Ambootia Rescues Sick Tea Gardens
Pluckers at Ambootia Tea Estate in Darjeeling, India
DARJEELING, West Bengal
With more and more tea gardens in Darjeeling and Assam becoming sick and unprofitable, Sanjay Bansal’s organic and biodynamic Ambootia Group is working to revive and regenerate these valued Indian regions.
By Jane Pettigrew
Darjeeling tea, with its delicate fruity elegance and gentle hints of fresh mown grass, is one of the world’s best-known and best-loved teas. And malty smooth Assams fill mugs and pots at millions of breakfast tables every day of the year. But as tea lovers sip these coveted specialty teas, they perhaps know nothing of the problems that have faced these two famous tea-growing origins during the past 50 or more years. They may have heard of Darjeeling’s Ambootia Tea Estate but have no idea that owner Sanjay Bansal is buying up sick gardens in both Darjeeling and Assam and introducing biodynamic farming methods in order to turn them around, bring them back to good health, and produce good quality tea while also concerning himself with the sustainability and well-being of the tea gardens, the workers, the livestock, the tea plants and the environment.
Gradual decline
The root of the problem facing today’s failing tea gardens dates to the 1950s. After the Second World War, countries all around the world were realigning to face a new and very different future. Industries had to re-organize and redefine themselves as markets changed or disappeared. Companies that had churned out ammunitions and arms during the war years had to find new uses for their nitrogen and nitrate-based products and so, as agriculture expanded to feed a growing world population, they manufactured nitrogen-based fertilizers to support inefficient and struggling agricultural practices.
At the same time in India, where 90% of the population depended on agriculture, the new socialist republic, established after independence, needed farming to expand and become more productive. The government subsidized agricultural inputs such as fertilisers, making India a large market for nitrogen-based agro-products, many of which found their way to Darjeeling.
Use of such fertilizers expanded and, as trade with Russia grew through the 1970s and tea farmers were keen to increase their crop in order to sell more and more tea, the use of chemical fertilizers became almost an obsession.
The excessive use of agro-inputs, increased yields, and the importation of mass production machinery to the tea estates led to reduced tea quality so that Darjeeling began to lose its reputation and position in the world market. And then, in the early 1980s, the Russian market collapsed and the heavily-oxidized dark brown Darjeeling teas that the Russians had demanded found no buyers in other markets. The economy of Darjeeling crashed, political parties in the region started agitating for an independent state, and money was not ploughed back into the estates. As a result, many were forced to close down.
Assam faced similar problems as a result of local terrorism, rising water levels, changing weather patterns, and an unwillingness on the part of some tea growing companies to address long-term problems and start investing money back into the estates and the environment.
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Ambootia Rescues Sick Tea Gardens
Workers return from the garden with baskets of fresh leaf.
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Ambootia Rescues Sick Tea Gardens
Compost for biodynamic input at Ambootia Group’s estates.
The organic movement
Meanwhile, in Europe, the small green shoots of the organic movement were just beginning to appear. Health scares connected to the use of pesticides and other plant protection agents (PPAs) led to public concern; universities introduced organic farming to their curricula; and farming and consumer groups started to lobby politicians to introduce and regulate organic food production.
As a result some producers introduced new organic farming methods and new business models, and in 1997, it was predicted that by 2020, 50% of Darjeeling tea would be organic. Currently a little more than 50% of Darjeeling’s 87 gardens are certified organic.
In 1991, Sanjay Bansal introduced organic agricultural techniques at Ambootia Tea Estate. Bansal was born at the estate in 1961. His father managed the garden and as Sanjay learned more about the tea business, “I realized that sustainable agriculture was the best way to guarantee high quality on the long term. We were confident that this, for us ‘new method’ would help us not only increase productivity but also improve quality. Furthermore, it appealed to us as an environmentally and socially responsible method of farming.”
And Ambootia’s tea production became not simply organic but biodynamic, a system of farming based on the philosophy of the Austrian writer, educator, and social activist Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). Biodynamic agriculture developed in the 1920s as a response to degraded soil quality and reduction of animal health resulting from the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. It encouraged farmers to develop a diversified and balanced ecosystem that ensures a healthy and fertile farm where organic preparations made from manure, herbs, and minerals work with nature’s vital forces rather than against them.
Biodynamic farmers also strive to work in harmony with the wider universe for the long term good of human, animal, soil, and plant health. In this system, everything matters – soil, water, insects, birds, trees, flowers, herbs, people, and air. Everything is regarded as being a part of a single holistic organism. Farmers focus on traditional and locally bred varieties, and on careful control of every aspect of farming. Natural ingredients are used to make mulches, sprays, and fertilizers; and the propagation of seeds, sowing, plucking, processing, packaging and distribution, are carried out in harmony with lunar and astrological calendars. The long-term aim is to enhance the quality, flavor, and nutritional value of the crop while attaining ecological, social, and economic sustainability.
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Ambootia Rescues Sick Tea Gardens
Cowhorns assist in the composting of organic matter.
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Seed-grown plants, pictured at right, have a deeper tap and stronger root system.
