Are the origins of tea the slopes of China's Yunnan Province? I guess I will leave that to the anthropologists (though, anthropologists study mankind, right, not plant derivations) who say such.
I just read an interesting article in the International Herald Tribune about how tea has boosted the Yunnan economy. If you have walked the streets of Yunnan's provincial capital, Kunming, you could easily verify this fact. I have been many places in South and Southwest China, and few have as many tea shops lining the streets. I guess they have to have something to drink when they play Mahjong, right?
Still, I have to wonder about the "wild tea" idea.
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There is a fundamental difference between finding your tea from big tea plantations and small, privately-owned tea farms. If you want organic, if you want clean, it is always hard to trust the big guys, because they are always trying to shave off a little more cost to make a little more money.
Small farms, on the other hand, are an excellent way to find not only organic, but hand picked, hand rolled, and hand processed tea. You can hardly find much better than that.
The downside is that these small farms are hard to find. So, we wanted to showcase one such farm. If you are interested in the strictest quality control for your tea, and are interested in Jade, Yun Bi Oolong, or Ruan Tze Oolong, you can find all these wonderful quality teas in one place.
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In keeping my eyes open for anything related to tea growing out here, I have noticed a recurring theme: signs that announce this or that tea company produces "organic" tea. I really have to wonder about that. I have seen a lot of Chinese farming and some tea farming first hand, but nothing that would give me the impression that anybody is going out of their way to grow organic.
A more literal translation of the "organic" word is "without environmental pollutants". But as we all know, that really is a little subjective. The locals evidentally do not think throwing plastic bags in the rivers is polluting, but I sure do. So, where is the line drawn for tea? Is it standardized or just a marketing ploy?
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I was hunting around on the Liuzhou Agriculture Bureau website (warning, that is all in Chinese) the other day and found some very interesting investment opportunities. Several were related to the tea industry here locally.
If nothing else, this is a definite sign that the government wants to make the most of their resources, sees value in them, and is thinking through how to develop them to the greatest potential.
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I just found out that what I have been talking about the past few months—providing a more direct route from rural sellers to end buyer and giving an honest wage to the farmer or initial producer who does most of the hard work—is actually a hot topic in the world of global trade and development these days, especially for consumable, specialty products like coffee and tea. So, I want to give myself a big welcome to the world of "fair trade" products.
I have been heading there for some time, but only now find out the name of this brave new world. The object of fair trade goods is to assure that the farmer receives an acceptable wage for the goods produced. Sounds reasonable, right? The problem is that for years, especially with products in such high demand as coffee, the big companies (most of them are not even names you would necessarily associate with coffee) have managed to starve farmers, provide end customers with stale product, and make their billions.
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So what do customers want when they buy organic? How can the producer really prove the product is organic? Especially in today's world of global commerce and trade, these questions are complicated even more with language barriers, not to mention just a good old lack of knowledge of how other countries function.
Though, that is not much of an excuse, if you ask me. An acquaintance of mine is a green tea producer in Thailand. To be exact, they produce Jade Green Tea, Yun Bi Oolong Tea, and Ruan Tze Oolong Tea, which is not all green tea, technically. If I am a buyer in the United States and want organic tea, and regularly buy tea from (let's say) China and Thailand, I should do everything possible to find out the process and standards of certification in the countries from which I buy.
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What is the comparison between coffee and tea? I starting thinking about it some when recently. Sure, there are similarities, but I think there are some very distinct differences between coffee culture and tea culture.
It is not as simple as saying this country drinks one and that country drinks the other. Both coffee and tea have gone global, and in true "e pluribus unum" fashion, they are both gaining influence.
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If you have done your homework on tea, you will know it is an evergreen, so "tea season" is indeed a bit of a misnomer. However, tea bushes certainly do have spurts in growth and produce more in certain seasons. So, without tearing my own title apart too much, I will state again, the big harvest season for green tea has begun.
The local markets here are bustling with individual tea farmers selling their tea, representatives from village-level tea factories, and, of course, the buyers, who have come in from the big tea companies, mostly in the Eastern China coastal region.
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How do we compare standards and certifications in one country to our own country or to international standards? I guess this is an old problem. I have heard some people say ISO is completely useless and others sing its praises, but the basic idea of trying to establish internationally recognized standards is a great idea, though it will never be perfect.
I recently ran across a tea producer in Thailand who has a "Government Certified Organic" status from the Thai government. Some buyers have questioned if the Thai standard for organic is the same as the United States standard. Then again, that is still only one country's standard, not an international standard.
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I have conducted an interview with a tea farmer I know, not in this area, but with knowledge applicable to tea farming anywhere. Instead of waxing eloquent about what I know, I wanted to go straight to someone who knows more than I do about tea, tea leaves, and tea farming.
You grow Oolong Tea. You have said that different varieties of tea bushes are planted depending on the different kinds of teas you want to produce. From the bushes you have planted, what kinds of tea can be produced?
There are hundreds of varieties of tea. Each different variety of tea is suitable for certain processes.
