I've not met up with Sasha Abramovich or Nok recently, and I finally did again this past weekend. A local tea celebrity of sorts dropped by, Kenneth Rimdahl of Monsoon teas. I'll say a little about what we tried and then run through some news related to Kenneth. He's been doing a lot with a sustainable, forest-friendly tea sourcing that's the main theme here, with just a little on that meeting covered first.
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a first outdoor tasting trial awhile back, last year |
Tasting tea and hanging out
Sasha brewed two Tea Side teas for us, a 1980 sheng (reviewed here) and a 2006 sheng (re-reviewed here, in comparison with what turned out to be a different 2006 HTC Thai sheng). It was interesting trying two teas I was already familiar with in a different setting. The second tea is the first aged sheng cake I ever bought, so I have some at home, but I don't drink it often. It's nice tea.
Sasha also brewed a few nice sheng samples from Tea Dee, commissioned or shop-produced tea versions that represent the best respected tea shop in Bangkok, owned by Khun Zhang. Double Dog is as well known but for being a Chinatown cafe, and they also sell tea, but no other Thai business comes close to matching that shop's local reputation related to pu'er. Oddly I've only visited them once, in a location that has since moved (now in Thanya Park), because that shop is way out towards the airport from where I live and work in the city center. There's a nice park out there we visit once in awhile, Rama 9 / Suang Luang, but I never get my wife to agree to add tea shopping to the list of days' activities when we visit it.
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view from their apartment; that's Benjasiri, the park in the last photo |
Not much of a review of teas we tried so far, but I didn't intend for this to go into that. There's more I could say about the Tea Dee cakes but it would only be a general impression due to writing this days later. They seemed different from each other, generally sweet and floral in different ways, and like quite good tea material. They didn't seem to be made in a drink-right-now modern style (more traditional instead), but not overly bitter, astringent, and unapproachable. They seemed to represent tea that could still be a good value even if selling for over $100 per cake when "young," before aging; that's probably saying enough.
Kenneth brought a couple samples of interesting Ceylon / Sri Lankan teas. I probably shouldn't say more about one that seemed unique in style and appearance since it represents a work-in-progress for a new product development. A second (green tea, I think it was) was unique for being able to change color, to switch from the pale gold that green teas are to pink with a little lime added. That transition capacity is familiar from blue pea / butterfly pea tisane but I've not seen actual tea that does that, until this one. I definitely like green teas the least of any broad category but that tea was fine too. The black tea version was a good bit better than "fine;" it was quite nice tea, and not exactly like other better Ceylon I've tried in style.
Onto news about Kenneth then, which does skip a lot of what we discussed that day, and how it went in general. It was a nice outing. We drank too much tea but I sort of saw that coming and only tried a couple of tisanes with breakfast.
Kenneth and Monsoon update
Monsoon opened a Bangkok branch around three weeks ago. I've seen news related to that, but just didn't get around to visiting there or mentioning it here. It's way out in the South-East of town, not as far as Tea Dee, but closer to that than to city center, my job (the main site), or where I live. The second main site for the company I work for (not related to tea; the subject is a hobby interest) is actually out in Bangna, on Bangna-Trad road. It's even further out than that Monsoon shop, and a ten minute drive from Thanya Park (but I use the sky-train here for commuting).
Monsoon's primary theme is selling tea blends, with a focus on Thai-produced forest-friendly tea. I reviewed a white tea version a couple of years ago and that was nice. Kenneth talked about that at a TedX talk a year or so back, and the Bangkok Post ran a story on him and the forest friendly tea theme.
On a related subject, I ran through details of a different type of related sustainable-production initiative carried out in Laos in this post (which reviews two local tea versions), with a website of the related participating NGO covering more details.
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Laos wild tea, photo credit Comité de coopération avec le Laos website (used with permission) |
I have mixed feelings about this forest-friendly theme, and the background can be a bit complicated, so that I'll say more about all that here than I did about trying 8 or 9 novel teas earlier in the post. Kenneth is nice, and he seems genuinely concerned about that sustainability concern; at least that seems to be a good starting point.
Forest-friendly sustainable tea production
Let's get the reservation and potential problem out of the way first: this theme is at least in part a marketing approach.
Teas really are healthy, but when a vendor promotes how healthy a tea is they trying to make a sale based on ideas that aren't usually as well-grounded as they represent them to be. I think there is a good chance that green tea is good for cardiovascular health, and there is some research evidence supporting that, but when a tea vendor makes that claim it comes across more as sales-pitch than them trying to be helpful and informative. I don't drink green tea much anyway; I don't like it as much, and other versions would overlap in terms of beneficial compounds present.
