Tea Plantation Owner Career

Tea Plantation Owner Career

The Real Poop

It's every little kid's dream to become a tea plantation owner when they grow up.

Oh shoot. Did we mix up "tea plantation owner" with "firefighter?" Darn. Every time.

We're not surprised if this is probably the first you're even thinking about tea plantation owner as a career. In our experience, tea plantations don't have a strong presence at college career fairs. After all, didn't this job end in the eighteenth century? 

For the most part, yeah, it did. The very, very few tea plantation owners who exist today are virtually unrecognizable to the mutton-chopped, bow-tie-wearing, whip-wielding plantation owner you have in mind and that you perhaps read about in history textbooks.

Before we talk about who exactly the modern tea plantation owner is and what in the name of Chai he does, let's talk about the tea industry as a whole. What the heck is tea? You probably know, however vaguely, that those Lipton tea bags you use have some sort of leaves in them. 

 Tea is made from the leaves of a kind of shrub called the Camellia sinensis. (Or "camel sinuses," if you want something you can remember.) What you do with the leaves determines the type of tea you get. There are technically three main types of tea: green (steamed), black (fermented), and white (left alone). Sorry, roobios, you don't count.

Are you getting a little bored? You better not be. The life of a tea plantation owner is completely absorbed with these tiny details. Tea is a super high-maintenance plant. It's more delicate than our great-great aunt Ruth with the rapidly progressing case of osteoporosis. 

And like our great-great aunt Ruth, who's always complaining she's too hot but now she's too cold, tea is super sensitive to temperature changes and rainfall. Which means that successful tea planters wake up in the morning thinking about soil acidity, fall asleep thinking about irrigation systems, and then once they're asleep, continue to dream about new fermenting techniques.

But alright, alright. Let's assume you've totally nerded out and learned everything there is to know about making tea itself. What's up with the tea industry as a whole? There's some good news and some bad news. 

Good news: Now that everyone's all "health-conscious" and whatnot, tea consumption is way up. Someday soon, tea might be the new coffee. Just look at Starbucks, which is investing heavily in Tazo tea and other tea varieties. And Unilever, the guys responsible for Lipton tea, are making some serious bank.

So tea is hot, hot, hot. (No offense to iced tea fans.) How do tea plantation owners fit in? Tea plantation owners are the guys on the plantations (probably located in China, Kenya, India, and Sri Lanka), who keep the whole shebang running. 

They know everything there is to know about horticulture and tea farming, they direct workers, they closely monitor profits and losses, and they communicate with the monopolizing, goliath corporations that buy their tea. A lot of what they do is behind-the-scenes, and depending on how exactly (ethically) they do it, a lot of that is also very...hush-hush. 

There are some serious problems with tea production—which, as a tea plantation owner, would be your area of focus. First of all, there's this pesky problem you hear about in the news and Al Gore documentaries: climate change. The tea industry has been hit hard by widespread droughts and extreme weather events. It's inconvenient, we know, but it's the truth.

Second, the tea industry is facing another beast of a problem: People want tea, but who's going to pick it? Traditionally, tea pickers don't get paid all that much. A little thing called urbanization is bringing rural workers to cities in search of higher wages. And the few rural workers who stay behind are trying to get in on the sweet rubber, palm oil, and fruit picking jobs that pay better. 

So the tea industry is facing some serious ethical dilemmas here. There's no doubt that, as a tea plantation owner trying to turn a profit while providing a livable wage, your ethics would be tested time and time again.

Who makes a good tea plantation owner? Someone with a passion for tea, that's for sure. You won't get anywhere if you find tea production boring and tea-dious. A good head for business and phenomenal communication skills are also definite musts. You'll be shmoozing with people above (unctuous, profit-turning corporate execs) and instructing the people below you (impoverished, rural workers and overseers) in the tea industry chain. 

Of course, the best, most successful tea plantation owners are the hard-nosed pragmatists with black hearts and a willingness—nay, eagerness—to exploit their workers. But most importantly, tea plantation owners are probably born into it. This is one job that tends to get passed down from family to family. Like royalty. But way less cool, and without a coronation ceremony.

If you're a businessman looking for the next big thing, the tea industry as a whole is definitely worth checking out. But before you set your sights on owning a tea plantation, ask yourself this: Are you currently living on a tea plantation, and are you the son or daughter of the plantation's owner? If not, then you might want to direct your attention elsewhere.