Part 5 of 5: Jem McDowall looks ahead at the future of tea and argues that today’s trends are likely to accelerate rather than disappear. Lee and Jem discuss the growing divide between commodity and specialty tea, changing consumer behavior, farm succession, liquidity, origin storytelling, and why simply producing more will not solve the industry’s structural problems.
Read MorePart 4 of 5: Jem McDowall explains why El Niño represents much more than a weather threat to tea farmers. Lee and Jem explore how climate disruption, fertilizer constraints, logistics problems, smallholder decisions, and the disappearance of excess production are making the global tea supply chain increasingly vulnerable.
Read MorePart 3 of 5: Jem McDowall explains why tea farmers are becoming increasingly vulnerable after years of low prices, rising input costs, oversupply, and underinvestment. Lee and Jem compare those pressures with coffee, discuss climate and currency risk, and examine why a weakened producer base could become one of the tea industry’s biggest long-term problems.
Read MorePart 2 of 5: Jem McDowall explains how tea is priced and traded through physical auction systems around the world, why tea has no futures market, and how buyers take ownership of the tea they purchase. The conversation also compares payment and financing structures in tea and coffee, raising important questions about where financial risk should sit in an agricultural supply chain.
Read MorePart 1 of 5: Jem McDowall of Universal Commodities explains how tea moves from fresh leaf through withering, oxidation, rolling or CTC processing, and drying. He also breaks down how tea is graded by leaf size, why those systems vary around the world, and how tea grading differs from the more standardized systems used in coffee.
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