Darjeeling (32 page)

The path to organic farming began with his father, and Rajah, he finally conceded, continued to drive it forward. “I was on a mission. It was a process of slowly moving. We moved ahead a little each day.”

For buyers and consumers, being an organic farm means being a
certified
one. The idea for Makaibari’s getting certification was instigated by a chance meeting in 1987 with Kiran Tawadey, an elegant woman who owns Hampstead Tea, a brand of organic and Fairtrade teas that gets exported to seventeen countries. “She said, ‘There’s big bucks in it,’ but I told her, ‘I’m not in it for the bucks,’” Rajah explained.

Tawadey, then in her late twenties and just starting out in the business, was not easily dissuaded. She began introducing Rajah to the broader organic community and asked him to host an inspector on the estate. He agreed. (Why? “I can’t say no to anybody.”)

Makaibari convincingly satisfied the criteria during the inspection, and in 1988 Makaibari was duly certified organic, the first tea estate in India to be so. Rajah is deeply proud of it, although he tends to underplay it. “I became certified because a buyer wanted it,” he said in a deadpan tone.

The transition to organic was not an easy time. “All my neighbors thought I was some sort of a witch, doing witchcraft in tea, and stayed away from it, from the crazy man,” he explained in the Makaibari documentary. “It was very, very lonely the first few years.”
⁷
Organic isolation didn’t last long. “The moment the whole garden started prospering, proving the point that eco-agriculture could be economically viable, everybody has started jumping in the bandwagon,” he said with a jaunty, upward lilt to in his voice.
⁸
When Makaibari started achieving record prices, the bandwagon became even more popular. “I was astonishingly propelled from laughingstock to pioneer,” he wrote in his book.
⁹

What a change in a quarter century. According to the Darjeeling Tea Association, by the end of the 2013 harvest, fifty-eight of Darjeeling’s tea gardens—an astonishing two-thirds—were certified organic with a number more in the conversion.
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Converting comes with significant consequences. “It is a costly affair,” said Jay Neogi at Ambootia, the flagship and namesake of the group with eleven organic Darjeeling gardens. Certification is expensive, organic materials cost more, and organic cow manure is in short supply in the hills.

But these are largely secondary concerns. Far more important, yields plummet. Ambootia saw its production drop from 200,000 kilograms (440,000 pounds) to 120,000 kilograms (about 265,000 pounds); it has now stabilized at 150,000 kilograms (331,000 pounds), or down 25 percent from previous amounts.

This is standard. Chamong Tee’s thirteen Darjeeling gardens all converted to organic production and generally experienced drops around 25 to 30 percent. Some were even higher. Marybong has been typical. The historic estate of the Wernickes and Louis Mandelli began the three-year process of moving from conventional to organic in 2007, the year Vijay Dhancholia took over as manager. Production went from 165,000 kilograms (375,000 pounds) to 102,000 kilograms (about 225,000 pounds) in 2012, a 40 percent loss. According to Dhancholia, a hailstorm during the first flush that year contributed to the slashed numbers, and with excellent weather conditions, he sees the garden capable of hitting 140,000 kilograms. But even that optimistic amount would still mean a 15 percent drop from the days of its conventional farming. In 2013 Marybong did significantly better but still missed that target by 10 percent, producing 126,000 kilograms, down a quarter from preconversion times.

With crop losses compounded on the accountant’s balance sheet by increased production costs, why turn organic?

“Market,” said Satish Mantri, the manager of Singbulli, a garden that stretches fourteen miles end to end through the Mirik Valley, with a conceding shrug. Singbulli completed its first fully organic year in 2013. It was a change for the garden—and Mantri. He has been a manager for nearly three decades. Neither had a choice.

“Organic is not a luxury anymore, but a necessity,” Sujoy Sengupta explained over lunch at Chamong Tee’s fifth-floor offices in a downtown-Kolkata office block called Sagar Estate. Oversize portraits hung on the walls of the empty conference room. Each had a smudge of vermilion pressed against the glass to the forehead. A marigold wreath dangled across one of the gilt frames.

Back in the late 1980s and 1990s, Sengupta explained, being organic meant something on the market. “Then, organic was more like adding an extra edge to your product.” Not now. Because so many gardens have converted, he said, “now just being organic is no longer a huge marketing advantage.”

