub-contract external processing, packaging and marketing;

• Smaller, more marginal farmers (typically farming between 5-100 ha), who typically sub-contract external processing, packaging and marketing; and

• Small farmers from the Suid Bokkeveld and missionary-based Wupperthal communities (typically farming 1-5 ha) who are organised into co-operatives or farmer associations, and to varying extents will process their own tea or supply processing companies. These include the Heiveld Cooperative in the Suid Bokkeveld; and three co-operatives in Wupperthal.

Commercialisation approaches

Although rooibos value chains are extremely varied and highly complex, at a commercial level two broad approaches can be identified. The first and most dominant approach represents nearly 99 percent of rooibos production, about 300 producers, and involves about 20 small, medium and large enterprises in the processing, manufacture and distribution of rooibos tea. Most of these farmers sell rooibos as conventional tea, but some sell organically certified rooibos and others are classified as “FairTrade” due to its broad definition which is inclusive of farm labour and also compliant with Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment standards on larger plantations. Only a few companies are responsible for the bulk of rooibos that is traded, with the dominant player remaining Rooibos Limited.

The second approach involves the three co-operatives of Wupperthal, and to a lesser extent the Heiveld Co-operative, who trade their tea under the FairTrade label. In most cases they will work through an intermediary, but also trade directly. There are about 200 farmers trading in this way.

Processors

There are also 11 processors of rooibos. Four of these are affiliated to the SA Rooibos Council, including Rooibos Limited, Cape Natural Tea Products, Red T, Cape Rooibos, while 7 remain independent of the Council.

The SA Rooibos Council

The SA Rooibos Council is an independent organisation established to promote rooibos and to protect the interests of the industry. It presently comprises eight companies. No small-scale producer organisations are affiliated to the SARC although several small producers do supply some of the members.

An overview of existing certification schemes for rooibos

In addition to UTZ, there are a range of organic and Fairtrade certification standards for rooibos and producers typically follow organic standards set by the country to which they are exporting. These include NOP, the standards set by the National Organic Program of the US Department of Agriculture, and JAS, the Japanese Agricultural Standard of Organic Agricultural Products set by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan. Other organic certification schemes adopted include CERES and Ecocert. The Union for Ethical Biotrade now collaborates with the Rainforest Alliance to manage this certification programme. 

A “Right Rooibos Sustainability Standard” has also been developed as a proposed baseline to inform other standards for Rooibos certification and align different systems but its implementation seems to have seen little uptake. Certified organic rooibos sales constitute about 20% of all rooibos exports. 

Fairtrade rooibos

Fairtrade rooibos has its origins in 1998, when it was initiated by the Netherlands-based Fair Trade Organisatie, which was also instrumental in developing a certified Fairtrade rooibos label through FLO in 2003. In the early 2000s smallholders began to organise as cooperatives with the help of local NGOs, intending to acquire organic and Fair Trade certifications and to sell to national and international markets. With the high quality of their tea being recognised, over a few years the cooperatives were able to grow and set up post-harvest processing facilities and sell directly to buyers. 

Today multiple alternative trade organisations from Europe and North America are engaged in the purchase and sale of Fairtrade rooibos from small-scale rooibos producers and, in some cases, from rooibos-producing estates. About 1–2 percent of all rooibos produced is estimated to be sold through fair trade markets.

The accreditation of large-scale estates as Fairtrade, with nothing in the labelling to distinguish large- and small-scale producers, has been a significant bone of contention as coloured smallholder farmers lack the land, equipment and the skills to compete with large estates. South Africa’s stringent labour laws and broad-based black economic empowerment standards[2] have to a large extent become synonymous with fair trade, and the limited volumes of tea produced by black small-scale farmers have seen the larger estates leverage this opportunity. Rooibos producers are, however, guaranteed prices for tea per kilo, with small farmer cooperatives receiving a marginally higher price to account for differential production costs. Both categories receive a Fairtrade premium.

Key issues facing the sector regarding ethical and sustainable sourcing

Biodiversity conservation and environmental impacts of rooibos cultivation and wild harvesting

Because rooibos is an indigenous species, it is often promoted as an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional crop systems. However, this belies the fact that thousands of hectares of natural mountain fynbos – one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the world – are annually ploughed up for planting to monocultures of rooibos tea. For example, the footprint for cultivated rooibos grew from 14 000 hectares in 1991 to over 60 000 hectares in 2016 with devastating impacts on biodiversity. In just 12 years, there has been a 300% increase in the number of species threatened with extinction because of rooibos cultivation – from 37 taxa in 1997, to 149 taxa in 2009, with 57 species in the most severely threatened categories of Endangered and Critically Endangered. Through the Rooibos Biodiversity Initiative and South African Rooibos Council’s “Right Rooibos Sustainability Standard” there is increasing awareness of the biodiversity threats of expansion, but it is important to strengthen such initiatives.