Some of that type of concern probably applies here. A complete critique of how the factors are likely to balance isn't possible, self-interest based marketing versus broader-interest based sustainability focus. It is possible to run through my take on how "real" I think this particular sustainability theme is, so I will cover that.
It's real, but it's not an important factor if the consideration is limited only to being related to tea in Thailand. Let's back up and examine why I think that (and note that it is only my impression, to an extent).
This 2008 research reference offers us a dated snapshot of tea production in Thailand:
This 14 year old production summary converts to a total land space of 75,076 rai used to make tea. That converts to 29,600 acres, or 47 square miles, an area of 6 miles by 8 miles. It's a good bit of land, but essentially nothing at all compared the land used to grow rice, fruit, or palm oil here.
Let's check on that and use the latter (palm oil production) for comparison:
According to this reference there are (as of 2015) approximately 700,000 hectares of land in use in Thailand for production of palm oil. That equates to 17.2 million acres. Put another way there is 58 times more land in use to produce palm oil than tea in Thailand. That's based on these numbers; tea production probably has increased, and I wouldn't be surprised if that palm oil estimate is on the low side, based on driving past palm plantations for hours in the South, lands that had been cleared of all native vegetation for that use. The palm oil production growth and land-use are escalating much more quickly too, since the tea industry is probably quite a bit more developed and mature now, with demand leveled off, making it a lot more of a development concern, as shown by this reference:
That's happening mostly in the South of Thailand, related to what climate supports growth of that palm plant type best. The general idea is that scale of tea production just isn't on the same scale as other agricultural production, so the risk for environmental destruction directly related to tea farming also cannot be. For all I know logging impact may well be more of a competing concern in the North than other forms of agriculture are, and land-use study might not be as easy to pin down for that kind of thing.
That would seem to point back towards this being a good story that sells tea, a basis for presenting ideas through different channels to promote a business, but not mostly based on a real issue. Not so fast though; there seems to be more to this, and it doesn't reduce to only being a factor related to tea.
Forest conservation as a broader trend
There are definitely competing interests that relate to land use and forest preservation; this much is clear. Destruction of standing old-growth forests to produce tea may well be a relative non-issue, compared to the scale of other agricultural-use concerns, but preservation of those forests definitely is an issue. Thailand, like most other countries, has set up environmental reserves and protections that tie to a broad range of concerns. I highly recommend reading this background summary on Forest Management in Thailand, prepared by the International Forestry Cooperation Office, a branch of a government protection agency that also involves Thai Royal family support. Their summary outlines the current status and goals:
...There is no doubt that remaining forests need to be protected and that deforested areas need to be replanted. Moreover, there is no disagreement that local people must be involved in conservation efforts if they are to succeed...
...Forest resources provide a multitude of goods and services, including pulp, timber, nontimber products, medicinal and edible plants, as well as other raw materials such as rattan and bamboo. More than 1,000 recorded species of plants contain medical properties and 30,000-40,000 households harvest them on a full-time basis. Furthermore, 60% of the rural population or roughly 30,000 communities living near forests rely on edible plants for their daily needs and more than 500 species of these plants are sold in local markets throughout the country...
The past history and regulatory efforts in place described in that short work are too detailed to summarize here, even in citation sampling format like that. One general theme meets back up with what Kenneth is promoting related to tea:
...Communities located within and near forests have been motivated to participate in the sustainable management of natural resources through well designed conservation policies and legal frameworks, especially those pertaining to forests, which have been amended to address rapid social change and emerging environmental issues...
...Thailand, which once exported timber, is now a net importer and has high expectations of the role forests will play in nature conservation. Since 1989, all natural forest (25% of total area) is protected by law from commercial exploitation...
...Community forests in Thailand are classified into two types: natural and rehabilitated or developed. They can be established on three categories of land: national reserved forest or public and overgrown areas; land under the jurisdiction of other government agencies (e.g., monasteries, educational institutes, military areas); and private locations.
The first type consists of natural forests where people in nearby communities join together to protect them in order to benefit from their productive capacity and to maintain their norms and culture...
I'm sure that there are functional programs and other initiatives in place that support sustainable, natural-growth land use, even beyond what is described in that reference. At the same time the more that minimal impact land use can enable economic development the more effective and functional those programs will be in practice.
