Cash Crops — Part 2: Jute and tea: visual lesson, ICSE Class 10 Geography (H.C.G. Paper 2)

Lesson

A fibre and a beverage

Part 2 — Jute, the golden fibre, grows on the hot, wet floodplains of the Ganga–Brahmaputra delta. Tea, a plantation crop, grows on the rainy hill slopes of Assam, Darjeeling and the Nilgiris. Both need heavy rain, but in very different landscapes.

In this lesson you will

Describe the retting process and explain why jute is concentrated in the Ganga–Brahmaputra delta
Explain why tea is grown on well-drained hill slopes, and describe plucking and processing
Name the leading jute- and tea-producing states

Table comparing jute and tea
Feature	Jute	Tea
Type of crop	Kharif fibre crop	Plantation beverage crop
Landscape	Flat delta floodplains	Well-drained hill slopes
Water	Heavy rain; water for retting	Heavy rain but no waterlogging
Leading state (early 2020s)	West Bengal	Assam

Concept

Jute: what it needs

Jute is a kharif fibre crop. Temperature: hot, above about 25 °C (up to about 35 °C). Rainfall: heavy, about 150–250 cm, with high humidity. Soil: light sandy or clayey loam of floodplains, whose fertility is renewed every year by fresh silt from floods, because jute exhausts the soil. Water: plenty of clean, slow-moving or still water is needed for retting. Labour: much cheap labour for cutting, retting and stripping.

Table of the conditions needed for jute
Condition	Jute needs
Temperature	Above about 25 °C
Rainfall	About 150–250 cm, humid
Soil	Floodplain loam renewed by silt
Water	Ponds or slow streams for retting
Labour	Plentiful and cheap

Diagram

Retting: freeing the fibre

About four months after sowing, the plants are cut close to the ground. The stalks are tied in bundles and soaked in ponds, ditches or slow-moving streams for about two to three weeks, weighted down to stay under water. Bacteria rot the soft tissue that binds the fibre to the stem — this is retting. The fibre is then stripped off by hand, washed, dried in the sun and pressed into bales for the jute mills.

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