A morning shower had drenched the city, but within an hour, the sun had come out and the humidity rose to unbearable levels. Under the loud, cyclical whir of the boxy air-conditioning unit, Sengupta mused about Marybong, a garden he knows well. After a stint in the Dooars, he had his first posting in Darjeeling at Glenburn, where he was a young assistant manager with Sanjay Sharma, then spent five years on Lingia and four on Marybong before coming to the head office in Kolkata as a tea taster and blender. Middays he is particularly distracted. Kolkata straddles the time zones of his customers in Japan, India, and Europe, and a constant cacophony of e-mails arrive on his open laptop, with messages pinging on his BlackBerry and the telephone ringing. His lunch that day went neglected as he took calls, typed quick messages, and repeatedly left the room in search of documents or numbers.

The first Chamong garden to convert was Tumsong, back in 1988. Yields fell 25 percent. The drop upon conversion is at first steep and then levels off. In theory, or at least in hope, yields should recover as the tea bushes grow stronger and build their natural resistance. But that hasn’t been the case on Tumsong or elsewhere in Darjeeling. “If it hasn’t come back in twenty-five years,” Sengupta said in a resigned tone, “it won’t.”

Contributing to the decline from conversion is the climate, but also more selective plucking, Sengupta said. “The market is demanding finer plucking.” By his calculation, though, this has accounted for only up to a 5 percent loss of yield.

The drop in output worries more than just a garden’s stakeholders. “Going organic means a loss of volume,” Sanjay Kapur said in his Delhi office. “Some estates have had a perceptive drop in
quality
.” The urge to bump up amounts can be great. “They want to make the one hundred thousand kilograms, not eighty thousand. So they make it up with leaf weight. Pick a bit later, pick larger leaves.” This isn’t across the board, Kapur was keen to stress, and many gardens remain rigorous in their plucking standards.

“We never compromise on quality,” said Sengupta over lunch. That can’t change. At its heart, Darjeeling is about offering a superior product. It will never be able to compete on volume or price. “They have to keep
quality,” Vijay Sarda of Nathmulls in Darjeeling warned rather gravely. “The moment they lack quality, the industry will go down.”

To offset lower yields, the tea should get a price push in having the certified-organic label, as well as new options for sales to previously inaccessible clients, though Girish Sarda at Nathmulls cautioned, “Only if you know your market.” Gardens need to have importers lined up to buy their invoices, he stressed, namely ones from Germany, France, the UK, and Japan. “If not, you will be selling at the same price as conventional teas.”

No local market exists for organic teas: buyers in India are not willing to pay a premium for that certificate. The indifference to organic teas seems in stark contrast to the clamor for green teas almost exclusively because of their health properties. Indian consumers have no similar association with organic teas.

Just how much rise in price a tea gets by being organic remains an unknown variable, said Sengupta. There is no exact—or rough— calculation.

Even the Darjeeling tea auctioneer, Anindyo Choudhury, at J. Thomas & Co. finds it difficult to estimate. “First, is it an established garden?” he asked. “And second, who are you selling to? To packeteers and blenders—then it doesn’t matter.” They will blend with conventional teas. It must be, he stressed, “exporters selling to the niche market.” If the garden has an established name and is selling to exporters of that niche market, then it will see an increase, he said. Pushed on a number, he reluctantly and hesitantly agreed to somewhere around 5 or 10 percent.

Because, if there is no financial compensation, what’s the point? he asked. “It’s a huge expense. There needs to be a benefit.” For Singbulli, the change immediately brought up the price of its lower-end teas.

Not all gardens in Darjeeling have had successful conversions. Namring Tea Estate is an example of what Sarda cautions against. This lovely garden runs down from the eastern slopes of Tiger Hill to the Teesta River. Teas, labeled Upper Namring, from its highest section are considered some of the finest in the district. In 1997, Namring turned organic. Yields fell 35 percent. “We couldn’t get a market,” said H. R. Chaudhary, running his hand over his close-cropped, silver hair. “Marketing is a big thing.” The losses were untenable, and in 2004 the garden returned to conventional production.

For some, it isn’t only about price. The drop is offset by other gains. “If you want to make your farm sustainable, you must sacrifice something,” Tukvar’s young manager, Rajesh Pareek, observed. Solidly built and broad shouldered, he would not look out of place in a Venice Beach
gym. Tukvar, among the first Darjeeling gardens planted out—and the first to top Rs 10,000 at auction (Rs 10,001, at J. Thomas & Co. in Kolkata in 1992), briefly holding the world record—saw a 20 to 25 percent drop from its recent organic conversion. Still, they are producing up to 300,000 kilograms, or 660,000 pounds, of tea a year, making it one of the largest estates in Darjeeling. While the garden, which sells under the name Puttabong, sacrificed yield, they are conserving the farm’s soil and protecting the environment and wildlife, Pareek said.