One additional context detail: the tea is already there
This part I almost left out, as familiar ground to me since I've been reviewing this relevant background for a couple of years (based mostly on input from Kenneth, and also other sources prior to talking to him), but it wouldn't be familiar to many. The tea plants are already there, essentially growing wild. Tea was introduced into areas in Southern China, Myanmar, Northern Vietnam, Laos and Thailand well over a millenium ago.
Which forms of the tea plants are the most original and native, and the role people played in distributing them are debated, but the consensus take is that wild forms of Assamica (one of two varieties of Camellia Sinensis) first originated in Yunnan, and that movement of the plants to a broader region was probably helped out quite a bit by people. Thailand was settled by waves of people from China and other places extending back well prior to known history.
It's really something of an unrelated tangent here, but I'll include a citation about the plant-history of tea that relates, and a link to support further reading:
The tea plant was initially domesticated in China over 4,000 year ago (Yamanishi, 1995)...
...we calculated China type tea and Assam type tea as having first diverged approximately 22,000 years ago, and Chinese Assam type tea and Indian Assam type tea as having diverged from each other approximately 2,770 years ago...
There is a lot more to that story. The short version: tea plants are there, growing relatively wild in the North of Thailand, almost certainly put there by groups of people who aren't well-documented by a known history (but some pre-history is described here). Kenneth emphasizes that earlier use relates to miang consumption, to practices of eating tea that are common to those in Myanmar (and in Northern India, I think?), and probably other places. I'm not sure if eating tea really did pre-date brewing tea, locally or elsewhere, or if it's possible to place the two in relation to each other as regional traditional practices over a long time-frame.
Deeper detailed history aside, what I'm trying to summarize here would seem very odd if the idea was to plant some sort of community farms inside forested areas, versus using leaf material from plants that are already growing there (the actual case). If these forests are destroyed for alternate use, or perhaps even just used for logging (depending on tree-harvesting process used), many of the tea plants and other useful bio-diverse plant-life might be destroyed.
Onto conclusions
It might seem like I'm concluding that every little bit helps, and that what Kenneth is promoting is one small step in the right direction, joining other government initiatives and land-use themes. That seems at least partly true, if potentially a bit optimistic. Not all government programs are effective at achieving intended goals, and I'm not sure how much economic benefit "wild" tea development currently has on such concerns, or what the future potential is.
All the same these ideas map together in an obvious way. The theory and broad government-control directive requires other steps and drivers to support it; that much was cited here in that Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment summary. It's not "sustainable" in one deeper sense for only government restrictions and NGO monitoring and education efforts to prevent high-impact forest land use; a positive economic driver could potentially also play an important role.
Is it better for the Thai natural environment to buy Monsoon wild-grown tea instead of plantation-produced oolong? Maybe a little. There wouldn't be a significant effect from that personal choice on a small scale but to some extent the small inputs would "roll up." I suspect that Kenneth and Monsoon's efforts round down to making no difference taken alone, but that all such forest-use initiatives considered together are a significant factor, and one that can potentially be extended.
To me this leads directly on to considering other factors. If you buy a tea blend sold in a small tin, what about the pit-mine impact from producing that metal, versus use of some other type of packaging? The mine for the metal ore might be in Laos, with the packaging production in China, and the likely end point for the tin as a landfill in Thailand, with transportation related impact all through those steps.
This is part of our current set of challenges; sorting out which inputs and causal connections really do make a difference, and identifying how to maximize the cumulative effects of our choices. It starts out as simply as choosing paper or plastic bags, or deciding to carry re-usable cloth bags instead. If one person's choice in some regard extends to a factor of a thousand times more impact than which tea source they choose then more focus is better directed there.
In conclusion, how much difference this really makes is hard to place. But it is one representative part of a very important subject that does need to be addressed. Probably palm oil farming represents a real land-use issue that needs to be considered and monitored at a national level, more so than tea production. Of course China is destroying natural areas much faster to ramp up tea production there, because tea is a much larger industry there.
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clear-cut tea farming (but not in Thailand or China) |
It would be nice if personal beverage choices could make a marginal difference in long-term land use in Thailand. To some limited extent Monsoon products represent that potential, whether that is actually the main driver for their sourcing framework or not. I think Kenneth's intentions are good, but of course businesses also need to be profitable, so goals tend to mix. If profit is motivating this development and natural-growth forest preservation and use is also being supported then it represents a case of multiple forms of values matching up.
For me personally I try to remain skeptical about claims and background descriptions made about tea across a broad range, but also stay open to new ideas, and remain somewhat optimistic. Drinking a different version of tea won't make much difference, but helping make a little difference could reasonably be experienced as a positive thing.
