Tuesday, July 14, 2020 - Flooding, Climate Change, and Tea Quality

Video Subtitles:

all right happy tuesday everybody it's
july
14th we're almost in the middle of july
unbelievable
and today i am going to be giving an
update
on the asian tea industry
so i say asia because this is some news
information that's going
uh or not going but has been affecting
india china as well as several other
growing regions as well because rain has
taken over the past
i would say the past month or so i've
been hearing about flooding
uh first i was hearing about it in assam
which is a very large tea growing area
and just learning that the flooding was
negatively negatively impacting
logistics
as well as production as well as like
just
infrastructure in the cities especially
during a time
when these urban areas so think of
debris
or guahati the two main urban areas
of the tea growing region of assam
lebanon cool
nice to meet you my name is elise i'm
really grateful that we've gotten to
meet
we have somebody from lebanon watching
on instagram
i hope you like tea because that's all
we talk about here is tea
uh but now so that was like last month
when we were hearing about
all of the flooding going on in assam
and uh you know i'm part of a couple of
different like citizens groups
of deep regard just because i like to
keep up with
what's going on in the city outside of
even tea production like what's going on
politically
uh and of course you know weather-wise
as well and
had seen in some of these facebook
groups how devastating
these heavy floods
how devastating these heavy floods have
been um
yeah for the tea industry uh but now
uh it's it's a problem in china and so
for the past few weeks
there has been heavy flooding throughout
china
several different states and actually
some pretty big devastations
to infrastructure there as well uh as
far as
dams you know several different dams
because of
you know these flooding up rivers uh and
then also
you know the pandemic has negatively
impacted that because
higher glass thanks for saying hi
um it doesn't negatively impact
you know the ability of
the states to manage the infrastructure
to handle
this increased flooding because you know
things are on lockdown people are
working from home
it's just a completely different
situation now than it usually is
um
so eric is asking last year was pretty
bad yes i mean this is monsoon season
right so the summer season in asia is
known as monsoon season
it's a heavy rain time and every summer
you can kind of expect these heavy rains
to come through but this year in
particular i am reading
it is much higher it's like 40 higher
than what
it was last year or what it usually is
um
and so yeah eric we were talking about
this couple days ago you had said that
cindy chen was sending me photos and
actually she sent me some photos too um
because i'm trying to get some tea and
she's like yeah right now you just gotta
wait a couple
of days because um we're dealing with
some major flooding and she sent me some
photos of the and we
shot of how flooded it is uh but
uh there is some major news and a friend
was
telling me about this outside of t uh
someone that keeps up with
you know international politics and
what's going on around the world and
he he was under the impression that the
government was purposefully
opening these these dams which now i've
read some articles they are purposely
opening some of these dams
but not to you know do any harm
to the infrastructure itself they're
doing it to
release a lot of the pressure that has
been building
up in these rivers that have for several
weeks
been you know over pressuring and
overflowing due to the increased
rainfall in the area uh so
now you know i'm talking about how
these heavy rains affect like the
infrastructure the
effect the lifestyle you know when
you're dealing with the flooding
you can't just easily you know get in
your car and just like hop to your
office and
and and get business done as usual
kind of um
yeah you have to be patient and hold off
just like cindy telling me oh yeah hold
on i can't i can't
send you t's right now because we're
dealing with these mass floodings
um but it does affect the tea as well
and that's uh that's the education part
that i want to go
into today to talk about
my desk area is getting a little
overwhelmed
flooded with too many tea wares and tea
things
yeah so there has been quite a bit of
research and i found a really great
paper that i'm just going to kind of
go over some of the talking points of
this peer review this is an academic
paper uh looking
at the effect of heavy rains
uh i.e monsoon season so this paper is
not even looking at like
irregularly heavier rains it's just
looking at the normal
shifts of rainfall throughout the year
the main one being the monsoon season
which we're currently
a part of right now there should be
heavier rains
versus the springtime you know after the
winter