Chemical inputs are also a concern. Although rooibos is a low-input crop requiring little water or extra fertilising, many commercial farmers spray plants with cypermethrin, a synthetic pyrethroid insecticide typically used to kill insects on cotton. Although touted by the industry as a pesticide which is non-toxic to mammals, evidence exists of toxicity to humans and laboratory animals, as well as to beneficial insects and other animals. Cypermethrin is also listed as a possible human carcinogen and is known to suppress the immune system and cause developmental delays. Glyphosate (Roundup), a non-selective herbicide used commonly in the rooibos industry to kill unwanted grasses and weeds when rooibos is grown in rotation with grain crops, is also known to have health side-effects, having recently been pronounced by the World Health Organisation as a “probable carcinogen”.

The cultivation of rooibos can also impact negatively on wild populations of the species. In addition to impacts on rooibos sub-species through the expansion of plantations, seed selection within cultivated plantations may have inadvertent effects on adjacent wild forms, through ‘illegitimate’ pollination across populations that would have never mixed in the wild, and the introduction of unfavourable gene material. Resultant effects could include a reduction in the genetic diversity of A. linearis and thus greater vulnerability to physical and biological changes. This is especially pertinent in the context of drought and climate change. This potentially serious problem receives little attention from farmers, who seldom isolate plantations.

Moreover, there are concerns about industry reliance on a single variety of rooibos of a single and narrow genetic base. Four main types of rooibos tea exist – rooi (red), vaal, swart (black) and rooibruin (red brown) – but it is the Nortier variety of the rooi type (also known as Rocklands) which has been selected, originally from wild forms, for commercial cultivation. Reliance on a single variety has likely reduced overall lifespan, with fungal infection being an especially acute problem, especially when cropping occurs late in the growing season.

A further concern relates to the unsustainable harvesting of wild rooibos. Traditionally, wild varieties of A. linearis have been used only on a subsistence basis by communities for the brewing of ‘veld’ tea. However, wild rooibos is currently facing unprecedented harvesting pressures. This is due in part to increased demands from international markets, which offer premium prices for wild rooibos tea, and also to ongoing drought conditions in this region which have reduced yields in cultivated fields and led to increased pressures on the more resilient wild populations. While the harvesting of wild rooibos can be sustainable, much depends upon the quantities removed, the methods utilised, and the frequency of harvesting. Important strides have been made to improve the sustainability of wild tea harvesting but this is nonetheless an issue that requires ongoing monitoring and attention.

Clearly, rooibos tea production is not without environmental impacts, but until recently conservation has seemingly featured negligibly in the rooibos business model. Ongoing initiatives to make production more environmentally sustainable include reduced use of agrochemicals, improved control of wind and water erosion, the use of ‘shelter belts’ in cultivated lands to provide a refuge for the natural predators of rooibos pests, increased mulching to promote carbon and water retention, and the retention of populations of wild rooibos. Greater scrutiny could also be given to the criteria used to grant permits for land-clearing for rooibos, to ensure maximum protection of biodiversity, and to the creation of biodiversity offsets for land cleared.

Those in the industry tend to deny the environmental impacts of rooibos, despite concerns expressed by a range of stakeholders. These concerns have escalated in recent years with the increase in price of rooibos, and an apparent increase in cleared lands. The “image” of rooibos as a biodiversity-friendly product is fiercely guarded, despite evidence to the contrary. Having said this, there are obviously diverse practices. Some farmers freely irrigate, spray the crop and may expand their plantations without necessary permits, while others have adopted a more environmentally conscious approach towards rooibos farming.  

Access and benefit sharing

The regulatory context: rooibos as biotrade and bioprospecting

South Africa’s 2004 Biodiversity Act contains three objectives which mirror those of the CBD, providing for:

• the conservation of biodiversity;

• the sustainable use of indigenous biological resources; and

• the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from bioprospecting.

The Biodiversity Act provides only a broad framework for ABS, however, leaving the detail to the Bioprospecting, Access and Benefit Sharing (BABS) Regulations which came into effect in 2008. There have been many challenges to implement the BABS Regulations despite ongoing stakeholder consultations and several legal amendments. This has been due to the complexity of the issues under consideration, but also to significant concerns about the cumbersome nature of the regulatory framework and permit approval process, the length of time required to secure a permit, and the ambiguities and workability of the legislation. The Act is however currently under revision.

