Expansion and Upgrading

Therefore, Ernst said, "Tea is one of the world's three great beverages, and of those three, two are industries in which East Africa holds an advantage. Tea and coffee cultivation are both limited by geography, while alcoholic beverages are far more varied—grains, melons and fruits, even other plants. In short, the raw materials for brewing are simply too abundant. It could be said that every region has its own liquor."

In fact, alcohol should also have counted as an advantageous industry in East Africa, though that advantage was not especially pronounced. This was only the result of comparing it with coffee and tea.

East Africa's advantage in coffee, meanwhile, was currently unshakable, because as everyone knew, East African coffee was renowned worldwide for its quality.

Tea, on the other hand, fell short in this regard. There were simply too many varieties of tea, while the varieties East Africa had introduced from the Far East Empire were all minor local strains. They therefore required special cultivation. East Africa had introduced more than a hundred tea varieties from the Far East Empire.

This involved East Africa's sea-of-questions strategy in the tea industry. One important reason Indian tea had still been unable to replace Far Eastern tea was that its flavor was difficult to compare with Far Eastern tea.

East Africa's answer to this problem was large-scale experimental planting, then selecting the best from among the best and expanding the varieties with superior flavor and yields on a massive scale.

"Coffee has a narrower cultivation range than tea and is basically confined to the tropics, while tea can also spread widely through subtropical regions and may even grow better there. This is one important reason why the Far East Empire became the world's foremost tea-producing nation. One key reason our northern tea region