into the spring not to say that it won't
rain at all
but rain is much less it's
you know less consistent and it plays a
big part in
why your spring teas are so different
than your summer teas
and then also the the autumn teas as
well so before i get into
talking about this article which was
written by dr selena ahmed
who is like the foremost researcher on
tea quality and climate change
um yeah she has some good results here
so it'd be kind of fun to look at that
over and i will be drinking tea
i am going to drink um
i don't know what this is handmade tea
it just says handmade tea
november harvest so this is an autumn
harvest
so you know probably you know drier
but having freshly experienced the
monsoon season
it's just like a hand rolled black it
looks really beautiful i'll show you
so eric says that he's heard he's also
heard that one reason they are opening
the dams is that they are not built
holding such pressure yes
they aren't uh or maybe maybe they could
have been
uh adapted to handle the pressure of the
increased
um you know flooding right now
but you know due to pandemic uh has been
a challenge
for them to to keep up with all the the
infrastructure
so here's my handmade black teeth
that'll be brewing right now very nice
beautiful looking forward to this
so yeah before i get into this
peer-reviewed paper i am first going to
look at just some stats so this is an
article
from krishi
jar jagran some um
publication in india i've never actually
read anything usually
there's a couple of different
publications i usually get my indian
news from so this is interesting it's
the first time i've
interacted with this and it's in the
agriculture section of
their publication
excess rains may cause long-term damage
to the tea industry so long-term damage
is
not necessarily from the rain itself i
mean these areas are used
to handling floods that come in through
and
damage that comes through so it's it's
not the damage itself it's not the
physical damage what they're implying
here
that is going to have you know long-term
damage on the industry it's more
economic damage because
the industry is just fresh dealing with
the first flush having been stolen
you know from them essentially by the
pandemic the lockdown they weren't able
to
hire their laborers to go and and you
know it's illegal for them to be
managing their their their factories and
processing team now it's a different
story
uh they are able to to get back to work
at 100
capacity of where they were before
uh so they should be banging right and
this is this is the second flush this is
monsoon flush there's definitely tea
being produced right now
but because of this flooding there was
another break
um dealing with that um and then once i
get into the article
uh with um dr ahmed's article
about rainfall heavy rainfall and
tea quality you will see that
you know even if they are able to
rebound a flush
harvest after these you know floods have
passed then um
the quality of that product may be lower
than usual
see amanda
so um
so the rains have actually been good for
certain farmers so there's certain crops
that actually
thrive in heavy rains so that's rice
that's the main one patty uh they want
you know the rice likes living in these
moist environments and tea
does like rain tea needs rain so growing
conditions for tea
the tea plant it varies variety to
variety
varieties like different uh you know
cold hardiness
but uh
it doesn't like to sit and rain it
doesn't like to be flooded in rain it
doesn't like to
you know drown itself in rain and so
that's why you see
tea optimally grown in certain areas
uh the condition of the soil is a big
part of
what a tea farmer is going to be you
know looking
for planting where they're going to
plant so the first thing is ph
and the ph of the soil doesn't really
have too much to do with rainfall
but that is like the the prerequisite
condition
is that the camellia sinensis plant
enjoys growing in ph conditions from
4.5 to 5.5 which is actually quite a
sick
and so that's why you see tea growing in
more of like the
volcanic areas of uh
of the world those places like hawaii
hawaii is a good place of that and
really pretty much
we could look at the map of of the ring
of fire
you know like where where it's known to
have you know more volcanic activity
and see that you know tea
is growing more successfully there
because of the sulfuric acid in the soil
so that's like that when they say
volcanic soil
that's what they're looking for you know
volcanoes
are just you know filled with pressure
of of sulfuric acid um and uh the t
actually likes that
uh not too much of it you know there
could be sulfur burns
you know i've heard actually in hawaii
i've heard different opinions about this
so in hawaii there's an active volcano
there
right now uh there is an active volcano
um and um
[Music]
that active volcano releases um
what's called fog it's basically volcano
fog
