How sustainable is your cuppa? This is a question that has been hotly debated in the UK tea market this year. The use of sustainability standards, such as Ethical Trade, Fairtrade, Organic and Rainforest Alliance, has become a common means for value chain actors to make statements about the values that their products and their networks comply with. Specifically, each of these four standards systems set out to distinguish themselves, rhetorically and materially, into separate tea value chains based on their visions of sustainability. By merging the theories of Global Value Chain governance and performativity analysis, Loconto’s research explores how these standards networks are performing the values of sustainability, corporate social responsibility and gender equity in equity in the practice of tea production in Tanzania. Her research examines whether these performances are ‘effective’ – in other words, making changes in practices. By focusing on the practices of the Tanzanian tea industry, the presentation will explore the dichotomies that are typically discussed in relation to African agriculture (i.e., commercial vs. subsistence farming, formal vs. informal work, public vs. private space).