Tea, Pests, Disease and Pesticides, Hidden truth of unknown cause.
We hear quite a few incidence of pesticide contamination from Chinese tea. One might wonder what is really happening with tea grown in China or anywhere else. I remember a lot of farmers in Japan telling me that tea always attracts pests, and pesticides and tea are always inseparable. Although it sounds like a reasonable excuse for tea farmers, but I believe there is much deeper cause of this tea, pest and disease relationship. Tea, pests, disease and pesticides are almost always big topics among tea farmers. Because there are pests and disease, farmers have to spray or else they lose the crop or the harvest will be heavily damaged. So the farmers go out and spray once, twice, three times.... and on and on until they are through with their annual cycle. In Japan, some tea farmers brag about only spraying 5-6 times in one year. They are considered eco-farmers. In my past 7 years of tea cultivation, there has never been a time I had to spray. Should I say, I intentionally let