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Darjeeling tea plants must cling to steep inclines and withstand heavy rains.
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Ambootia Rescues Sick Tea Gardens
Dandelions are grown to make organic fertilizer.
Tea cultivation at Ambootia
Contrary to what many outsiders believe, the tea plants growing throughout Darjeeling are a mixture of assamica varieties, sinensis, and new crossbred cultivars. When pioneer planters were establishing their gardens in the 1850s, they used whatever seeds or seedlings they could obtain, hence the mix that survives today. About 75% of the plants are what the locals call ‘chinery’ or sinensis varieties, and the rest are assamicas, hybrids of assamica and chinery varietals, and clonal plants.
Bansal believes that the sinensis variety is better suited to cultivation in Darjeeling and therefore plans to plant mainly seed-grown sinensis bushes on all his estates. Even where other varieties are already in the ground, he will gradually convert all the gardens to local sinensis.
And while many tea estates around the world now grow new plants by vegetative propagation from leaf cuttings, Ambootia grows mainly from seed and has a seed orchard where the tea plants grow into trees that are used only for the production of seed. The use of their own seeds gives the garden management team total control over of what they propagate, and allows the development of plants that are best suited to the Darjeeling environment. Tea plants from seed have much stronger root systems than plants grown from leaf cuttings. Seed grown plants yield good quality tea for 150 years or more, whereas plants developed by vegetative propagation are productive for around 50 years.
Following Steiner’s biodynamic guidelines, Ambootia grows dandelions whose leaves can be used to make sprays, and whose flowers are stuffed inside cow horns and buried in the earth during winter to make fertilizer. Cow horns are also filled with a humus mixture and buried in the autumn. Through the winter months the humus decomposes and is then used as fertilizer in the spring.
Ambootia’s tea fields are surrounded by Lantana bushes whose beautiful yellow, pink, and orange flowers create a delicate splash of color amongst the fields of green. But it has another use. A spray made from the boiled leaves of Lantana makes an effective pesticide against aphids.
Vermiculture also plays an important part in preparing rich manures. The higher the proportion of nitrogen in compost the better, and as organic matter is broken down and digested by the worms, a higher concentration of nitrogen develops in the compost. Worm-digested compost also contains much higher levels of other essential nutrients, such as phosphorous and potash, than normal soil and, once spread around the tea plants, encourages them to absorb water and nutrients.
Ambootia’s nurses sick gardens
While Sanjay Bansal was building Ambootia’s reputation around the world, other gardens in the region were falling sick, were being sold off, or were completely abandoned, leaving resident workers with no means of earning a living.
Bansal recognized that to save Darjeeling and stop families from moving away permanently from the area in search of a livelihood, the gardens had to be taken over and brought back to health by sustainable organic and biodynamic cultivation methods. So he formed Darjeeling Organic Tea Estates Pvt. Ltd (DOTEPL) and began to acquire abandoned and sick gardens. Deciding which gardens to buy demanded careful assessment of each individual garden’s value and potential; if gardens were put up for sale by auction, it meant sometimes that competitive bids were too high and plans had to be changed.
He knows that in some cases he has paid more than the market value, but decisions depend on how quickly the individual garden can be turned around and made profitable. He usually chooses gardens that are sick and derelict because it is much easier to adopt a new system at a garden that has failed than to impose a new system on a garden and factory that are still viable and where workers may resist change. Ambootia Group currently owns 14 gardens in Darjeeling and 5 in Assam, and there are plans to acquire another 7 in Darjeeling.
Once a purchase is complete, Bansal visits the estate workers in their homes or calls a village meeting in the community hall in order to explain the Ambootia plan and philosophy and to discuss the way forward.
“No one knows better how a tea estate works than the workers and their families,” he explains. “We have to learn from them and ask for their help.”
Organic and biodynamic methods are introduced within two days of the takeover; factory managers from successful estates are brought in to take over or to train existing staff; engineers arrive to make factory modifications and adapt machinery to the new way of working; and very quickly, the tea is being cultivated, picked, processed, and packed according to the Ambootia organic and biodynamic principles.
Although Ambootia Group is working in the same way in Assam, the problems there are very different to those in Darjeeling. The region is much, much bigger and the industry runs on a very large, mass-production scale; two different types of tea (orthodox and CTC) are made in Assam; there is a markedly wide variation in quality and character of the teas; and few producers are driven by the sort of passion that runs in Darjeeling growers’ blood. Few of the estates are certified organic.
Bansal recognizes that some customers want organic tea, and so he has moved into this region in order to meet that demand. But the geography, the continuous sweep of flat tea fields and the established system in Assam makes it more difficult to grow tea organically than in Darjeeling, where the steep hill slopes and valleys create natural divisions between the individual gardens.
Bansal predicts that, “When the Assam industry finds that the organic system is sustainable and superior, the organic movement will start here too. By growing from seed, by adopting a sustainable organic approach, by caring for the soil and the long-term health of the plants, and by focusing on quality rather than just financial profit, we can also work to combat climate change, global warming, and build a long-term relationship with our customers.”