What is Biodiversity Tea (BiodiversiTea)? - Part 1

December 02, 2019

When is the last time you really thought about where your tea comes from?
The tea leaves look so beautiful, they are perfectly rolled and they smell fragrant. Each cup is delicious, but did you stop and think about where your tea comes from?
Are Fair Trade certification and organic cultivation enough? What about fair trade with the earth itself?
As I traveled through countless tea farms, tea estates, and ancient tree tea plantations, I was stunned to find that most of these places had completely destroyed the entire ecosystem around them, leaving behind nothing but manicured rows of trees and depleted the soil. All the beauty that made the land such a wonderful place, in the beginning, is now gone to pave way for the profit machines.
Looking at entire mountains destroyed and laid bare except for countless rows of tea trees is simply horrendous. The original inhabitants, the birds, the insects, the flowers, have all vanished. As I visited more tea farms like that, I felt despair and anger growing, How could I support this?

Yes, most of us live far away from China, but what happens in one part of the pond has a ripple effect. That ripple is now changing into a big wave as the tea industry is getting bigger and bigger every year. More mountains are made barren, and more of the wilderness is destroyed to plant rows of a single species of trees at the cost of everything else. You might say that’s the way it is. However, more and more people are questioning these practices and asking, “What can I do?” There is something you can do. Be informed about where your tea is being sourced from, and buy tea from a wild forest tea garden or purchase sustainably harvested tea. You may ask what is a wild forest tea garden? What is sustainably harvested tea?

These are teas harvested from trees that grow naturally in an undisturbed environment. In such places, flowers such as orchids grow naturally around and on the tea trees, adding an incredible flavor to the tea. Tea trees are extremely absorbent, taking in energy and smells from everything around them.

I once heard of a tribal leader in Yunnan who could describe in great detail the environment around the tea tree just by taking a sniff of the tea leaf. Such expertise only underlines how important the surrounding environment is and how significant an impact it has on the taste, smell and quality.

Tea is the world’s second most popular drink. It is gaining in popularity every year, and sales are expected to increase over the next 10 years. This is great news if you are in the tea business, but this could be bad for the earth if careless, unsustainable mass tea farming continues. There are some big issues that need to be addressed.

We need to ask how we can sustain our growing tea consumption without desecrating our beautiful mountains and valleys with mass tea plantations. How can we grow our tea in a more sustainable way that will not interfere with the local ecology?
We need more tea gardens that integrate with the local ecology and wildlife, and grow them in a way that does not deplete the soil. I call this type of tea BiodiversiTEA (Biodiversity Tea).

On a BiodiversiTEA (Biodiversity Tea) plantation, you can see flowers, grass and plants growing naturally in between the tea trees. On a typical mass- planted tea plantation, all the grass and native plants are ruthlessly ripped out of the ground as they are considered a weed that will suck nourishment from the tea tree. Actually, given how absorbent a tea tree is, all the plants, trees and flowers growing around it greatly affect the taste of the leaves.
Have you given any thought as to why you constantly add sugar, milk or honey to sweeten tea? That is because the mass farmed teas that are commercially available have a very unpleasant taste, leading tea producers to add berries, dried fruits, and flowers to create mixed blends that seem so trendy these days.
My friends, who own large tea factories and who count large tea companies in the US as their clients, have confided in me as to why the big corporations love to do blended teas. It is really simple and is all profit-driven. The large tea companies buy really low quality, cheap tea, and mask the taste of the tea with fruits. flowers and berries and sell it as blended tea. Now don’t get me wrong. These large tea companies are masters of their trade and are reaping huge profits, offering all of us lessons in how to run a commercially viable tea business.

But what about those of us who are in the tea business because of our passion for tea? What about those who want to drink really high quality tea so as to be able to get the true taste of the tea? What about those of us who care not only about Fair Trade, but also about preserving our quickly vanishing forests and wildlife? Can you drink good tea and still preserve our natural resources?

YES! I strongly urge you to support BiodiversiTEA (Biodiversity Tea) and any true tea artisans that carries these kinds of teas. There are not many of us out there, but I can see a trend coming soon to China. I hope to be working with a group on creating this awareness, and to make it a reality across China, by educating farmers, plantation owners and locals on how to change their farming practices to adapt to their local environment, not destroy it.

• #1 Guaranteed Organic But Even Better. There are tons of organic teas on the market, but some of them are deemed organic with “an acceptable level” of pesticides and there are very loose, cringe-worthy definitions as to what constitutes “acceptable level.” Wild teas, especially high mountain wild teas, don’t have this problem. For example, on Phoenix Mountain, there are loads of so-called organic teas, but they are oftentimes located downstream of other farms which are conventionally sprayed with chemicals. The result is that pesticides are borne by the wind to nearby farms, and seep into the underground water which feeds the organic tea. At the peak of Phoenix Mountain which is where our Wild Rock Oolong comes from is a grouping of ancient and wild Phoenix Mountain tea trees. There are no farms above this area that could potentially leak pesticides downward.

• #2 Better for the Planet Many of these commercialized farms clear cut forests, wiping away mountains of green to make room for endless rows of tea that is then laced with heavy fertilizers, which then roll into other nearby farms, wreaking havoc. I have seen mountains that are so bare of vegetation that mudslides occur with great frequency. The trees that had held the soil together have been ripped out, and the resultant mudslides have swept away the tea farms. All that is now left is an ugly eyesore. I will point out that some farmers of wild tea plantations are guilty of over-harvesting their trees, causing some of the trees to die prematurely. Therefore, it is important to work with a tea farmer who really cares about his or her tea trees. Take a look at the Ancient Purple Leaf Puer I found, which is picked by the local tribal people. They have a deep-rooted tradition of respect and reverence for their tea trees, traditions that they observe with great care and fidelity. They would never greedily denude the tea trees of all the leaves just to make the extra buck because they sincerely believe that the spirit of the tea trees protected them and kept them alive through the darkest times in their history. Honoring the tea spirit means taking enough without overdoing it.

• #3 Wild Qi Energy and More Nutrients While most Chinese teas add to your energy levels, we are talking about a different quality of energy that comes from drinking biodiversity(BiodiversiTea) wild or ancient tea tree teas. When the roots of a tree grow deep into the ground, they derive many more nutrients to make for a stronger tree. A stronger tree yields tea that will make you stronger. Why is it that Weston Price touted the health of the ancient Native American Indians? His research showed that their bodies were significantly stronger and in much better condition because of the wild food they ate. In today’s life, most of you are drinking without giving thought to what you are putting into your body. Consumers are buying all types of calcium carbonate to add minerals to their water. The tea that is grown in the wild is already filled with sufficient antioxidants and minerals that you don’t need to add more through artificial supplements. Who can logically argue that a mass-produced tea has more minerals than a tea grown out of volcanic rock in Wuyishan (Wuyi Mountain)?

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