Pricey Tea a Growing Niche Crop in US, Even Canada
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BROOKHAVEN, Miss. — After Hurricane Katrina wiped out his timber 11 years ago, Jason McDonald wanted a crop less susceptible to Mississippi’s potentially powerful storms.

Low maintenance was also a priority.

“I didn’t want to be a cattle farmer and chase down cattle at 3 or 4 in the morning,” McDonald said.

A chance encounter with South Carolina tea drew him into the growing ranks of North American farmers from Mississippi to British Columbia who are growing tea for the high-priced specialty market.

There’s money to be made because more Americans are willing to pay premium prices for what they consider top quality, tea consultant Nigel Melican said in a phone interview from Bedford, England.

The specialty tea market is growing 8 to 10 percent a year, according to Peter F. Goggi’s 2015 market review for the Tea Association of the U.S.A. Inc. Such teas are particularly attractive to millennials, who “find delight in the discovery of new and differentiated flavors, ethnic or new cultural offerings and craft selections,” he wrote.

Melican said U.S. wages are too high to compete with overseas farmers who grow the commodity tea commonly found on grocery shelves.

For example, a 4-ounce box of 50 Lipton black tea bags can be found online for $3, while Connecticut-based Bigelow Tea sells the South Carolina-grown product at $7.95 for a box of 12 tea bags weighing less than an ounce.

Compared with some prices, that’s peanuts.

Eliah Halpenny of Big Island Tea on the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii sells her black and green teas wholesale for about $42 an ounce. Her online retail prices work out to more than $75 an ounce.

Light of Day Organic Teas in Traverse City, Michigan, where plastic-covered “hoop houses” shelter tea plants eight months of the year, sells its home-grown white tea for $256 a pound or $32 for a 1.5-ounce tin. It takes 70,000 hand-picked leaf buds to make a pound of white tea, owner Angela Macke said.

“I don’t recommend it to anyone as a commercial crop. You’ve got to love it,” Macke said in a phone interview.

About 60 U.S. farms, with only a handful created before 2000, are growing tea, said Tygh Waters, president of the U.S. League of Tea Growers and founder of Piedmont Tea Co. in Athens, Georgia. Tea is grown in at least 15 states and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Outside of Hawaii, it generally takes about five years for plants to grow big enough to survive repeated harvests, Walters said.

A tea bag helped decide McDonald’s future after the 2005 hurricane wiped out 75 percent of the pine trees on his farm of nearly 5,000 acres near Tylertown, about 40 miles from what is now his Great Mississippi Tea Company in Brookhaven, Mississippi.

On a visit to South Carolina, he was served a tea called American Classic. The message on the teabag’s envelope intrigued him — this tea was home-grown.

That led him to the nation’s oldest working tea farm: Charleston Tea Plantation, started by Lipton in 1963 with plants that had grown wild on a defunct farm in Summerville, South Carolina. There, McDonald learned that tea comes from Camellia sinensis, which needs high heat, acidic soil, ample rainfall and humidity. Mississippi State University researchers helped him determine what varieties might be best for Mississippi.

After an unusually cold winter killed off nearly an entire year’s stock in Mississippi, McDonald began buying seeds from overseas, from places such as Nepal and Kenya. He’s looking to cross cold-hardy and heat-tolerant plants to produce a hybrid that will thrive in Mississippi.

He’s also planted seeds from a Hattiesburg woman named Penny, who gave him two huge plants for a promise to name some of their offspring after her. He says those seedlings are growing much faster than other varieties. Hoping for a copper-hued tea, McDonald named them “A Penny’s Worth of Copper.”

新商機飄香 美15州搶種高價茶

由於更多美國民眾願意付出高價以購買高品質的茶葉，已讓農場業者日漸發現特殊茶葉（specialty tea）有利有圖；目前在美國至少15個州，約有60座的農場開始種植高價茶葉，以加入搶攻特殊茶葉市場的商機。

據Peter F. Goggi所做美國茶葉協會2015年市場分析指出，特殊茶葉市場目前一年成長8%至10%，英國茶葉專家梅利肯說，年輕一代尤其喜愛這種茶葉，他們被這種茶葉的新奇與眾不同且含有異國文化的風味所吸引。

梅利肯說，美國工資太高，價格上難以與外國茶農生產、超市常見的普通茶葉競爭。例如，利普頓4盎司重、一盒50包的茶包網上價格3元（美元，下同），同時總部在康州的「碧蘿茶」（Bigelow Tea），銷售南卡羅來納州生產的一盒12袋、重量不到1盎司的茶包價格為7.95元。兩相比較，即可知價格有雲泥之別。

夏威夷州莫納洛亞火山生產大島茶葉（Big Island Tea）的尹莉亞‧哈皮尼，銷售紅茶和綠茶的批發價每盎司42元，她放在網上銷售的價格每盎司更超過75元。

密西根州特拉弗斯市溫室成長的天光有機茶葉（Light of Day Organic Teas），出產的白產（white tea）每磅售價256元，或1.5盎司錫罐32元，業者安吉拉‧麥基說，一磅白茶包括手採的茶葉葉芽7萬支。但她說：「我並不建議任何人都投入種茶，種茶必須要有熱情。」

美國茶農聯盟主席華特斯說，美國目前約有60座農場種茶，其中少數寥寥幾家是在2000年之前即已存在；他說，除夏威夷外，通常約須種植五年，才能重覆採收。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/03/13/us/ap-us-tea-farms.html

2016-03-15 03:37 世界日報 編譯張玉琴