``The industry is making good profit at the moment, providing good income and self-employment to thousands of youths and annual and seasonal employment to another couple of thousands,'' said the chairman of the North-East Foundation Dhruba Jyoti bora which recently conducted a survey of the small tea garden movement of Assam

The small tea growers are active in 17 districts of the state and altogether there are 22,660 growers in the state, while the total land area of small plantations was 2,59,221 bighas, according to the survey report. The total production of the small tea gardens in the last year amounted to 195 million kgs of green leaf and the industry is expected to produce 10 to 20 per cent of the total tea produced in the state by the next decade.

``Assam produces more than 410 million kgs of tea annually, which is more than 50 per cent of the total tea produced in the country and 22 per cent of the tea produced globally. Small tea gardens are likely to add 40 to 80 million kgs of tea within the next 15 to 20 years to this output'', Bora said.

The survey revealed that males outnumbered females in the industry in the ratio of 32:1 though the small 3.6 per cent of female growers were really active taking part and guiding all spheres of production activity. The majority of the growers were young with 77 per cent below 30 years of age and 74 per cent below 36.

The primary reason for taking up small tea cultivation was proper utilisation of land followed by profitability of cultivation and business, self-employment, permanent nature of the crop, good market for green leaf, to become economically strong, desire for setting up business, to decrease unemployment problem and others.

Some growers also pointed out some uncommon reason for taking up tea cultivation like availability of high land, depredation of wild elephants on paddy fields and monkeys in sugarcane fields, alternative livelihood, respectable business and desire to become a plantation owner.