One of the Chamong properties that suffered steep declines was Ging Tea Estate, down the Lebong Road on the backside of Darjeeling. In autumn, trees with pink blossoms lined the switchbacks down to the factory. Across the Rangili Valley, the tea-covered slopes of Glenburn and Tukdah estates radiated green in the morning sun. Relaxing on the shady verandah of the manager’s bungalow with a cup of tea, Mukul Chowdhury, the senior assistant manager, said Ging’s output tumbled from 180,000 kilograms (400,000 pounds) to 96,000 kilograms (about 212,000 pounds) with 2006 certification, although it has now stabilized at around 120,000 kilograms (about 265,000 pounds), a loss of one third. Chowdhury, a tall, middle-age Bengali from a landowning family, came to these Himalayan foothills two decades ago. The flower gardens around the solid, gray-stone bungalow buzzed with honeybees. Butterflies and small sunbirds skimmed around in the morning autumn sun that lit up in butterscotch yellows the marigolds studding the hedges along the fields of tea. Look around, he seemed to say with a wave of his hand at the surroundings,
this
is the trade-off.

That night, on Makaibari, Rajah Banerjee said, “Healthy soil is healthy mankind.”

Not all are convinced that going organic is the best move for their garden. Castleton, Margaret’s Hope, Gopaldhara, and Namring are four marquee estates that produce some of the most sought-after and expensive Darjeeling teas, and they remain conventional. So does Glenburn.

Why to turn organic was answered in a single word. Why
not
took Sanjay Sharma an afternoon.

“It’s pure soil science,” Sanjay began, dropping down one of Glenburn’s steep garden roads from the manager’s bungalow in his ranger-green Maruti Gypsy. It was July. Rain had been falling in starts and stops all day, and a late break finally allowed him to take the sturdy but roofless jeep down to look over a lower field. A Scottish tea company had started
the estate in 1859 and named it Glenburn, “a river valley” in Scottish. With 40 percent of the estate bordered by rivers, the name is particularly fitting. The Rangeet River marks the northeastern boundary of the garden and separates it from Sikkim.

The monsoon rains had washed out chunks of the precarious track, and stones, some the size of dinner plates, had been set in the deep ruts and along the crumbling edges. Sanjay brought the jeep to a stop and then inched it around a tight hairpin switchback before easing out the clutch. The road passed a mobile weighment station where pluckers were hanging their conical wicker baskets on a scale before dumping the tea leaves out on a tarp. A large, blue plastic sheet covered in leaves stretched across the wet ground behind the open bed of a pickup with bald tires and metal grates over the taillights. A couple of men were packing the leaves into large mesh bags and heaving them into the pickup’s bed. Sanjay got out for a moment and spoke to the group in Nepali.

“The tea tree is a bonsai,” he said, continuing to drive down the uneven gravel road. “You have stunted it with pruning and plucking. It’s creating new foliage to sustain itself. It’s a
tree
. And left alone it grows high. Naturally there would be a little new foliage in spring.” He maneuvered through a corner so sharp that it took a four-point turn to complete. “But we are plucking it thirty to forty times a year, every five to seven days. The plant is trying to survive. The most important thing for it is nitrogen.”

Nitrogen forms the triptych of primary nutrients for a tea plant, along with potassium and phosphorous. Potassium, or potash, works largely on root development, while phosphorus focuses on fruit, flower, and seed development. Nitrogen is the prime ingredient responsible for the tea plant’s growth and leaf development and is an essential part of chlorophyll, which creates the brilliant green pigments and causes photosynthesis to take place. As tea is a leaf crop, nitrogen is essential for good yields. It’s generally added by a fertilizer application or, on organic gardens, using manures, composts, and cover crops. “The old planter’s adage says that every fifty kilos of green leaf needs one kilo of available nitrogen,” Sanjay said. “How do you put it back? The best compost has half a percent available nitrogen. A good producing field might produce five thousand kilos of green leaf. That’d be twenty thousand kilos of compost. You’d have to
bury
the plants in it.”