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I wrote a few days ago about simple ways technology can greatly improve farmers' everyday lives. The China Daily article I had read mentioned a couple national Agriculture Bureau sites, but I wanted to take a look at the more local sites that farmers in my local area would be able to take advantage of.
I wanted to get a quick look at Liuzhou's Agriculture Bureau website, but it was something like the one afternoon I had many moons ago to take a quick look at the Lourve Museum. There is nothing quick about it. It has loads of information, so I decided to find what I could about the area tea business.
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What would it take to transition rural Chinese farmers from producing green tea to black tea? The leaves are the same, they only need to alter the process of manufacturing the leaves.
They would only need to add some machinery and learn the new process, but the primary question is one of buyers. To whom would they sell? Could a rural cooperation of tea farmers sell direct to buyers around the world?
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What happens when you are a tea farmer from the Chinese countryside and your buyer receives shipment of your tea, disconnects his phone line, and disappears without paying? That is exactly the situation of a Dong friend of mine right now.
I do not want to suggest this is a common occurance, but once is enough to cause very serious damage. What can a rural tea farmer do when the buyer is half way across the country? What affects will this leave on the local economy? How can crop theft be avoided?
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The best hope for rural, undeveloped tea producers is foreign markets. The potential to expand into foreign markets is a bit of a strange idea, but quite realistic with the right opportunities. The next step is to identify what tea products are needed by foreign buyers. What is in demand?
Currently, most tea farmers in rural China grow variations of green tea, but there is no rule saying that cannot change. It is simple economics to the tea farmers. They know they can grow green tea and there will be somebody to buy it. If they could make similar profit growing another variation of tea, they would gladly switch over.
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Fujian Province's Anxi County alone (the most famous of China's tea producing areas) has thousands of tea tradesmen all around the country. With big companies from the famous tea areas of Eastern China in such a strong position in the tea market, what can small, developing tea producers do?
One of the most important issues at hand is actually what kind of tea is produced and sold. Green tea, Oolong Tea, and other famous Chinese teas are the main fare in China and the greater East Asian region. Rural areas would have to fight hard to even try to compete in those markets, but likely could find more room for development if they invested time and effort in global markets.
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Tea is a great benefit to local farmers and village level factories, but as has been already said in "A Step Toward Rural Development," the tea industry could still be much better, providing a higher price for the farmers and local producers and a lower price for the end buyers. Locals realize the price !!discrepency, and know the middle men are making all the money, but are powerless to alter the situation.
Representatives from tea companies in the eastern, coastal provinces of China (!!notably Anhui and Jiangsu) collect tea from the rural tea producers (or village level factories) at a price between US$2 to $10 per kilogram, depending on tea quality and season. Of course, the money those eastern tea companies put into shipping and packaging is completely unknown to local tea producers, some sense of the final sticker price for the tea sold from there is generally known.
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 We said a lot about the farmers who pick the soft and sweet little tea leaves, but where does the tea go from there? Tea is one of those wonderful crops which requires very little production. No chemicals need be added, no expensive scientific jargon is used. It is plain and simple, right up till the time we put it in our cups.
Village-based factories can easily accomplish all that is needed to prepare tea. In one small village, four factories can take care of the tons of tea leaves that come flowing through each year. These factories are equipped with a few simple machines and a staff of four to ten people. During the day the tea leaves are picked, and to ensure freshness, the factories open when the farmers begin to return from the fields with the leaves. Between sunset and midnight, the day's production needs can be met.
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What a perfect situation! Tea production is already further toward the win-win goals New Frontier has set for many of the local resources. Yesterday, my wife and I visited a village here in Sanjiang county known for tea production. At first, I assumed it would be like all the other crops, but it already has some distinctive benefits seen in few other places.
New Frontier has long noticed the emigration trends throughout the rural areas where we work. Most villages are comprised of people under the age of 15 and over the age of 40 or 50. Where is everyone else? "Da gong!" They have left the village to work in factories in Guangdong Province or to set up a life in the county seat.
The village we visited had a healthy balance of all age groups. Parents are taking care of their children (instead of grandparents as substitute "parents") and most children receive an average level of schooling. What has made the difference? Tea.
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Tea harvesting season is upon us, and in Sanjiang County, that will most certainly be a big thing. Only five years ago, tea was a rare commodity in Sanjiang, but now miles and miles of mountain roads weave through the tidy, pleasant, green-ribbed mountainsides full of tea plantations.
Sanjiang County now can boast a development of over 6,000 hectares (almost 15,000 acres) of tea plantations, producing almost two thousand tons (1,880,000 kg) of dried tea leaves. Unfortunately, Sanjiang still sells their products within China to provinces like Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shanghai, Hunan, and others, meaning they are selling to middle men who then resale. That is the making of a great oppurtunity for counties like Sanjiang.
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Xinhua News Agency reports that a delegation of Hong Kong farming representatives will visit Korea for seven days in order to learn from Korea’s advanced technology and agrculture management. This is exactly what should be happening all over China, not just for relatively developed areas such as Hong Kong.
Agriculturists from the West, from Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, and many other countries around the world have expertise that could be shared. How could these foreign professionals with a desire to help develop rural China help? How do they find opportunities?
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