TEA PRODUCTION

Taranaki Daily News, 30 December 1929, Page 13

TEA PRODUCTION

EFFORTS AT REDUCTION.

MARKET DEPRESSED.

(From Our Own Correspondent) Wellington, Dec. 27. New Zealand and Australia are not alone in feeling the depressing effect of reduced prices for our products, foi other countries are similarly affected, including the East, Java in particular being badly hit by the drastic decline in the prices for sugar and tea. One would have thought that the increasing consumption of tea would be about cancelled by the increased production, but this is not the ease. Consumption would be much greater than it is but for the fact that tea is taxed in many countries.

Recent reports from London state that Mincing Lane tea dealers have been discussing proposals to restrict tea production. They suggest that planters should reduce their output by 5 per cent, to 15 per cent, on the annual average crop of the last three years, the percentage varying according to the average price obtained. This confirms news received privately in Melbourne that negotiations were proceeding between the planters in India, Ceylon and Java to limit production in an endeavour to promote better trading conditions. The proposal was understood' to be on the basis of 7-J per cent, curtailment in the three growing centres, but this, it is said, would hardly be sufficient to prevent the continuance of glut conditions in London. Stocks there this season have reached a record total, and are about 60,000,0001 b more than those held at the corresponding date in 1927. The quality of the tea in India, and to some extent in Ceylon and Java, has suffered because of over production. Restriction of output would improve the quality. Prices for tea at recent sales have been less than the cost of production, and unless .an improvement occurs the restriction will amount to the full 15 per cent. The plan evidently provides for a gradual removal of the restrictions as prices improve. Concentrated action will present difficulties, and the breaking away of even a small numbers of planters might be sufficient to wreck the scheme. The large number of plantations already cultivated will be a sufficient guarantee that prices will not be unduly inflated.

It is rather remarkable that China is not included in the scheme, for although China tea is never grown by individual planters on a large scale, and is always cultivated as a subsidiary crop, yet annual production is round about 300.009.0001 b, and must still be considerable, though reliable statistics are difficult .to obtain. There are four chief kinds of China tea —green, black, Oollong ami brick. They differ greatly in colour, flavour and in other respects, but they are all made from the same class of raw leaf. Green and black tea have each four different brands, and each of this again is divided into three or four varieties. These various sorts are mostly named after the localities in which they are grown. To the distinctive topographical descriptions have to be added sundry commercial classifications. Thus there are first, second, third and fourth crop teas, according to the time of picking and manufacture in relation to the Grain Rain festival. Further, Shanghai divides all teas into three groups. There is, first, the tea that has been thoroughly prepared at the place of production; then there is the tea prepared at Shanghai itself; and, thirdly there is the tea partly prepared at the point of production and finished off in the city. All teas pass through two middlemcnt between grower and exporter or retailer. These are the local collector and the retailer, The latter is so powerfully organised and regulates the trade so strictly that no on© can buy or sell teas wholesale unless he is a member of the guild. Brifk tea is made specially for the Mongolian, Tibetan, Siberian and Russian

markets, and is cast in that form because it can be more easily and safely transported by pack animals on overland journeys. It is so general and so long established a commodity in regions like Mongolia, for instance, where ordinary facilities of civilisation are rare, that it is often used as a medium of exchange.