Matcha is a hit and I visited a Japanese tea farm to find out why

And when the cooperative that Tanaka was a part of (an arrangement in which businesses in a shared industry can pool their resources) began to be overwhelmed by high levels of demand, Tanaka was fired because he was the newest member.

This meant he had to build his own processes from scratch and purchase his own machinery; He asked tourists not to take photos because he wanted to keep the details private.

Tanaka’s farm is about four hectares (40,000 square metres), making it relatively small even among the many family-owned farms in the area, each of about eight to nine hectares. But Tanaka exports to more than 50 countries and says he gets five to 10 emails a day from different businesses asking if his farm can supply them.

The problem for many farmers is no longer a lack of demand, especially from international markets. “The demand for matcha is growing exponentially,” says Tanaka.

Instead, the limits lie in the fact that the matcha production process is very specialized and young people are not as interested as previous generations in taking over the farms handed over to them. This has reduced the pool of older farmers trying to keep the process alive (most matcha farmers in Japan are over 65) and a handful of young entrepreneurs like Tanaka.

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Matcha powder is made using the same leaves grown for green and black teas; The name refers to the process rather than the type of tea leaf used. This process and the special conditions and manual labor required to grow tea trees are particularly intensive and cumbersome.

Tanaka says there are certain conditions that must be met to grow the trees. Sloping lands that provide adequate drainage have a climate where the temperature difference between noon and evening is large and at the same time the chance of freezing is as low as possible. To prevent freezing, Tanaka placed wind machines above his facilities that pushed warm air downwards.

In Japan, the availability (or lack thereof) of suitable land and the limited labor pool make expansion of production difficult.

Although there are machines that can harvest the tops of trees, Tanaka says he hand-picks the leaves growing in the space between the rows he plants to avoid damage.

Plants also need to be covered with a screen for two weeks before harvesting; This encourages them to produce more chlorophyll and L-theanine, reducing bitterness and increasing umami flavor and vibrant green color.

There’s also the fact that matcha trees take about five years to mature (meaning farmers can’t suddenly plant more and hope to harvest enough to meet increased demand), and that the best harvest is usually in the spring, meaning there’s a small window of time when the leaves can be harvested.

These leaves then need to be processed quickly to prevent them from oxidizing and losing matcha’s unique qualities (including color and taste). This involves transporting the harvested leaves (usually within 24 hours, but the sooner the better) to a processing facility where they will be steamed, dried and pulverized.

This time crunch means that production cannot be distributed evenly over time. However, it would also be costly and inefficient to leave too many large, private facilities idle during the off-season.

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All of these limits mean that the “price elasticity” of matcha supply (the ability of a good business’s supply quantity to respond to a change in price) is relatively “inelastic” (or unresponsive).

So, although matcha prices have increased significantly (thanks in large part to greatly increased demand for the product), farmers have not been able to increase their supply that much.

This also helps explain why our growing appetite for matcha (both in Australia and around the world) hasn’t been met with such a huge influx of matcha powder, and why we so often see “sold out” signs for matcha lattes in our cafes.

Of course, there is probably also a concern among some farmers that the enthusiasm for Matcha is temporary and that planting hundreds or thousands more trees and installing the machinery and labor needed to process them will leave them high and dry.

But tea powder, once consumed only by Japanese nobles and samurai, has taken off as some people have undoubtedly developed a lasting taste for tea.

For example, my friends and I have been consuming matcha (increasingly in the form of matcha lattes) for years; Our last trip to Japan only fueled our love, which for some of us bordered on addiction.

While countries such as China, Vietnam and even Australia have begun to expand into matcha production, farmers in these places do not yet have the same level of knowledge and expertise needed to accommodate the high-quality production that comes mostly from Japan.

Determined not to get caught by another “sold out” sign, but now acutely aware of the challenges of starting our own matcha farm, my friends and I decided on the next best thing: taking home a few boxes of matcha to get us through the shortage.