Every day, billions of cups of tea are sipped worldwide, a ritual that anchors a vast global industry and sustains countless livelihoods, especially in developing nations. But this daily comfort faces an unseen, escalating threat: climate change. Its unpredictable weather patterns are not just tweaking the thermometer; they're fundamentally re-engineering tea cultivation, impacting yields, quality, and the entire supply chain. Tea, mostly grown in rain-fed systems, is acutely vulnerable. The profound impact of climate change on tea cultivation presents significant challenges to its yield, quality, and sustainability.
What’s happening to your cup?
From Asia to Africa, tea-producing regions are already reporting diminished and erratic production. While overall global crop yields have seen some increases, countries like Kenya have experienced dramatic, climate-driven swings in tea output. The shifting climate hits tea cultivation at its very core, affecting both the leaf in your mug and the millions who depend on it.
Shrinking quality, dwindling yields
Rising temperatures are drying out the soils where tea thrives, leading to reduced water content in plants and directly lowering production and quality if proper mulching isn't consistently applied. Sun scorch is also diminishing harvests and their quality. More ominously, the climate is unleashing new pests and diseases that were once dormant but are now becoming more resistant, severely compromising the natural defences of tea plants.
Beyond quantity, climate shifts are rewriting tea’s chemical blueprint. Environmental changes alter the concentration of crucial natural compounds – so called "secondary metabolites" – that are vital for tea's quality. More frequent and intense rains can dilute these compounds, causing noticeable changes in tea taste, a phenomenon already reported by farmers in Yunnan, South China. Some findings also suggest that consistently rising temperatures can directly degrade tea quality.
Water wars and extreme weather
Water availability, stemming from reduced or unpredictable rainfall or limits on ground and river water resources, is a critical limiter for tea yields. A significant and growing concern is the surging frequency of extreme weather events like droughts, hailstorms, floods, frosts, heavy rainfall, and landslides. These chaotic conditions directly hinder production and undermine consistent tea quality.
Cold temperatures in spring pose a considerable challenge, especially in high-altitude areas like China's Yangtze River region. This "spring frost damage" (SFD) limits production and lowers the quality of spring tea. Cold stress triggers physiological and biochemical changes, including oxidative stress and reduced levels of chlorophyll and carotenoids, all of which negatively impact photosynthesis and tea quality. Young tea leaves are particularly vulnerable, showing higher damage and reduced photosynthetic efficiency compared to mature leaves due to gene expression differences related to cell membrane stability and ROS detoxification (oxidative stress prevention).
The economic fallout
The financial implications for the tea industry are far-reaching. Smallholder farmers face lost income due to fewer "plucking days," directly threatening their food security. For the global market, projections indicate that international tea prices could skyrocket by over 26 percent due to production declines in key regions. While this might seem like a win for producers, the reality is that the higher costs of adaptation can significantly erode profit margins, wiping out any potential gains from rising prices. Tea estates are already incurring substantial additional expenses to maintain production. These include combating topsoil erosion from uncharacteristically heavy rainfall and increasing reliance on fertilisers to preserve soil fertility, as well as pesticides to fight resurgent pests, especially during dry seasons. Some estates, particularly in India, have had to invest in irrigation systems to boost yields during longer dry spells and heavier rains. The combined effect of increased inputs and infrastructure has dramatically inflated production costs. In India, despite laws obliging employers to provide social services like housing and medical care to workers, some less efficient estates find current tea prices insufficient to cover these escalating expenses. This has led to layoffs, increased unemployment, and children leaving school as families migrate to urban areas for work. These rising climate-related costs are now impacting social provisions, raising serious socioeconomic concerns about working conditions in tea-producing countries, including low wages, poor housing, health and safety issues, a shrinking permanent workforce, and dwindling worker representation. As climate impacts intensify, these socioeconomic repercussions are expected to worsen.
Engineering resilience:
Innovating for a stable brew
To ensure a long-term, dependable supply of tea, a comprehensive and intelligent approach is no longer optional – it's mission-critical. Extensive research is making significant strides in understanding how tea plants respond to climate stress at a deep biological level. Strategies under exploration and implementation combine centuries-old agricultural wisdom with cutting-edge science and proactive policy.