Significantly for rooibos, the very wide scope of the Biodiversity Act includes commodity trade, or biotrade, as part of the bioprospecting definition, in contrast with the CBD and its Nagoya Protocol, which confine regulation to the utilisation of genetic resources. The breadth of this definition has significant implications, in that it regulates a wide range of activities, and it is also contrary to ABS approaches in neighbouring countries.

In practice, confusion reigns about the distinctions between biological and genetic resources, especially where species such as rooibos have multiple uses in more than one sector. For example, research and development on rooibos for new products might include original research on genetic resources and traditional knowledge. At this stage, under the CBD, these activities would be characterised as bioprospecting, or genetic resource use. Very quickly after companies investigate new properties or traditional knowledge, demand shifts into the biological resource trade, or biotrade. 

The regulation of biotrade seems to stem from a concern that material traded as a commodity may subsequently be transferred to third parties and enter a new research and development cycle. The case described above involving research and development by Nestlé on extracts of rooibos and honeybush brought many of these concerns to the fore. In this case, the secured material of rooibos and honeybush plants from a local South African processor, did research on extracts and filed patents, but without the requisite agreements in place. Although the material was obtained from a local processor, it could equally have been purchased off the shelves from any European supermarket, raising questions about the challenges of regulating research and development on commodities such as rooibos tea that are already commercially available.

Intellectual property rights and rooibos as a Geographical Indication

To date, most ABS efforts in the rooibos sector have focused on negotiating an agreement with those claiming to hold traditional knowledge. However, there is also a need to protect national interests and strategically strengthen the research and technology benefits of the industry. This is vividly illustrated in relation to rooibos, where little attention has been given by government to the surge of interest in its biochemical and health properties, evidenced by the array of new products incorporate rooibos, including cosmetics, slimming preparations, novel foods, extracts and flavourants. Much of this research is linked to foreign patents: in 2009, there were 95 entries for rooibos in the patent database (increasing to 141 by 2016), 67 filed by Japanese companies. While many might be commercially dormant, they raise questions about the manner in which material was accessed and compliance with South Africa’s Biodiversity Act.

An important recent development, formalised through the signing of an economic partnership agreement between the European Union and South Africa, has led to the granting of geographic indication status for rooibos as an important mechanism to secure the plant’s origin and provenance. This followed a decade long dispute brought about by the 1994 filing of a trademark application for the name ‘rooibos’ in the United States, with the eventual cancellation of the trademark. In a world-first for African food, the European Commission has also recently approved the registration of the designation ‘Rooibos’/’Red Bush’ in its register of protected designations of origin and protected geographical indications. 

While such victories are cause for celebration, they are also an opportunity for critical engagement about who stands to benefit. Debates concerning geographical indications and ABS have historically been entirely separate, championed by different government departments, but it is important to bring them together into a combined space of deliberation.

Traditional knowledge and rooibos

By far the most controversial ABS issues in the rooibos sector centre on the traditional knowledge that fostered the industry’s growth. Rooibos was first put under the ABS spotlight in 2010 when the giant food company Nestlé was accused of biopiracy by the NGO Natural Justice for filing patents involving rooibos extracts, without the requisite agreements in place.

Subsequent demands were made by the South African San Council and National Khoisan Council for a share of benefits from the rooibos industry, based on claims of the San and Khoi as traditional knowledge holders of rooibos. In March 2019, following nine years of difficult discussions, a benefit-sharing agreement was finally concluded between the Rooibos Council, the South African San Council, and the National Khoisan Council. Small-scale Coloured farmers and farmworkers – defined as “Rooibos indigenous farming communities” who are “rural farming communities in rooibos growing areas who consist of descendants of original Khoi-Khoi peoples”—were eventually included through the National Khoisan Council.

The agreement is momentous in acknowledging the role played by San and Khoi TK in the development of the industry and holds enormous symbolic significance for the San and Khoisan Councils. Moreover, through allocating a “TK levy”, calculated at 1.5% of the farm-gate price that processors pay to farmers per kilogram of harvested rooibos, it will bring money to Indigenous San and Khoi organisations. Because rooibos is already an established global industry it has the potential to bring financial rewards to Indigenous San and Khoi of an order hitherto unseen, possibly upwards of US$1-2 million per year, depending on price and volumes. After delays due to the appointment of an auditor, the first payment of about ZAR10 million (about US$6.5 million) was made in 2021. Significant unresolved controversies remain about the way in which small-scale Coloured farmers will benefit, and the representivity of the two councils involved in the agreement. 