and that volcano fog is like very high
density
of sulfuric acid um and so a lot of
people complain about the bog you know
it's like irritating on the eyes
irritating on sinuses
for good reason and you know could be
stinky too right sulfuric acid is pretty
stinky
but i've heard different opinions from
the tea farmers on big island that
sometimes the tea plants actually like
that bog
you know like they're just kind of
singing in that vog uh
you know taking in that acidic
environment while others say that too
much of that bog can actually
uh burn the the tea plants and cause
damage
but when it's in the soil and it's you
know acidified that soil to that sweet
ph of 4.5 to 5.5 then the tea will grow
really well
okay so now in regards to rain and soil
that has to do with good drainage
so the tea plants would love if it
rained every single day
that's just like ideal if it just like
rained lightly every single day
got a little wet and then the water
would immediately go
away after it rained the tea plant would
be very happy
and so that's why you know you do see
some irrigation systems
and some tea growing regions because
maybe they don't have regular rainfall a
place like
hawaii you know they pretty much get a
blessing of rain every day
maybe not heavy rain they do get heavy
rains but
it's very common for just very light
rains to pass through on a daily
you don't like bog it's it's a it's a
real thing you know look it up google it
bog
it's a real thing i didn't make that up
eric
so uh sandy soils that's
you know gonna allow drainage you know
now like heavy clay soils that don't
have you know pieces in it that allow
the water to go through it just compacts
the water in and holds the water in
uh you know areas where the land
accumulates the water is not really good
and so that's actually why tea grows
really well on slopes
because you know even if it's terraced
the water
is going to go down and not stay in one
place and so
um you know some tea farmers i've seen
if they don't have the ideal
you know sandy soil conditions they can
actually
they can actually set up their their
farm uh to allow
for that that aeration and that flow
um to happen through the soil uh just by
sloping the land it doesn't have to be
like a very
um steep slope uh in terracin like you
usually see with tea
it could just be like a really subtle
slope that just slowly goes down and
that subtlety is enough
for that water flow to go to one place
and so where all the water goes is
definitely not where you would
put your tea plants because if you put
it there your uh
tea plant root system will rot um yeah
the tea plant does not like to be left
in the rain and so
with these heavy rains happening in
assam uh there
inevitably will be damage to tea plants
especially in these like a big gardens
flooding is happening
and the flooding will you know be
concentrated in certain spots
depending on the topography of the area
you know
assam is not a very mountainous you know
terraced
tea growing region it's a very a large
and expansive area and so
you know flooding is happening um i mean
it's possible that it could be damaging
all of the tea plants but i'd imagine
that
in heavy flooding like this there would
be you know spotty
damage um you know where just tea plants
will just rot
from the root system it'll just rot and
then the rest of the tree will die
so yeah t loves rain but then doesn't
love rain
it's a it's a funny love hate
relationship and so a tea farmer has to
be really mindful of these things as
they set up their garden
so according to the data from the indian
metrological
department said that the um the region
has received
at was more than 40 percent compared to
the previous year
and the monsoon is maintaining its
intensity so they're not seeing it ease
up at all it wasn't
as far as this article is making it seem
it wasn't just like a one-off
you know rainstorm it it actually is a
part of this
this whole monsoon season and they don't
see it letting up
is this an effect of climate change i
don't know
uh maybe you know if you want to attach
some meaning to it
uh you can do that um
but what's happening is happening
already and so that's that's the whole
point why i'm sharing with you is like
why is it important if you do see these
articles about flooding in these tea
growing regions
why is it important for our tea and how
how might we see some effect either on
the economics of the pricing of tea
which you know in past live streams i
have been talking about
kind of the crazy pricing of tea mostly
price going up
and this is like not just the specialty
price like what we deal in
um this is also the commodity price the
commodity price of t
is going up and that's an effect of
scarcity and so you know heavy flooding
like this
that affects the yields will affect
scarcity
and will affect the price so that is
something that we may
end up seeing i'm not saying for sure
