You may have heard of the water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa that is scheduled to run out of water completely for the residents who live there by April of 2018. The population of Cape Town has plumeted from a million in 2000 to just over 400,000 presently and continues to decrease in population. Most who have migrated to Johannesburg. However, 400,000 is still a lot of people to be without water. One of the issues being that on the hills of Cape Town grows Rooibos tea. Water is consistently consumed to keep the Rooibos growing but in April that might be a different story for the Rooibos growers of Africa.

With a substantial export being reduced because of the water shortage, it will likely cause the price of Rooibos to increase. Especially if Africa is forced to give up growing Rooibos which is where most of the worlds Rooibos is grown. Possibly all Rooibos sold in the US is imported from South Africa. Nepal also grows it but does not export it as prevalently as South Africa does. Having Rooibos become unmanageable will cause their economy to wither as quickly as the Rooibos does.

It's likely that Rooibos will spike in price or become less available if available at all. Necessitea will be stocking up substantially on Rooibos to keep stocks for the next few years. After that we will have to see what happens to our beloved Rooibos in the near future.