Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/694455
34 STiR tea & coffee industry international / Issue 3, 2016 (June/July) Compost for biodynamic input at Ambootia Group's estates Dandelions are grown to make organic fertilizer Ambootia's nurses sick gardens While Sanjay Bansal was building Ambootia's reputation around the world, other gardens in the region were falling sick, were being sold off, or were completely abandoned, leaving resident workers with no means of earning a living. Bansal recognized that to save Darjeeling and stop families from moving away permanently from the area in search of a livelihood, the gardens had to be taken over and brought back to health by sustainable organic and biodynamic cultivation methods. So he formed Darjeeling Organic Tea Estates Pvt. Ltd (DOTEPL) and began to acquire abandoned and sick gardens. Deciding which gardens to buy demanded careful assessment of each individual garden's value and potential; if gardens were put up for sale by auction, it meant sometimes that competitive bids were too high and plans had to be changed. He knows that in some cases he has paid more than the mar- ket value, but decisions depend on how quickly the individual garden can be turned around and made profitable. He usually chooses gardens that are sick and derelict because it is much easier to adopt a new system at a garden that has failed than to impose a new system on a garden and factory that are still viable and where workers may resist change. Ambootia Group cur- rently owns 14 gardens in Darjeeling and 5 in Assam, and there are plans to acquire another 7 in Darjeeling. Once a purchase is complete, Bansal visits the estate work- ers in their homes or calls a village meeting in the community hall in order to explain the Ambootia plan and philosophy and to discuss the way forward. "No one knows better how a tea estate works than the workers and their families," he explains. "We have to learn from them and ask for their help." Organic and biodynamic methods are introduced within two days of the takeover; factory managers from successful estates are brought in to take over or to train existing staff; engineers arrive to make factory modifications and adapt machinery to the new way of working; and very quickly, the tea is being cultivated, picked, processed, and packed according to the Ambootia or- ganic and biodynamic principles. Although Ambootia Group is working in the same way in Assam, the problems there are very different to those in Darjeel- ing. The region is much, much bigger and the industry runs on a very large, mass-production scale; two different types of tea (or- thodox and CTC) are made in Assam; there is a markedly wide variation in quality and character of the teas; and few producers are driven by the sort of passion that runs in Darjeeling growers' blood. Few of the estates are certified organic. Bansal recognizes that some customers want organic tea, and so he has moved into this region in order to meet that de-