it's going to happen that way but that
is
some effect of of these types of events
as well as understanding how the quality
of the team might be different
you know so you might get some second
flush assam tea
you know after some months and realize
ah this tastes a little bit different
than what i'm used to and
the heavy rainfall could be a factor on
it again i'm not guaranteeing that
that's what's gonna happen
but these are all things to keep in mind
so yeah 40 more rain than what they're
used to so eric you were asking and
this doesn't say about china uh this is
specifically this article specifically
about
assam about india but you know these
places are all very close to each other
and you know storms do you know kind of
go on different paths and
and have different styles and and and
and rates and effects
but i would think that china is also
getting increased rainfall
so i did look up some um
articles about chinese flooding and that
is definitely getting
a lot more mainstream publicity right
now
especially because of these
infrastructure issues these dams opening
up
so the government is purposely opening
the dams to release the pressure
but when they open those dams there's
people
below and so they're flooding out whole
villages
um and so that that's a bit more
controversial
it's a bit more political and so i think
that's why we are seeing a lot more of
that in the mainstream media so this is
an article from the new york times
you know as mainstream as you can get
and the the title of the article is
severe floods in china leave over 106
dead or missing so
you know these floods are are definitely
affecting people
um you know it's not just
inconveniencing industries or
inconveniencing
infrastructure which it definitely is
but it's actually affecting people's
lives
and so yeah this article just kind of
lists off all the different states i
mean pretty much the entire it's mostly
south china
uh but all of the rivers in south china
um are just completely getting
flooded and overrun with water
and hubei uh is one of the hardest hits
from these floods was also the hardest
hit from
the pandemic so just what a nightmare to
have to deal with
um you know just so much craziness going
on um and so you know i think that's
enough talking about
what's been happening you know and i i
did want to make sure that i
i you know talked about these dams
because
i had a friend talking to me that's
completely not
into chinese culture chinese history
or anything like that but um he knew
about this he's very much interested in
chinese politics
and um you know there's a lot of
skepticism
around the chinese government right now
you know very much thanks to
our leadership here in the united states
unfortunately building up a lot of
unnecessary
bias and prejudice against chinese
culture
so there's a lot of pessimism uh and and
doubt
that you know the chinese government
does have the best for their people in
mind
um and that's not what i'm talking about
here uh but
that right there like is increasing
people's visibility
of what's going on in china i mean that
same friend also knew about the
conflicts going on
at the border of china and india and
that's like a much more obscure conflict
going on that's a very obscure thing
it's not like a huge raging
battle raging war going on
but there is a lot of contention there
is a lot of politics going on there
my friend actually knew about that i'm
like okay that's cool
you know china's in the spotlight right
now maybe not in the best spotlight but
it's in the spotlight so
i just wanted to clear that up and i'll
definitely be clearing that up with my
friend about the dams
so it's like i just don't see the
chinese like what what would they have
out of it i mean
building a dam that's another thing so
that's what's happening in india they're
trying to build a dam
in india to collect you know um to
collect
you know the the benefit from that um
and then completely drying up
millions of people's water sources so if
anything yeah i have heard
of you know building um building stuff
but not
purposefully destroying things so uh it
was good to clear that up in this
article that there is a purpose of why
they're opening those stamps and that is
to release the pressure from these heavy
rains
okay so now i'm going to move on to the
education portion
which is reviewing dr selena ahmed's
article
the one that i found i'm sure she's
published many articles she's been
actually working on
this area of study for a long time i
believe since i've even started working
in tea and studying tea i've been
hearing about her actually this
paper was published in 2014. so yeah it
is
um you know a long-standing area of
research
that um okay and so this article is
called effects of a stream climate
events on t
functional quality validate indigenous
farmer knowledge and sensory preferences
in tropical china
what a great article here i'll put the
link here
