Tea farmers struggle to pay medical bills as the climate crisis impacts crop sizes

Teresiah and Francis told The Independent that as climate change has disrupted weather patterns, they have experienced respiratory and joint problems after spending all day outside picking tea - (Vincent Owino/Fairtrade Africa)

Early each morning, 62-year-old Francis and his 56-year-old wife Teresiah walk from their home along a short dirt track to their patch of farmland, which lies on a precipitously steep stretch of hillside in Kenya’s central highlands.

Here, they will spend the day picking two leaves and a bud of bright green tea from their crop of tea bushes until the baskets on their backs are full - which they then empty into a sack ready to be sold, before repeating the process over and again until sundown.