Land ownership, inequality and transformation 

The geographical and political backdrop to the rooibos industry is clearly one of dispossession and adversity. While the abolition of both apartheid and this system in the early 1990s opened the door to coloured producers, about 200 of whom now trade rooibos tea as South Africa’s only indigenous fair trade product, most of these farmers remain marginalized, and will continue to be so – physically, because of their remote location; environmentally, due to the harsh, drought-prone conditions under which they farm; and economically, on account of their limited access to land and continued struggles to gain adequate access to markets, extension services and credit. 

Inequality continues to characterize the industry; less than 7% of rooibos tea lands are today controlled by coloured farmers, who produce about 2% of rooibos tea volumes, with white farmers cultivating about 93% of the planted area. Moreover, there is significant income disparity between farmers, largely due to the scale of production. For example, while rooibos farmers from Wupperthal and the Suid Bokkeveld typically earn about US$1,560–2,800 per annum from their tea, large-scale rooibos farmers can earn up to US$200,000 per annum.

Land is increasingly becoming the central issue in South African contemporary politics, and the rooibos context epitomises these concerns to a large extent. Without land redistribution and tenure security inequalities will persist and deepen. One proposal has been to use funding from the ABS agreement to purchase land for rooibos production by Coloured and Black farmers, and thus begin to shift patterns of ownership. Plans at this stage are still speculative but the industry will indisputably need to demonstrate greater transformation.

Conclusion

In summary, rooibos is a sector that while fraught and divided in many respects, also offers significant opportunities for change.

External threats to the industry include climate change, the uncertainty of the land question, and the political and social challenges of implementing the benefit-sharing agreement.

Internal threats are perhaps centred in the lack of cohesion and transparency within the industry, the lack of trust between different companies, and the absence of an overarching and transformed vision. The power held by a handful of companies remains a concern and the dual implementation of the Fairtrade standard has created considerable conflict.

Opportunities lie in the potential to make a real difference with regard to biodiversity conservation, beyond farm-level actions, and towards broader sustainability and ecosystem goals. This is especially relevant given the biodiversity importance of the production region. There are also opportunities to bring ethical, social and environmental coherency to production standards, including the GI which thus far remains a rather isolated and poorly understood mechanism. Finally, through ABS there are opportunities to widen the scope of discussions to include other value chains that use rooibos in non-tea applications.

Click here to download a summary table of the case study.

[1] Such figures exclude export sales and non-tea products such as cosmetics and extracts.

[2] To counter the legacy of apartheid, the government has instituted a series of policies to address racial dispaities in access to land and other resources. Black Economic Empowerment policies promoting black ownership of shares in commercial enterprises have emerged as central to South African political discourse and practice and includes targets for augmenting black ownership, management, procurement, and capacity building.

References

Govender. 2007. Aspalathus linearis. Plantz Africa. Pretoria: South African Biodiversity National Biodiversity Institute. Available here.

Louw, R. 2006. Sustainable harvesting of wild rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) in the Suid Bokkeveld, Northern Cape. Masters Thesis, University of Cape Town.

Malgas, R.R., Potts, A.J., Oettlé, N.M., Koelle, B., Todd, S.W., Verboom, G.A. and Hoffman, M.T. 2010.

Distribution, quantitative morphological variation and preliminary molecular analysis of different growth forms of wild rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) in the northern Cederberg and on the Bokkeveld Plateau. South African Journal of Botany, 76(1): 72-81. ISSN 0254-6299. Available here.

Malgas, R., Oettlé, N., 2007. The Sustainable Harvest of Wild Rooibos. Environmental Monitoring Group, Cape Town. Available here.

Malgas, R., Potts, A., Oettlé, N., Koelle, B., Todd, S., Verboom, G., and Hoffman, T. 2010. Distribution, quantitative morphological variation and preliminary molecular analysis of different growth forms of wild rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) in the northern Cederberg and on the Bokkeveld Plateau. South African Journal of Botany 76 (2010) 72–81. Available here.

Pretorius, G. 2008. Rooibos Biodiversity Initiative (R.B.I.). Biodiversity best practice guidelines for sustainable rooibos production. The South Africa Rooibos Council (SARC) in partnership with the Cape Nature Greater Cederberg Biodiversity Corridor (GCBC) Project Management Unit. NaturaLibra Environmental Consultants, Malmesbury, South Africa.

SANBI. Red List of South African Plants – Rooibos tea. Available here.

SARC. 2020. Rooibos Industry Information Sheet 2020. Available here.

Wynberg, R. 2017. Making sense of access and benefit sharing in the rooibos industry: Towards a holistic, just and sustainable framing. South African Journal of Botany 110: 39-51.

ABS Agreement References

The Rooibos Access and Benefit-sharing Agreement

The Rooibos Benefit Sharing Agreement–Breaking New Ground with Respect, Honesty, Fairness, and Care

Department Of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment