Despite higher yields, early-monsoon dried tea leaves lose popularity

As it is early monsoon, tea leaf yield has increased but consumers don’t enjoy dried tea leaves produced in early monsoon, according to tea leaf farmers.
In early monsoon, demand is likely to decline as tea leaf quality is a little low, it is easy to produce young leaves and sun drying takes longer.
“The price goes down slightly. Now, monsoon is arriving so production will increase. But price has fallen. If it rains in June, the number of buyers will decrease slightly. Production increases in monsoon. Young leaves are easy to produce when it rains, and sun drying may take several days. And the scent is not as good as before. Some buyers don’t much like monsoon dried tea leaves,” said Ma Tin Tin Yi, a tea leaf farmer from Pinlaung Township.
In May, dried tea leaf sales were good and price was good in previous months as the weather was hot.
“Tea leaf sales were still good in May. Some people ,who don’t want to buy dried tea leaves in monsoon, have bought before monsoon comes. In this period, buds are produced abundantly. In previous months, the scent and quality of tea leaves were good. Before Thingyan, there were a lot of buying. At that time, the tea leaf quality was good and the price was good too, and we had a lot of buyers,” she added.
Farmers need to pluck tea leaves before they are ripe and make sure that the drying process is done properly, so that they can get a good price. — Thit Taw/ZS/ED