The folks at T Ching have spent the better part of half a decade promoting tea as a delicious beverage, touting its health benefits, its comforting ritual, and its spiritual history. Tea has such tremendous variety that there is a tea for everyone. Be it white, green, 
oolong, black, or herbal, you could probably drink a different tea every day of the year and have yet hundreds to look forward to.
Look around this website. Look at the hundreds – closer to two thousand – posts about tea. From literature to vacation destinations to recipes to “tea in the news,” this blog is Tea Promotion at its highest level. T Ching has certainly done a good job, as its “number one tea blog” status attests: sponsoring a tea ritual at a local high school; constantly staying hip with the latest and greatest in the community; bringing tea geeks together every day in so many ways; and promoting tea education at all levels, to name a few.
Time to celebrate, right? Yes . . . and no. According the India Times, tea consumption has risen 5%, while production has risen just 2%. Remember what you learned in Capitalism 101? Your school might have called the course Economics, but the lesson was the same: the good old rule of supply and demand. When demand goes up, the price goes up. If supply goes up and demand remains the same, prices drop. When demand and supply stay the same, price remains static.
When demand goes up, and supply goes down . . . prices raise a lot.
You might ask how much of that 5% growth in tea consumption / demand can be attributed to the plethora of tea soft drinks – about as far away from the real thing as Teflon is to a well-seasoned cast iron skillet. Certain brands of whiskey, beer, cookies, candy, diet products, and breath mints each make a claim to tea as an ingredient. What part of that 5% increase in demand is for the real thing? On the other hand, tea is the raw material for all of those end products. Demand is increased no matter what the cause of the increased demand.
So, while the mission has been proven successful, I’m going to have to sip a lot slower! I’m curious, how many of you have noticed the pinch when you purchase your favorite 100 grams?
Thanks for your compliments Regena. Yes, T Ching has been around for a while now and we’ve worked hard to bring the message of tea to the internet. You have played an important role in T Ching as well as in our community in Hood River. Your stint as our managing editor brought lots of wonderful posts and your involvement with tea in the high school has been nothing short of amazing.
As you’ve noticed, the prices are rising but I’m afraid I’m seeing that with everything. Is it more substancial with tea? I’ll have to start paying closer attention to that. When I buy the things I love, I don’t usually pay attention to the prices. I consider those purchases essential. It’s the foods and beverages that I need but don’t necessarily covet that I hate paying more for.
I refuse to be ashamed. Unfortunately, Michelle, there are many, many of us who have to watch EVERYTHING we purchase. Those things we “love” and consider essential are placed under the same scrutiny as every other purchase. My post obviously was not for those of you who are so fortunate that what you consider essential doesn’t merit examination before purchase. I have a fixed income. Inflation IS happening, and it is hurting me in areas I cannot control – like my electric bill, gasoline, food. So, I must be frugal in all purchases.
I hope the price of tea doesn’t rise so much that you do have to think of it, Michelle. It would surely be out of my reach then.
Coincidentally, I wrote a post on the same topic but my slant is that it is not doom and gloom.
I hear you on inflation and rising cost of living, for all the same reasons (to a greater extent even, considering the GDP growth in China & India) we should expect rising prices in order that producers, farmers and tea leaves pickers remain in the fields where they honed their skills rather than joining the urban unskilled work force.
Note that Derek’s post will be published tomorrow!
I hear you Regena. It is difficult these days. I do feel blessed that I can still enjoy many of those items that are important to me. I have to be more selective with my organic produce but I won’t give it up in favor of pesticided produce. In terms of tea, given that I resteep my pot atleast 4 times a day, I feel the price is still reasonable. I’m avoiding the more unusual and expensive choices this year but I can’t complain. I’m enjoying wonderful teas. Add on the health benefits of tea and I feel VERY good about drinking it throughout the day.