How Tea is Made: Harvesting

The process of making tea is actually rather complex. At a very high level, there are a handful of steps. However, to appreciate the work that goes into making this beautiful product it, examining each step in the process is required. In this video we talking about the first step, which is harvesting the raw tea leaves.
Before tea is harvested, it has to grow and there are many components the tea growers have to consider for the tea plant. Elevation, soil conditions, access to water are just a few. Once the tea plant has established itself and is large enough to harvest from, which varies country to country, then the grower has to judge when to harvest.
Like many other plants, harvesting during rain is a bad idea. Ideally, the fields and the plants have not had rain or fog for at least 24 hours before a harvest. Sunlight also has to be judged, along with the leaf growth and number of leaves available to harvest. Also, their is the consideration of labor.
The tea industry as a whole has a labor shortage. Finding people willing to harvest tea in countries like Taiwan and Japan, has lead to the use of mechanized harvesting equipment. Many of the growers and manufacturers would prefer to hand pluck, but they are unable to find workers willing to do the job. In India, many of the pluckers in the tea fields are actually from neighboring countries. So the availability of labor also effects when the tea will be harvested.
Once harvested, the tea needs to make it back to the manufacturing center to undergo the rest of the process. This takes the form of walking back in the baskets used to hold the leaves while harvesting by hand or sacks loaded into trucks to drive to the manufacturing center. Once there, the leaves will undergo the remaining the stages, which we will discuss in future videos.
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