Tea
Estates
Originally, the British estate owners grew coffee, but when disease destroyed the coffee bushes, tea was planted as a replacement for coffee. And consumers in the British Isles changed from coffee to tea drinkers. Meanwhile the various empires in continental Europe continued importing coffee from their African colonies, and so coffee continued to predominate there. By 1945, tea plantations covered 17 percent of the cultivated area; and the island's name, Ceylon, was associated with tea in Western Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom.
Tea workers earn about $4.00 per day and about a third of them live in poverty.
Although tea is produced in Sri Lanka, the world's largest tea drinkers in 2003, measured by pounds per person, were:
U.K.
Ireland
4.94
3.33
Poland
Morocco
2.67
2.60
Egypt
2.47
