The Hindu Business Line : Kolkata firm to replicate organic tea farming model

K. MANIBHAI & Co, which has successfully implemented the rotational farming technology and produced pure organic tea at the Jalinga Tea Estate in Assam, has firmed up plans to replicate the experiment in Belseri Tea Estate, its second tea garden in Assam.

The organic tea has been tested and certified by the Government of India's Pesticides Residue Laboratory, Pune, and Eurofins of Germany.

According to Mr K. Patel, Director of the company, the whole garden at Jalinga Tea Estate has gone organic with a crop of 9.75 lakh kg of tea produced under a natural method of farming.

No pesticides, weedicides or chemicals have been used at the estate. The crop volume has been sustained and costs have been contained.

The tea has been launched under the brand Jalinga Naturorganic Tea and was available in consumer packs of 250 g, 100 g and packets of 25 tea bags.

Mr Patel said the pricing of the company's organic tea was on a par with conventional teas. ``The idea is to maintain the pricing at affordable levels and take the product to the masses,'' he said and added that organic tea cultivation would soon be taken up at Belseri Tea Estate, which produces around one million kg of tea annually.

To showcase its achievement, K. Manibhai & Co organised a seminar on the `Scope of sustainable & economical organic production & their achievements of producing pesticide free tea at Jalinga Tea Estate' here.

Speakers at the seminar included senior officials of the Tea Board and the director of Inhana Biotech, the Kolkata-based research firm that has pioneered the rotational farming technology.

Speaking at the seminar, Mr T.C. Choudhary, Director (R&D) of Tea Board, said the future of the tea industry lay in the production of organic teas.

However, the challenge would be to contain the costs of certification and make organic teas available to the common man at an affordable price.

Mr P. Das Biswas, Director of Inhana Biotech, said that out of the 850 million kg of teas produced in India, a mere 3.5 million kg was organic teas.

This was because cultivation of organic teas was neither convenient nor economical. He urged the Tea Board to have its own certification standards.