and if you guys feel so inclined you are
welcome to go check out this article
this is a peer-reviewed article
so you know just uh if you don't know
what that means peer-reviewed if you've
heard that before
um peer-reviewed is like
it's not just like a journalist that's
able to like write something and then
publish it and put it out
um and then even that like
traditional journalists that are working
for like new york times or you know a
major
media outlet like that there is going to
be
a high level of due diligence of making
sure fact checking making sure that
inaccurate information is not being
shared to the public
but peer-reviewed is like levels higher
and so these articles are not published
in like mainstream media these articles
are usually published
in scientific journals and in order to
get published it's a very long process
of the of your research and of your
writing being approved by several layers
of um you know academic
experts academic professionals um
so that's peer reviewed you know and so
um
your peers will review your research
make sure that your research makes sense
uh that you followed proper scientific
method uh
so you know someone says that they're
referencing a peer-reviewed article
like that's good you know referencing a
period article is definitely higher
quality than referencing new york times
even though we do
reference the new york times often
uh so yes uh you know so there's there's
a lot uh
in this article about you know climate
change and how it's happening
and what is doing um
to the t
so it says here let's see this is part
of the abstract i'll go down to like the
actual findings
sampling was conducted in a major tea
producing area of china during an
extreme drought
through the onset of the east asian
monsoon
in order so that's first flush and
second flood in order to capture effects
of extreme climate events that are
likely to become more frequent with
climate change
so the the their study here
was not on an extreme case like what
we're talking about today
this year happening right now in asia is
actually extreme rainfall extreme
climate change is happening right now um
and so the findings of this paper is
actually from
like a normal year the normal contrast
between the first flush and the second
flush so
i was saying earlier the first flush is
happening during a time of not like
real drought but like season out
seasonal uh
you know lack of rainfall there's going
to be less rainfall during the spring
you're just coming out of the winter
and that's good you know you want that
and then in the summertime
you know this this monsoon comes through
and increases the rain so it says
compared to the spring drought tea
growth during the monsoon period was up
to 50 percent higher
uh higher of what
concurrently concentrations of catechin
and methyl lexidine
secondary metabolites
major compounds that determine t
functional quality were up to 50
lower during the monsoon while totally
total
phenolic concentrations and antioxidants
activity
increased the inverse relationship
between teeth growth and concentrations
of individual
secondary metabolites suggests a
dilution effect of produces
precipitation on t quality so that makes
sense
uh and so that's why actually
a really good tea master tea farmer uh
will not go harvest
their tea the day after a heavy rain
they'll wait a few days
for the the equilibrium to adjust in the
tea plant
uh because yeah they're diluted like
when the tea plant is
like flush with with water with heavy
rain
um all of your compounds which affect
the
not only affect like the the health
properties
so you know this article is identifying
catechin
and um metabolites uh
which you know are more associated with
like the health benefits of tea
but we're also talking about the flavor
compounds the aromatic compounds
all of those things get diluted when
when you have a heavy rain
so a good tea master will wait a few
days
after rain but you know when it's like
monsoon season like right now
you have these heavy rains just keep
coming through
you don't really have that chance to to
wait it out
so that's why you know there could be
effect on the quality of the tea
during this time
the decrease in concentrations of t
secondary metabolites was accomplished
accompanied by reduced farmer preference
on the basis of sensory characteristics
as well as a decline up to 50 and
household income
from t sales so there's an economic
response
farmer surveys indicate a high degree of
agreement regarding climate patterns and
the effects of
precipitation on t yields and quality
extrapolating findings from the seasonal
study to long-term client scenario
production suggests that farmers and
consumers
face variable implications with
forecasted precipitation scenarios
and suggests that farmers and consumers
face and
calls for research on management
practices to facilitate
climate adaption for sustainable crop
production
