And when the co-op (an arrangement under which businesses in a shared industry can pool their resources) that Tanaka was part of started becoming overwhelmed by the higher level of demand, he was kicked out because he was the newest member.
That meant he had to set up his own processes from scratch and buy his own machinery – which he asks tourists not to photograph because he’d like to keep the specifics under wraps.
Daiki Tanaka started his matcha farm and business about a decade ago but said it was difficult to settle in.Credit: Millie Muroi
Tanaka’s farm is roughly four hectares (40,000 square metres), making it relatively small, even among the many family-owned farms in the area, which span about eight to nine hectares each. But Tanaka exports to more than 50 countries and says he receives five to 10 emails a day from different businesses asking if his farm can supply them.
The problem for many farmers now is not a lack of demand, especially from international markets. “Demand for matcha is growing exponentially,” Tanaka says.
Instead, the limits lie in the fact the process of producing matcha is so specialised and that younger people are not as interested as previous generations in taking over farms that have been handed down to them. That has left a shrinking pool of older farmers (most matcha farmers are over 65 in Japan) and a handful of younger entrepreneurs such as Tanaka to try to keep the process alive.
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Matcha powder is made using the same leaves grown for green and black teas, with the name referring to the process rather than the type of tea-leaf used. That process and the specific conditions and manual work needed to grow the tea trees are especially intensive and cumbersome.
To grow the trees, Tanaka says there are some conditions that must be met. They include sloped land that ensures there’s enough drainage, a climate in which there is a big gap in temperature between noon and evening – but also as little chance for frost as possible. To prevent frost, Tanaka has wind machines set up above his plants which propel warmer air downwards.
The availability (or lack thereof) of suitable land and the limited pool of workers available in Japan make expanding production difficult.
While there are machines that can harvest the tops of trees, Tanaka says he hand-picks the leaves growing in the gap between the rows he has planted to prevent damage.
The plants also need to be covered with a screen for two weeks before harvesting, which encourages them to produce more chlorophyll and L-theanine, reducing bitterness and enhancing their umami flavour and vibrant green colour.
My friends and I visited Tanaka’s farm in the town of Wazuka in Kyoto to learn more about how our favourite tea is produced.Credit: Millie Muroi
Then, there’s the fact that matcha trees take about five years to mature (meaning farmers can’t just suddenly plant more and hope to reap enough to respond to increased demand) and that the best harvest is generally in spring, meaning there’s a small time frame in which leaves can be gathered.
Those leaves then also have to be processed quickly to prevent them from oxidising and losing the qualities (including colour and flavour) specific to matcha. That includes moving the harvested leaves – usually within 24 hours, but the earlier, the better – to a processing facility where they are steamed, dried and ground down into a powder.
This time crunch means production can’t be spaced out evenly over time. But it would also be costly and inefficient to have too many huge, specialised facilities lying dormant in the off-season.
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All of these limits mean the “price elasticity” (the responsiveness of the quantity of a good businesses supply in response to a change in price) of matcha supply is relatively “inelastic” (or unresponsive).
That is, even though matcha prices have surged dramatically (largely thanks to a huge lift in demand for the product), farmers haven’t been able to boost their supply by as much.
It also helps to explain why our growing appetite for matcha (here in Australia, as well as worldwide), hasn’t been matched by as huge an inflow in matcha powder – and why we so often seem to see “sold out” signs for matcha lattes in our cafes.
Of course, there’s also probably a concern by some farmers that the hype for matcha is temporary and that planting hundreds or thousands more trees and setting up the machinery and workforce needed to process it all will leave them high and dry.
But the tea powder – which was once consumed exclusively by Japanese nobles and samurai – has taken off, with some people undoubtedly developing a permanent taste for it.
My friends and I, for instance, have been consuming matcha (increasingly in the form of matcha lattes) for years now, with our recent trip to Japan only fuelling our love – verging on addiction for some of us – for it.
And while countries such as China, Vietnam, and even Australia, have started expanding into matcha production, farmers in these places are, for the most part, yet to gain the same level of knowledge and expertise needed to meet the high-quality output from Japan.
Determined not to be caught out by another “sold out” sign, but now acutely aware of the challenges of starting our own matcha farm, my friends and I settled for the next best thing: taking home some small tins of matcha to get us through the shortage.
