Natural Is Best

Life returns to the tea farms

Pinglin, a Paochong (Baozhong) tea–producing district in northern Taiwan, lies upstream from Feitsui Reservoir. In the past, tea farmers seeking higher yields relied, like much of Taiwan’s agriculture, on chemical fertilizers and pesticides to sustain production. Yet when pesticides and fertilizers flow into streams, they can also put pressure on water sources and ecosystems.

In 2007, the Tse-Xin Organic Agriculture Foundation launched the “Jingyuan [Clean Source] Project,” working alongside tea farmers to gradually transition to organic cultivation. The first step was to stop applying pesticides and chemical fertilizers; from there, the tea farms quietly began to change. Plants once dismissed as weeds returned to the ground, insects multiplied, birds came back, and even wildlife that had once been rarely seen began appearing around the tea fields.

Fresh tea leaves fill the harvest bags, carrying with them 18 years of Pinglin farmers’ efforts to work more harmoniously with the land. As cultivation methods have changed, the ecological scene at the tea farms has quietly changed as well.

Letting tea trees grow on their own

Among the first farmers to join the Jingyuan Project was Yu Sanhe, founder of the Sanhe Tea Group.

Yu left home to make a living when he was young, returning to Pinglin mainly in order to take care of his aging parents. At around that same time as he came back, Tse-Xin was promoting organic farming locally, and he joined the transition because he shared its values.

Seeing that most tea farmers were getting on in years, Yu went a step further by experimenting with natural farming, managing his tea farm in a semi-wild way. He stopped fertilizing and pruning, keeping only essential tasks such as mowing and harvesting. With less human intervention, the tea trees in fact grew stronger.

Yu says unpruned tea trees can grow as tall as two and a half meters. At harvest time, ropes are needed to help pull them down, almost like raising a flag in reverse. Asked about the difference between wild-grown tea and organic tea, he says with a smile: “With organic tea, you drink its color, aroma, and flavor; with wild-grown tea, you drink its body and qi—its vital energy. After you drink it, your whole body warms up, as if the channels through which qi moves have opened up.”

Taiwan Panorama first interviewed farmer Yu Sanhe years ago. After 18 years of organic and wild-grown tea cultivation, he still holds fast to the belief: “I don’t grow tea; I just maintain the environment!”

New visitors at the tea farms

Another farmer, Chen Luhe—known as the “Frog Prince”—was also among Pinglin’s first ecological guides. For years, he has led visitors into the tea farms to learn about the local ecology. Pinglin’s tea plantations are largely nourished by rainwater and require no additional irrigation. In the past, farmers set up water tanks and discarded bathtubs to mix pesticides, but since the shift to organic farming, these have unexpectedly become breeding sites for emerald green treefrogs.

Once pesticides and chemical fertilizers were no longer used on the tea farms, emerald green treefrogs returned—a sign that vitality is reawakening in the land. (courtesy of Tse-Xin Organic Agriculture Foundation)

As the environment improved, Reeves’s muntjacs, pangolins, Taiwan blue magpies, and Swinhoe’s pheasants also began returning to the areas around the tea farms. In organic tea fields, those most sensitive to change are often not the farmers, but the animals.

“If you take good care of the tea farm, the rest of the ecology naturally comes under protection too,” says Chen. His sincere hope is to preserve Pinglin’s green mountains and clear waters so the next generation can enjoy this beautiful environment as well.

A Swinhoe’s pheasant strolls through a tea farm. (photo by Chen Luhe, courtesy of Tse-Xin Organic Agriculture Foundation)

The next generation steps in

Zhan Chengde, who goes by “A Te,” a young tea farmer from a traditional tea-growing family, is currently chair of the UChung Cooperative, an organic tea transport-and-marketing cooperative. Since turning to organic cultivation, he has brought what he has learned into his tea farm: keeping vegetation in the fields and adjusting harvest timing according to pest behavior. These practices differ from the conventional methods of the previous generation.

Standing in his tea farm, Zhan Chengde (A Te) studies the growth of the tea plants. For him, tea-farm management has no single standard operating procedure; rather it involves an ongoing conversation with the land.

These experiments once became a source of friction between A Te and his father. For the older generation, yield and income mattered most. A Te, however, hoped to use scientific observation and organic management to find cultivation methods better suited to the land.

Over time, he gradually came to understand that “there is no single standard operating procedure for tea-farm management; different models can be developed according to environmental conditions.” As results gradually became visible, his father’s initial skepticism gave way to acceptance, and the very differences in outlook between the generations became a driving force for the transition.

Organic farming does not rely on pesticides to control pests and diseases, so tea farmers must observe the ecology and adjust their management methods, learning to coexist with insects.

For many tea farmers, organic cultivation began as a way to protect water sources. Today, 18 years later, they have found that what they have harvested is not only tea leaves grown in a more environmentally friendly way, but also an ecosystem gradually returning to life.