First published July 11, 2013.
Updated: 2026 April — we continue to focused on helping the Japanese tea industry as a business. Our vision is for Japanese culture to be a part of contemporary life—both outside Japan and in Japan itself. And we do this by fulfilling our mission to help small scale producers find and create new markets. Commentary on what I thought as CEO 13 years ago in bold/italic!
I am currently prepping a business plan to take to investors. We hope that the infusion of capital will allow us to expand and increase the quality of service to our customers. Some of the data that I am looking at is fascinating…as in cause for worry. (2026—we successfully entered an accelerator program in 2014, but launching Yunomi.life as a true marketplace was a failure...too many fake "farms" applied to be sellers, and we found it easier to simply buy up product from farms and factories that we curate. A slower way to grow, but one that ensures better quality for customers.)
In 1980, there were 196,923 tea farmers according to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. In 2020, there were just 12,325 tea farmers.
That's an 81% decline in the number of tea farmers.
| YEAR | 1980 | 1985 | 1990 | 1995 | 2000 | 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 2025 |
| # of tea farmers | 196,923 | 202,673 | 109,020 | 93,544 | 53,687 | 37,617 | 28,116 | 19,603 | 12,325 | ??? |
(image courtesy of Google's Gemini)
Reasons for this decline are attributed to an aging population, a lack of successors, and a decrease in average income per acre (perhaps due the introduction and popularity of bottled teas).
The 1985-1990 decline is perhaps due to the land bubble in Japan. This is speculation, but perhaps aging farmers sold off their land and stopped farming.
The good news is that the amount of tea leaves produced has not changed much. 95,500 tons in 1985, 100,000 tons in 2000, and 82,100 tons in 2012. Improvements in equipment have helped increase production yield.
Update 2026 - since writing this a decade ago, the production volume has continued to decline, but the sudden global boom in matcha is definitely shifting the industry -- we may see increasing volume but producing matcha requires different production infrastructure so there are already winners and losers; 2025 saw a record number of closures in the industry.
So we will likely be able to continue supplying Japanese for a few years…but for the tea agriculture industry in Japan to have a bright future, we believe overseas markets for Japanese tea need to be developed further.
Update 2026 - Now that matcha is booming globally, it feels ironic that I said the above. It feels like a hollow victory for exports to be so successful while total leaf green tea consumption dropped 15% in 2025. Our focus going forward is going to be using our export business as a foundation to help rebuild Japanese domestic interest in Japanese tea.
Japanese Source:
