There is an interesting chart in the June 27th edition of The Japan Food Journal (日本食糧新聞), showing the Spring tea leaf picking season for last year and this year.
The season was a bit delayed this year and the yield is down (due to the cool weather, I suppose), but still the season started only two days later than last year and lasted for the same number of days. The exact same pattern of harvested tea-per-day was shown both years. The first days are best and then the yield per day decreases steadily. This would not be interesting to someone in the tea industry, but I find the way mother nature keeps to a fairly strict schedule interesting.
2007 Season April 19th to May 17th
2008 Season April 21st to May 19th
The article points out that for the 3rd year in a row, the price of even good quality tea is down. That goes against the trends for other crops, especially grains.