so i'm not too sure this paper really
addresses
what those solutions are maybe at the
end
um so i'm just going to pass through i
mean just like with any other
peer-reviewed paper
that is acknowledging their use of the
scientific method
uh there are when you look at a
peer-reviewed paper
like the majority of the text that is
there like if you're a researcher it is
very important text because you want to
be able to see
what was the method what were the
materials uh what what what were they
looking for what were they measuring
um but for like a consumer or someone
like us that's just trying to like
understand what came out of the study um
you know you can you can read that stuff
but it's kind of
difficult to read when you're not a
researcher
so here's the results tea growth and
functional quality
tea leaves harvested during the spring
drought appeared drier compared to the
leaves sampled during the monsoon onset
and monsoon tea leaves
that appeared tender
that makes sense because it's more flush
with liquid
tea length and tea weights decreased
significantly with increased
in precipitation over the sampling
periods from the spring drought to the
monsoon onset
and monsoon onset to monsoon tea
harvests
so they will also weigh more
that's just more water in the tea plant
the concentration of six major tea
polyphenolic
metabolites so the they were looking at
egc egcg ecg gcg
c and ga that determined t functional
quality decreased with the onset of the
east asian monsoon
from the spring drought to the monsoon
tea harvest
the compounds with the largest change in
concentration during the transition from
the spring drought to the monsoon tea
harvest were egc
egcg and ecg
egc egc hcg
don't even have me read the entire the
entire world i've never been able to
uh but yeah egcg must maybe like one
that sounds familiar to you that is a
very popular um
polyphenol that is is said to
you know address
its power as an antioxidant to decrease
the likelihood of cancer you know future
into life
these metabolites were also found to
have the highest concentrations during
all threesome
see all three seasonal tea harvest
periods in addition
to changes in these polyphenolic
metabolites
total mexical
methylxanthine
methylxanthine i said it right that time
concentrations significantly decreased
from the spring drought to the monsoon
onset as well as to the monsoon tea
harvest
concurrently total phenolic
concentration and antioxidants
activity of tea leaves increased from
the spring drought to monsoon onset and
monsoon tea harvest huh
that's interesting no difference was
found between the monsoon onset and
monsoon for total phenolic concentration
but a significant difference was found
for antioxidant activity
overall seasonal tea harvest period and
samples categorized as high quality
by informants were both found to be
significant for secondary
metabolites analyzed total
methylxanthine
concentration total phenolic
concentration
and antioxidant activity independent of
plot effects
so that was kind of interesting
sometimes science is like that you know
like you go in with a certain assumption
like it's going to work this way and
then after you do the actual research
and you like
crunch the numbers um things don't
always work the way so that was so i'm
going to read that sentence again
because that
concurrently total phenolic
concentration and antioxidant activity
of tea leaves increased
from the spring drought to monsoon onset
and monsoon tea harvests
i thought things were supposed to be
more concentrated
in the drier season
the increase in leaf weight was
correlated with the decrease in the
concentrations of
individual phenolic compounds
total phenolic concentration did not
significantly change with leaf weight
we found a high degree of agreement
between farmer responses and structured
survey questions on observed climate
patterns and the effects of
precipitation variability on t
quality
coded interviewed responses found that
informants perceive that precipitation
patterns have changed during their
lifetimes including
observations of increased duration
strength
and unpredictability of rains so that's
more addressing climate change
and so this was like through interviews
of the farmers and this this was done in
a particular area in china
i'll go back to the top and find out i
think that she did most of her work in
you none though so i'm thinking that
this is a new nun but it could be
different i'll go to the top
in the in the methods and find out where
they did this
additionally informants perceive that
temperatures have increased
during their lifetimes resulting in
fewer cold days
warmer winters warmer summers and less
frequent occurrences of frost
informants noticed that these changes in
climate patterns have impacted their tea
aggro ecosystems
with earlier spring tea harvests and
monsoon tea harvests
and that's something that i have seen
that like the harvests
