Interesting Graphic, cool to see how the producers change (or stay the same) overtime:
The Top 10 Producers Of Tea Worldwide By Country (1994-2019)
The rise of China and demise of India is interesting. Would be interesting to see it compared with export/import data. For example, I've seen somewhere (not sure how up to date it is), that about 80% of indian tea is consumed domestically.
I think that would probably be true for China, Taiwan and Japan as well. I mean Taiwan even has a 70% part of imported tea in its overall amount of available tea!
Very interesting. I didn’t expect to see Iran or Argentina up there and was surprised to see Japan slipping from the top 10. I know coffee has gained tremendous popularity in Japan in recent times. Wonder how much that has affected demand for tea in Japan.
Argentina is the main producer of tea destined for iced tea bags in the U.S.; Ceylon tea is often of better quality but it "creams down" when cold, which makes the tea cloudy. Many U.S. tea drinkers do not understand this, and so they avoid iced tea with a cloudy sediment.
Japan doesn't really have an export market anymore. Before World War II they exported a lot of tea to the U.S., but after World War II this market went away, and wasn't really replaced with any other markets. So tea production in Japan mirrors tea consumption in Japan.
The graph is partially skewed because China is producing more tea. Even though China has a reputation for tea-drinking overseas, this is not really accurate. For many years tea was rationed in China, so the style of brewing in some areas is to take a small amount of tea and brew it clear, and "poor man's white tea" (i.e. hot water) is a common drink in others. In the cities coffee is becoming more popular with the young, and loose-leaf tea drinkers are often older. So slight changes that increase tea consumption in China have a big impact on metrics.