FAO has urged tea-producing countries to increase income from the crop by marketing the drink more heavily at home and publicising the health benefits of the beverage abroad.
The UN agency warns against increasing the size of tea plantations which would damage prices in the long run.
In a report FAO also says that the export market in green tea will grow more quickly over the next ten years than that of black tea, where the markets in major importing countries are unlikely to expand further as they are already nearly saturated.
HJEMMEMARKEDET I FOKUS
– Scope for expansion in consumption in traditional import markets like the United Kingdom and Russia is quite limited but in the countries where tea is produced the per capita consumption is much lower and so there is a lot more market potential, said Kaison Chang, Secretary of FAO’s Inter-Governmental Group on Tea, the only international tea authority.
Consumers in tea-producing countries drink just a tenth of the amount of tea than those in mature import markets, representing a major opportunity for tea-growers if the right marketing strategies are employed, said the FAO report.
The FAO Composite Price for tea, the indicative world price for black tea, increased by 13 percent in 2009, pushing prices to record levels last year due to drought in some of the major tea-producing regions of Asia and Africa.