keep getting sooner and sooner and
that's from like an early onset of
you know the warm spring which causes
the flushing to begin
field observations with farmers in
december of 2012
found the unusual occurrence of fourth
tea harvest with warmer temperatures
tea plants are usually dormant during
this period
due to colder temperatures so this would
be like so you have spring
monsoon autumn and now they're saying
that there's this fourth flush that
would be probably like sometime in like
october or november
and that's typically when the tea plants
are already starting to
like flower seed and prepare for
dormancy in the winter
and so the climate change is actually
affecting these seasons
the majority of informants perceive that
precipitation variability impacts
equality
and yields although fewer than half
agree that temperature variability
impacts equality
and yields all informants agree that
quality varies during the three seasonal
tea harvest and is inversely related to
leaf size
tea harvested during the dry spring
harvest is rated with the highest
quality and best sensory preference
farmers perceive this high quality
deteriorates with the arrival of the
east asian monsoon
when quality and sensory preferences is
ranked the lowest
specifically informants reported that
tea harvested during the dry spring
harvest
has stronger aroma physiological
characteristics
and taste that many describe as
more bitter and bittersweet with the
sweet lingering afterpaste
at the back of the throat referred to as
guan
in addition to quality farmers noted
that precipitation levels are directly
related to tea growth
specifically informants reported that
when tea quality is
highest during the spring harvest there
is less leaf budding
and tea leaves are drier and smaller
compared to the monsoon tea harvest
season
in addition to direct effects of
precipitation variability on t
quality and yields almost 70 percent of
informants reported that changes in
climate patterns
have impacted tea quality and yields by
altering the qualities
or the quantities and types of pests and
weeds in and around tea agro ecosystems
so that's interesting too that like
these climate change issues
aren't just directly connected with
quality
and harvest and yields but also affects
like their agriculture practices in
regards to pests and weed management
so i'll read that sentence again because
i want to understand that more in
addition to direct effects of
precipitation
variability on t quality yields almost
70 percent of informants reported that
changes in climate patterns
have impacted tea quality and yields by
altering the quantities and types of
pests and weeds in and around the agro
ecosystems
so these things don't operate in a
vacuum like everything is connected
informants reported that t traders that
buy and sell tea from the study site
have
the greatest demand for tea harvest
during spring and recognized monsoons as
delete the deleterious to t quality and
prices while regarding droughts as
positive for tea quality but harmful to
yields
right so there's that counter there and
that's the same for like all
quality tea and why so many of the tea
growers and more of the commodity-minded
spaces like assam and sri lanka and
kenya
it's really hard for them to turn to
quality production because their entire
infrastructures and systems and business
models
were all fit for the more commodity
minded which is all about high yields
who cares about quality you know
everything is just going to get
masticated and chopped up and blended
and homogenized
anyway so we don't need to care about
the quality but we do need to care about
the yields
and so you know they're taking shortcuts
they're over harvesting the leaf so
that's another issue like they
they will jump on that fourth harvest to
make sure they they can get as much
quantity in order to support the
business
but then uh the quality is jeopardized
but you know if you want to make the
highest quality product that has the
highest
value uh you have to do slow and easy
and let it grow small that's why they
say you know if you
you're uh i'm growing tomatoes right now
in my house and i just harvested yeah
i just harvested my first two fruits for
the season
uh it feels good i'm excited to to taste
them and try them out because i know
they're gonna be really dank
uh and they're like small you know i i
don't
have i mean this is a freaking desert i
can water them all day but it just dries
up right away
and so these tomatoes actually ended up
growing quite small for the variety
uh but very dense and very concentrated
i put a lot of love
into you know watching and you know
taking care of these tomatoes as they
grew
um and so like slow and steady
and smaller quantities is always going
to yield higher quality
so you got the two there you know when
rain plays a part
like some farmers would want to go out
and harvest after a rain because they
know all the
