Last Question: Which tea to buy? Pesticide Free or Organic?
Short answer is YES. If healthy = secure, then definitely yes. If you are talking nutrition, then the answer will be changed to Maybe. Why is that? read on.
To most people including farmers, consumers and governors, organic is a certificate, that’s it.
To be more clear, this certificate might mean no pesticide, no chemical fertilizer, that’s it.
But I see many yellow sticky cards and light traps which is claimed for insect pest control. Does this looks right?
A friend told me why he started his own organic tea business, the story is one day a customer visited the ex-organic-company he worked for and said, “Imagine tea as human being, does these yellow cards look like plaster, why a healthy people need it?”
To your surprise and don’t blame me, the answer is just probably.
But,
Organic is a guarantee of the bottom line.
You will understand if you read through all ten questions.
There are three quick methods:
The most exciting part might be the database, as all contact details are there.
But as time goes by, you might find most of them are trading companies, only maybe one tenth are farmers, why is that?
As you know, in the real world, if we speak system which normally means complexity and money, the bad is Organic Certifying is a big system, this is not a common farmer can deal with.
Pesticide Free tea is the Organic without certificate, that’s it.
That’s it? Real?
Let me share something more real. With tea there are two kinds of people:
For the first type of people, tea is something they are proud of, more important than business, the market is not their first concern. We call them nerd.
But sometimes the tea these nerds produced is not what the consumers like, this has big possibility, be aware.
To be clear, we are in no way opposed to organic which fullfil the needs and easy the buying job.
Contrarily Pesticide Free tea has no specific label, how could you tell the difference from conventional tea? That’s the cost.
Different Organic Certifying System chooses different testing laboratory, here our recommendation is Eurofins, they are kind of expert in this tea testing area. They do have business in other areas but tea is always their main focus. From my whole personal career and what I heard, Eurofins is the one. SGS might be more famous to public consumers, here in this niche market Eurofins is more famous.
If possible I also suggest you doing this testing in China, Eurofins USA has much higher charge.
I want to say yes but it is NOT what I see in last twenty years. Both Organic and Pesticide Free needs more than a man called tea farmer.
It’s very coincidentally a tea farmer owns a coincidental good farm that can grow happily without any human intervention. And, even if it was real, in this impetuous world, he needs to control his greed over bigger output by applying fertilizer.
So he needs more help to sustain the purity, he needs to know how to grow with grass instead of against it, he needs to know how to create a biological chain instead of eliminating them all, he also needs to know how to react to climate change.
In short, we don’t need a slave but a wiser.
A wiser will receive some success and grow his business to maybe not big but big chance to beyond small. If it is still small, then it might mean he is not wise enough or still in the process, let’s trust the process somehow.
This time I want to make my answer to be more clear, fuzzy answer is no.
Organic or Pesticide Free tea farming operation is not a 10 minutes game, it’s a long run, I would like to divided it into two parts. The first half is about 20 years, the second half is about 20 years too.
There is a learning curve, not just the farmer, also the insects, birds, grasses etc. The farmer needs to learn how to be more creative, the insects need to learn how to evolve. Both need time, both need to pay.
So for the first half, paying = costing, the average output is one third of conventional farming or sometimes zero harvest.
Out of mind sometime I will imagine there is a super computer that can have a simulation system, and we can just sit in the room and point to the screen and say “oh yes this can work, this not balabala.” But on second thought, “what’s the meaning of life if it is so easy? Won’t it taste flat?”
Holy No.
If someone tell you this, don’t buy it.
Organic does not 100% necessary to have holes on the leaf.
Good Organic may have holes but should not many.
If it has all holes over, then what organic do?
Good practise will create a complete ecological chain that no pest can outbreak as their natural enemy won’t allow it ^_^
The previous Question 4 somewhat answered this, here I will try to give the answer in another angle.
We may see @elon_musk sometimes does’t wear something with big logo, the brand is not what they care, the quality and experience is, that’s where customized service come. No label but excellent good.
Expert tea consumers (Teapert) is similar to them, they care more of the quality and safety more than the Organic label. These teaperts have strong willing to pay extra fees for that excellent as becoming a teapert is a very big sunk cost. Becoming teapert also means classifying the people into rookie and not rookie, this is kind of honor.
And Pesticide Free is more difficult than Organic in the real world, less supply, strong demand, that’s the biggest reason why they have no such motivation to get a certificate.
I am wondering how is your personal answer. Mine is mine only. Drop me a line when you have one.