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.