the leaves are going to be like big and
and more weight
you know in a lot of these like botley
factories the small growers take the
green leaf to the botley factory to sell
it to them
uh they're selling based off of weights
they're not selling based off of quality
they're not selling based off of
oh yeah this was harvested at the rain
it's not going to be that good quality
there may be some difference there
but ultimately like what makes them the
money is in the bulk is in the
quantities
the past decade the perceived drop in t
quality and increased tea growth that
occurred with the onset of the east
asian monsoon
has been accompanied with a decrease of
30 to 50 percent in livelihoods
derived from t sales so this is the
the consequential economic impact
specifically for the 2002 to 2012 period
farmers experienced an average
decrease of 51 in on-farm tea prices
during the monsoon tea harvest compared
to the spring drought
tea harvest informants attributed
the highest historical tea price that
occurred during the dry spring season of
2012 to an especially high
quality crop resulting from the severe
droughts
and not to decreased yields only a few
farmers attributed the high spring tea
prices
to the 25 to 33 percent decline in
yields resulting from the
the the droughts so this is the same
that there's two reasons that could have
caused that price to go up
i talked about this earlier it could be
more scarcity so that's like decreased
yield so there's less tea going into the
market the demand is still the same if
not
bigger so the price will go up it's the
supply and demand type of the thing
but most of the farmers interviewed here
so that wasn't actually the reason why
the prices went up the prices went up
because the quality the product was
actually higher
interesting regardless of precipitation
the effects on tea farmers express that
climate factors
have not negatively impacted their t
sales to date
but have negatively impacted food supply
and income from other crops
however farmers reported concern
regarding the drought threshold that is
beneficial for tea quality
before tea plants lose viability
all farmers noted having knowledge of
management practices to reduce
vulnerability to tea crops of climate
variability
management practices employed by farmers
to the study site to mitigate
climate risk in their agro-ecosystems
including cultivating tea from seed
rather than clonal um in growing tea
plants as trees rather than as shrubs
lastly farmers noted that the importance
of maintaining canopy coverage
in forested buffer zones around
agroecosystems in order to reduce
risk in their tea production system so
there we go
i'm going to put this all here i think
this is a very important
part of this study and this is like in
the title it talks about that
indigenous knowledge that could be
employed
to safeguard against these
um these risks so
yeah there's still much more i'm gonna
go back and read this article again i
put the link in the comments
uh throughout facebook youtube twitch
so yeah please check that out if you
want to read this article
i am quickly going to find out where the
study was done
and you know yeah
but it seems that they're working with a
more like commercial
system than with like artisanal you know
craft farmers like what we we work with
in united
which is fine you know like the
situation is the same
so yeah that's it you guys have any
questions
today's all been about rain you know
from the desert with no rain just
lots of heavy sunshine here
but this has been interesting i've been
you know grateful to educate myself
today
i am going to be signing out of
instagram thank you guys so much for
tuning in my phone's about to die
actually you know what i can do
and charge it
you got my charger here that'll be easy
hey suki good to see you
what are you coming back to vegas huh
my cord's over here
good well you can go back and watch the
replay sookie
and or you can go find that article
yourself
and read it very interesting stuff i
think
oh my phone's too hot hey gabby good to
see you
[Music]
all right guys i'm going to be signing
out my phone's too hot i can't even
charge it right now so i've gotta
stop streaming i guess this rainfall is
not keeping the phone cooled
down enough uh but i love you all and
thank you so much for tuning in
and learning something new with me oh
shit
oh excuse my language i just said
something bad my phone died
all right i only have four people
watching right now so that's fine you
guys get to hear that i i curse
and not just when i'm passionate about
something i'm sure you've heard me curse
like when i'm talking about
you know the things that i'm so
passionate about
but uh
yeah i love you guys and uh
drink more tea please i'll see you
tomorrow tomorrow i am going to be
uh doing a constitution study group so
reading more
federalist and anti-federalist papers
until then
i'll see you guys around