Page 24 - ATODAY
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A24
BUSINESSMonday 14 March 2016
Pricey tea a growing niche crop in US, even Canada
JANET McCONNAUGHEY
Associated Press
BROOKHAVEN, Mississippi
(AP) — 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 In this Feb. 29, 2016 photograph, Joshua Watson, left, and Chase White gather tea plants onto racks at The Great Mississippi Tea
are willing to pay premium Company near Brookhaven, Miss. A growing number of North American farmers from Mississippi to British Columbia are growing
prices for what they tea for the high-priced specialty market. Associated Press
consider top quality, tea For example, a 4-ounce “hoop houses” shelter tea Georgia. Tea is grown in American Classic. The
(113-gram) box of 50 plants eight months of the at least 15 states and the
consultant Nigel Melican Lipton black tea bags can year, sells its home-grown Canadian province of message on the teabag’s
be found online for $3, white tea for $256 a pound British Columbia. Outside
said in a telephone while Connecticut-based or $32 for a 1.5-ounce (42- of Hawaii, it generally takes envelope intrigued him —
Bigelow Tea sells the South gram) tin. It takes 70,000 about five years for plants
interview from Bedford, Carolina-grown product hand-picked leaf buds to to grow big enough to this tea was home-grown.
at $7.95 for a box of 12 make a pound of white survive repeated harvests,
England. The specialty tea tea bags weighing less tea, owner Angela Macke Walters said. That led him to the nation’s
than an ounce (28 grams). said.“I don’t recommend it A tea bag helped decide
market is growing 8 to 10 Compared with some to anyone as a commercial McDonald’s future after oldest working tea farm:
prices, that’s peanuts. crop. You’ve got to love the 2005 hurricane wiped
percent a year, according Eliah Halpenny of Big Island it,” Macke said in a phone out 75 percent of the pine Charleston Tea Plantation,
Tea on the Mauna Loa interview. trees on his farm of nearly
to Peter F. Goggi’s 2015 volcano in Hawaii sells About 60 U.S. farms, with 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) started by Lipton in 1963
her black and green teas only a handful created near Tylertown, about 40
market review for the wholesale for about $42 before 2000, are growing miles (64 kilometers) from with plants that had
an ounce. Her online retail tea, said Tygh Waters, what is now his Great
Tea Association of the prices work out to more president of the U.S. Mississippi Tea Company in grown wild on a defunct
than $75 an ounce. League of Tea Growers Brookhaven, Mississippi.
U.S.A. Inc. Such teas are Light of Day Organic Teas and founder of Piedmont On a visit to South Carolina, farm in Summerville, South
in Traverse City, Michigan, Tea Co. in Athens, he was served a tea called
particularly attractive where plastic-covered Carolina. There, McDonald
to millennials, who “find learned that tea comes
delight in the discovery of from Camellia sinensis,
new and differentiated which needs high heat,
flavors, ethnic or new acidic soil, ample rainfall
cultural offerings and craft and humidity. Mississippi
selections,” he wrote. State University researchers
Melican said U.S. wages helped him determine
are too high to compete what varieties might be
with overseas farmers best for Mississippi.
who grow the commodity After an unusually cold
tea commonly found on winter killed off nearly
grocery shelves. 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.”
