Brewing Under Pressure: Climate Change, Culture, and Adaptation on Japan’s Small-Scale Tea Farms

Tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world, second only to water. By understanding how such a large industry, one highly reliant on specific climate conditions to function, is both being affected by and adapting to climate change, one can inform policy, adaptation strategies, and promote refined research on the topic. In this work, a suitability index map of tea cultivation across Japan is created using a variety of climate metrics collected through a comprehensive analysis of scholarly sources. Using 3 farm stays and multiple intervews with farmers across some of Japan's vital tea-producing regions, this body of work asks: (1) How have rising temperatures and increased climate variability affected cultivation, community, and culture on small tea farms? (2) What common sentiments, concerns, and adaptation strategies emerge across these farms? and (3) How do these experiences align with long-term shifts in climate suitability for tea production? Through qualitative thematic analysis of interviews, the work uses a mixed-methods approach to bring local farmer experience into greater context with GIS-based modeling to reveal climate change dynamics that neither method could fully capture on its own.