Geography · Ch 11 — Land Resources and Agriculture
Tea
Tea
Tea is a plantation crop grown primarily for use as a beverage. The leaves contain significant amounts of caffeine and tannin, which give the drink its characteristic flavour and stimulating properties. There are two main types based on processing: black tea, where the leaves are fermented, and green tea, where the leaves are left unfermented.
The plant is indigenous to the hills of northern China. It thrives in humid and sub-humid tropical and subtropical climates, requiring undulating topography in hilly areas and well-drained soils. These conditions are essential because tea plants cannot tolerate waterlogging.
In India, commercial tea cultivation began in the 1840s in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam. This region remains the country's most important tea-growing area. Later, plantations were introduced in the sub-Himalayan region of West Bengal, specifically in the districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, and Cooch Behar. Tea is also cultivated on the lower slopes of the Nilgiri hills in Tamil Nadu.
India is the second-largest producer of tea in the world, after China (as of 2018). Within India, Assam dominates production: …
The photograph in Figure 3.10 shows a tea garden — a large, open plantation on gently sloping land. The tea bushes are planted in long, neat rows, and their tops have been clipped flat to form a low, dense canopy at waist height. This pruning is done to encourage the growth of tender new leaves, which are the ones plucked for tea.
Several workers are visible in the field, each carrying a large basket strapped to their back. They move along the rows, using both hands to pluck the young leaves and shoots from the top of each bush, then dropping them into the basket behind them. The image captures the labour-intensive nature of tea plucking, which is still done by hand to select only the finest leaves. …
This map is a thematic map of India titled "India – Tea and Coffee". It uses an outline of the country, including neighbouring landmasses, the Tropic of Cancer, a graticule (latitude-longitude grid), a scale bar, and a north arrow for geographic orientation. The map’s legend contains two symbols: one pattern for Tea and another for Coffee.
Tea is shown in three distinct clusters. The largest and most prominent concentration is in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam and the surrounding north-eastern hills. A second, smaller patch appears in the sub-Himalayan region of West Bengal — this corresponds to the Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, and Cooch Behar districts mentioned in the textbook. A third, isolated tea-growing area is marked in the Nilgiri hills of southern India (in Tamil Nadu).
Coffee is depicted along the highlands of the Western Ghats, running through three states: Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu. This is a continuous belt, not scattered dots, reflecting the fact that coffee is a plantation crop grown on the slopes of these hills. …