Tea
Tea is an evergreen shrub of the warm, wet, acid-soiled hills. It likes heat and heavy rainfall but drains best on a slope, so the great tea gardens climb the monsoon highlands of China, India's Assam and Darjeeling, Sri Lanka and Kenya.
How it grows
Tea grows on a woody shrub, its fruit held above the ground.
What it’s worth to grow
Farm-gate value = the price farmers are paid per kilogram (FAOSTAT producer prices, median of 93 positive country-year observations spanning 2018–2024). It tracks how costly and labour-intensive a crop is to grow — almonds and vanilla command a premium; potatoes and cereals are cheap staples.
Where Earth's climate suits tea
Climatic suitability only — scored for every 0.5° of the planet from this crop's temperature and rainfall tolerances (FAO EcoCrop) on AgroClim 1991–2025 normals (AgERA5 temperature, CHIRPS/ERA5 rainfall). It shows where the rain-fed climate permits the crop, not where it is grown today; irrigation lets many crops thrive in drier country than the map suggests (California, Egypt, the Indus and Nile).
Who grows it — and where the climate merely allows it
The climate where it grows
— mean monthly temperature ▍ monthly rainfall — averaged over the actual growing areas (the suitable cells) inside each country, so it reflects where the crop is really grown, not the national average. AgroClim 1991–2025 normals. The 🌧 badge is the last 3 months’ rainfall as a percentage of the 1991–2020 CHIRPS normal (through 2025-12) — the current drought/deluge signal.
Climate envelope · FAO EcoCrop
Deep bar = optimal range; pale bar = absolute tolerance. Beyond the pale bar the crop fails. Latitude tolerance ±43° · soil pH 4–6.
Growing calendar & hazards
Where it is warm and wet year-round the bushes are plucked every week or two through several flushes; in cooler highlands growth pauses in the cold season.
- Drought. A dry spell halts the flush and cuts the pluckable leaf.
- Frost. Frost damages the tender shoots at the cool-highland margins.
- Warming & pests. Shifting rainfall and rising temperatures are moving where quality tea can be grown.