World Tea Expo 2017

JASON MCDONALD
VICE PRESIDENT
THE HAWAIÆI MEDICINAL TEA & HERB COOPERATIVE


From the first time Jason first saw tea growing in the field, he knew what his life work would become. He was immediately hooked and tea has become a passion driven pursuit for him. Since his first encounter with a tea plant in the Spring of 2012, Jason has gone on to found The Great Mississippi Tea Company, which produced 4 top award winning teas in the 2015 Tea of the United States Awards. He is also a co-founder of The United States League of Tea Growers. He has been an industry collaborator with multiple grants for tea research from the USDA in conjunction with research universities. He has traveled extensively (India, Nepal, and China) to gain hands-on experience in order to distill information from various tea producing regions into a working model for US production. He recently traveled with a USDA delegation sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture (USDA Scientific Exchange Program) to research Chinese tea growing methods with an emphasis on climate change and its effect on tea production. His most recent work has been focused on the development of The Hawai'i Medicinal Tea & Herb Cooperative. The cooperative is developing a sustainable economic model for US growers and provides A-Z services for tea farm development, harvesting, processing, and marketing of finished tea products. In addition to his professional work in tea, Jason has also made it a mission to collect as many different tea plants as he can as a hobby and personal passion. He splits his year equally between Mississippi and Hawaii experimenting with tea growing methods, researching tea growing in various conditions, and developing sustainable business models for tea production on a larger scale for the US. Because he has an innovative spirit and is adaptable in his methods, his impact on the US tea growing community has been felt in numerous ways in a very short period of time.

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