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.”
At the bottom of the estate along the river, the land flattened out. Narrow drainage ditches for runoff had been dug and created a herringbone pattern across a section of tea that had been planted out in spring. The river sits at eight hundred feet above sea level, some twenty-four hundred feet lower than the bungalow, and it ran fast and milky from the monsoon rains. Golden mahseer carp migrate from the Ganges up through the river during the rainy season. In winter, when the water runs lower and clear, Sanjay fly-fishes for Himalayan trout. A pair of crested serpent eagles floated across the river to perch on a tangle of branches on a cliff above the water. He named them and then unclipped the phone on his belt, opened a birding app, and flipped through screens until he found the species with its distinctive white band across the tail to confirm his identification.
“Conventional teas are safe,” he said later in an exasperated tone, after checking the field and grinding back up the steep track in the lowest gear toward the bungalow. “They are not hazardous to health. How about Japan? China? Taiwan?” He was referring to three great tea-producing countries where customers are not insisting on organic teas. “Organic teas don’t taste different.”*
Glenburn’s use of chemical inputs is slight, and maximum residue limits (MRLs) are within what the EU, Japan, and the USA permit. “The conventional practices we follow need to be very judicious,” he said, “how we go about it. We’re not polluting the environment with huge chemical loads and deadly pesticides.” He laughed at the often unambiguous view of conventional gardens all being awash with toxins. “We take the best from conventional and the best from organic and play it by ear and see what the tree needs.”
While it will be sprayed if an infestation of red spider mites gives the bushes a telltale rusted appearance, Glenburn uses eight hundred thousand kilograms (1.7 million pounds) of organic manure a year, which he buys from farmers on a nearby organic tea estate—“My neighbor hates me,” Sanjay joked with a schoolboy grin, as Glenburn can pay more—and has an active program of vegetative composting and vermicomposting, which uses earthworms to convert the organic waste into fertilizer. Three or four times a year, men harvest Guatemala grass, a robust, broad-bladed perennial that grows on parts of Glenburn, and haul it around the garden for mulching and rehabilitating uprooted soil. Sanjay instigated a massive planting of marigolds. They die off and self-seed, coming up the following year. “Self-generating mulch.” He introduced them for aesthetics, too. When they flower in October and November, Glenburn’s vibrant green tea fields are interwoven with rows of brilliant yellowish-orange buds.
Such a hybrid approach is not uncommon in Darjeeling. Other conventional estates have significantly cut their use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. “Conventional—but minimal,” said Namring’s Chaudhary. “Practically organic. Or near-organic.” Rohini’s B. B. Singh said, “I use only when the pests and insects come.” It is for treatment rather than prevention. “It’s like if you have fever—you take pill.”
For Glenburn, instead of organic, Sanjay Sharma opted for what he calls “an integrated approach” that looks at the larger picture. “The whole thing: land, people, plants, tea,” he explained in the jeep on the way back up to the bungalow. He does what is best for all, not just one. “The teas, the environment, people in every aspect, we need to do good by them. People have different needs. The future must be secure. Sustainable. Security will only come if production is up and the teas are selling. The trade-off with organic is losing production.”