Chapter 656 Expansion and Upgrading
Therefore, Ernst said: "Tea is one of the three major beverages in the world, and two of the three major beverages are dominant industries in East Africa because of tea and coffee cultivation. There are regional restrictions, and the final alcoholic products are relatively rich, including various grains, fruits, and even other plants. In short, the raw materials for winemaking are too abundant. It can be said that each region has its own alcoholic beverages. ”
In fact, alcohol should be considered a dominant industry in East Africa, but this advantage is not too prominent. This is the result of comparison with coffee and tea.
The current advantage of coffee in East Africa is unshakable, because as we all know, the quality of East African coffee is famous all over the world.
This is not comparable to tea, because the types of tea are too rich, and the tea varieties introduced in East Africa are small varieties from the Far Eastern Empire, so they need special cultivation. The tea varieties introduced in East Africa from the Far Eastern Empire have reached There are hundreds of kinds.
This involves East Africa's oversea tactics in the tea industry. An important reason why Indian tea has not been able to replace Far Eastern tea is that the taste is difficult to compare with Far Eastern tea.
The solution to this problem in East Africa is to conduct experimental planting in large quantities, and then select the best of the best, and select those with superior taste and yield for large-scale planting.
“The planting range of coffee is smaller than that of tea, basically in the tropics, while tea can also be widely distributed in the subtropics and even grow better. This is why the Far Eastern Empire became the largest tea producer. An important reason why our northern tea area can break out among the tea producing areas is the plateau terrain and tea production advantages. The plateau ensures the production of East African tea. quality, and it is also more convenient to plant tea gardens in plateau terrain. ”
Of course, tea has relatively high terrain requirements. Generally speaking, high-altitude terrain such as mountains and hills is the most suitable. East Africa is a plateau area. The Far Eastern Empire has complex and rich terrain. India's tea region, Assam, has a large area of plains, but its quality is much worse than that of the Far Eastern Empire and East Africa.
This is not an exaggeration in East Africa. In the previous life, Kenya had beaten India and the Far East Empire in tea exports for more than ten years. The important reason for Kenya’s tea to catch up is naturally its excellent quality and huge output.
Of course, this is also related to the fact that Kenyans are not used to drinking tea. Most of their tea is exported, so they have a long-term advantage in the international market.
In the previous life, the Far Eastern Empire and India had extremely rich domestic tea markets. India cultivated a large number of tea lovers during the colonial era. Of course, tea in India mainly appeared in the form of milk tea, and milk tea shops on the streets of India were very common.
Milk tea is also available in East Africa, mainly in northern pastures and some areas with relatively developed animal husbandry. The demand for milk tea is very high. The northern pastures are close to the northern tea areas and have high milk production. The combination of the two, This has caused the production of milk tea to rise. Of course, northern pastures are also an important consumption area for black tea in East Africa.
In the northern industrial belt, there is an abundant supply of dairy products, including milk tea and coffee with milk, which are very popular. Therefore, the northern industrial belt is also the combination of the world's three largest beverage production and consumption areas.
“In addition to the northern tea area and the southern tea area, the Great Lakes area is also an excellent tea and coffee production area, but currently it cannot be compared with the northern tea area and the southern tea area in terms of scale. This must be Pay attention, especially in the Western Great Lakes Province (Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and other regions). The tea market is still very profitable, so providing more varieties will also help open the market for East African tea.”
The East African Plateau is regarded as a high-quality tea production area. This is a unique advantage of East Africa. Basically, all East African countries in the previous life produced tea. Even if they are not in the East African Plateau, the East African Plateau produces tea, which means that other plateau areas in East Africa are also suitable. After all, the overall environment for tea cultivation is similar.
“Of course, the biggest disadvantage of our East African tea industry is at the level of industrial production, especially mechanization, which is far inferior to India. Therefore, we must work hard on mechanized tea production. In addition to research and development of imported tea production from Austria, In addition to machinery, we must also build related machinery manufacturing enterprises ourselves.”
As a semi-industrial country, East Africa is far inferior to European countries in the field of machinery manufacturing, and the field of mechanized tea production is even blank. Because most of East Africa's industrial and technical sources come from the German region, and the German region does not produce tea, there is naturally no related mechanical production and technology accumulation.
The most advanced in this field is the United Kingdom. The British planted tea in India more than ten years earlier than in East Africa. Now Indian tea factories have large machinery with hundreds of people. Factories appear.
The world's largest tea producer and third largest industrial producer, the Far Eastern Empire and East Africa are still relying on traditional methods to produce tea.
The situation in East Africa is slightly better. A factory in Austria was specially commissioned to design machines for tea production, but the effect is naturally hard to describe.
After all, this is an area that Austria has never touched before, so the efficiency of the machines used in tea production plants in East Africa is very unsatisfactory and cannot even replace labor. Moreover, the failure rate is high and the maintenance costs are high. big.
So Ernst continued: "Our tea production capacity is still too weak. Corresponding improvements must be made in view of the unreliability of machine production. In previous years, the method of entrusting foreign design and production was , it seems that it is not feasible now, so we still have to hire from Europe A professional team came over and asked them to customize relevant machinery for East African tea production based on the traditional tea production process in East Africa.”
In addition, the advantage of this is that it can solve various problems that occur after the machine is running at any time. problems and make targeted improvements to them.
The disadvantage of this is self-evident, that is, the cost is relatively high, but the East African tea industry can bring considerable benefits to East Africa every year, so the money spent on technology is acceptable to the East African government.
As for tea revenue, the East African government is much stronger than the Far Eastern Empire government and India. The Far Eastern Empire government is relatively chaotic in terms of tea taxation, and it can even be said that it has done nothing.
Because tea is one of the most important export products of the Far Eastern Empire. Before the Opium War, tea alone was an important export product of the Far Eastern Empire to Britain. With this alone, the Far Eastern Empire could surpass the British. (The total value of exported goods in foreign trade exceeds the total value of imported goods).
Today, the Far Eastern Empire’s annual tea export volume reaches around 100,000 tons, and the export volume is increasing almost every year. However, the tea tax imposed by the Far Eastern Empire government is not long and has been maintained at a level of several hundred thousand taels per year. This level is too low, and it is far from matching its status as the largest tea producer and consumer country. If the tea tax can be clarified, it can greatly solve the financial problems of the government, but this is obviously difficult to achieve.
As for India, it is purely a colony. No matter how much tea is planted, the British are the ones who benefit, and their contribution to India is not great.
Although the scale of the tea industry in East Africa is much smaller than that of the Far Eastern Empire and India, the value of the benefits it derives belongs to East Africa itself. Both the government and tea workers can benefit, so the government attaches great importance to tea income.
So the government is quite willing to promote the scale of tea planting, expand the East African tea market, and improve tea production efficiency.
(End of this chapter)