Poverty of Iranian farmers and drought led to stopping third harvest of green tea leaf as farmers could not do the preparation works before production season. Quoting Iraj Hoosemi, head of the association of tea farmers, Reported Jahanesanat daily.
T he report says, some 70 to 80 percent of tea industry factories in Iran are not working and collected green tea leaf volume decreased by 40 percent compared to last year’s second harvest. Amount of green tea leaf during third harvest hardly hits 10 thousand tons, while it had been predicted to be harvested 40 thousand tons of green tea leaf.
Though government had increased the price for purchasing green tea leaves from farmers by around 30 percent last month, delay on payment by government has occurred repeatedly during last years.
According to the reports, some 46000 tons of green tea leaf which were collected during the first and second harvest have been purchased from farmers up to now, whereas just 2 percent of the worth has been paid to them.
Iran imported over 41,000 tons of tea, worth $200 million, in the first nine months of the last solar year (March 20-December 20, 2012), state-run ISNA reported, citing data released by the Iranian regime customs offices.
Iran’s annual tea consumption amounts some 110,000 tons. Smuggled tea share is a high part of tea import to Iran.