Smart farming, greener fields
A fundamental strategy involves planting drought and stress-tolerant tea cultivars that can better withstand adverse conditions. Diversifying production is another crucial practice, which includes converting low-yielding tea land to other suitable crops or implementing intercropping where tea is planted alongside other trees (like rubber) or food crops. Shade trees offer the dual benefit of protecting tea plants, while food crops provide additional income and can improve soil health. Organic cultivation is also promoted for long-term sustainability. Effective water management is paramount, necessitating efficient irrigation and drainage systems, coupled with water harvesting, to conserve water and manage erratic rainfall. Finally, advocating for soil conservation practices helps prevent topsoil erosion caused by heavy rains. These traditional practices are particularly vital in tropical regions like Sri Lanka, where shade trees effectively buffer temperature extremes and reduce moisture variability, offering practical and cost-effective solutions for smallholder farmers.
Science Steps Up
Emerging research highlights the "potential of molecular and biochemical tools to enhance tea plants’ resilience to climate stressors". Technologies such as transcriptomics, metabolomics, and proteomics, have been instrumental in identifying essential genes and pathways linked to stress adaptation, offering "promising targets for genetic improvement". Biochemical interventions involve applying natural or lab-produced compounds like melatonin, abscisic acid (ABA), calcium chloride (CaCl₂), and fulvic acid. These "plant helpers" can significantly boost a tea plant's natural defences, enhance its ability to tolerate drought, and aid recovery after stress. For example, melatonin and 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) have shown promise in boosting cold tolerance against spring frost damage. However, applying these biochemical solutions and implementing genomic technologies presents challenges for small-scale farmers due to costs and the required technical expertise.
Predictive Power & Policy
Climate modelling provides valuable insights, with models forecasting "significant shifts in the suitability of tea-growing regions". Tools like MaxEnt species distribution models are increasingly used to predict climate suitability and guide cultivation practices under future scenarios. This predictive power helps inform where to plant and what practices to adopt under changing climate scenarios. Policymakers and researchers must prioritise developing region-specific adaptation strategies that account for financial constraints and technical challenges. The overarching goal is to provide actionable insights that bridge the gap between laboratory research and real-world farm conditions.
The Future of Tea: A Shared Mission
Ensuring the long-term future of tea demands a multifaceted approach that spans science, agriculture, economics, and policy. Despite significant progress in understanding how tea plants respond to climate stress, key challenges persist – especially in addressing the combined impact of multiple stressors, developing long-term adaptation strategies, and grasping the full socioeconomic consequences of climate change. This highlights the urgent need for interdisciplinary approaches that bring together molecular, ecological, and socioeconomic research.
The goal is to provide actionable insights that connect lab-based research with the realities of on-the-ground farming. This includes expanding field trials to diverse agro-ecological regions, integrating climate models with socioeconomic analyses, and fostering global collaboration, especially in underrepresented tea-producing regions like Africa and Southeast Asia.
Finches leverages the power of AI to protect the future of tea and the livelihoods of the millions who rely on it. Our climate-smart procurement platform provides real-time risk insights and mitigation strategies from the field to the boardroom, empowering agronomists and procurement managers to reliably source crops. By using data and AI to predict the "new normal" for agricultural conditions and offering advice on how to respond, Finches is building a smarter way for the supply chain to adapt to the escalating challenges of climate change.
Sources:
🔗 Comprehensive review of mapping climate change impacts on tea cultivation: bibliometric and content analysis of trends, influences, adaptation strategies, and future directions
🔗 Climate change brews trouble for tea industry, but circular solutions await
🔗 Socio-economic implications of climate change for tea producing countries
🔗 Review on Impacts of Climate Change on Tea Yield, Yield, Components and Quality
Acknowledgement:
A heartfelt thank you to Dr. Russell W. Glenn – your brilliant research made this blog post possible. We're truly grateful!