As with other forms of agriculture, the issue that really concerns me is the economic pressures that drive the industrialization of tea production. It's simply not ecologically sustainable to continue large scale monoculture, but neither is it economical to convert the entire sector over to sustainable farming practices. The available trade-offs exist at the margins and are unlikely to produce radical, let alone beneficial, change.
Pesticides are a very complex topic. The problem is not so much that it is a chemical, but that it often has a lot of poorly understood impacts. Those are often also not reflected in the LD50. For example, birth defects as a result of harmful chemicals is completely unaccounted. For a farmer, it is often a vicious cycle too, because you need specially cultivated plants that can survive your pesticides, so you have to pay twice. There is the open question whether certain modern pesticides are responsible for the death of insect populations here, most noticable the bee populations. The counter question is how can agriculture work without pesticides. Historically farmers used to grow a combination of vegetables, so that certain pests are kept away. E.g. garlic and onion can be used to help against voles. Certain plants help to keep away lices etc. But all this doesn't agree with industrial agriculture...
@@LongDistanceCall11 William mentioned it and I fully with that part: we don't have a good replacement for many pesticides. It's not a question of price per se but what trades you are willing to accept.
@@joergsonnenberger6836 this is what it really boils down to. Uncertainty about the risks, scarcity of resources available to allocated in any one direction, and a limited ability to evaluate the trade offs of various alternatives.
Neonicotinoids are suspected of harming the bees populations. It required a lot of research to come to this conclusion because, unlike measuring the LD50, it requires long term studies with many more factors to measure. Even when we identify the source of the problem, we need to find a way to fix it, and most of the time, it requires an alternative product. Implementing the change also requires time because lobbies will slow down the process and people need to change their habits. Not using pesticides at all would be an ideal solution, and it is possible in some cases. But some crops rely on them if you want a cheap product. We can implement techniques used in the past as an alternative to pesticides, but if we want to keep the cheap food prices we have today, we can't go back to a traditional farming system. Tea enthusiasts are willing to buy expensive tea, but what about the bottled ice tea industry? As long as there are buyers for the cheap products and that governments make it legal, the pesticides will be used.
Thank you for sharing this information and your thought. The depth in which you approach many topics that are not widely discussed regarding the world of tea is deeply insightful.
PPE...personal protective equipment. SO IMPORTANT. Was in secondary school, and we were working on a car. Guy was using a torch to remove a strut, and a flaming piece of rubber landed in the center of where his eyeball was, but he was wearing his PPE / Safety Glasses! Him and I exchanged a look that verified he would of been blinded in that eye, less the glassess, and I've used PPE always, since then.
Thank you for these important insights. I would add that measuring the effects of single or even multiple pesticides gives little indication of actual the level of effect. Many people have reached a toxic saturation point, called “toxic load”, after which even minor assaults on human biology can produce serious effects. Factors that influence toxic load include insecticides as well as medications, metals, parasites, viruses and bacteria, molds, pollens, electromagnetic fields, liver and other organ dysfunction, gut microbiome, genetics, and lifestyle choices such as smoking, alcohol, diet, noise and light pollution. Also, for a more comprehensive view of the effects of persistent and disruptive environmental contaminants, especially on the endocrine system, I highly recommend Our Stolen Future by Theo Colborn (Foreword by former Vice President Al Gore).
Thank you very much for the insight. What is your opinion on the half-life (at long term tea storing conditions) of the concerning chemicals? I assume even if some amount is present in the tea, it degrades thus becomes inactive after a few months gradualy. So teas meant to be stored long term, may be even less concerning by that regard.
You can't compare it to the half life of radioactive products. The time it takes to degrade will vary massively depending on the environment: exposure to sunlight, temperature, humidity... You'd have to look at the degradation process of each pesticide. Regarding glyphosate, its original molecule degrades in a matter of days in a natural environment, but it creates byproducts: secondary molecules which stay longer and are the one which can be found widely in the environment. When studying the degradation of a product, you have to look at the chain of products, until they break down into more basic molecules.
the bird in the story about DDT was the bald eagle DDT nearly wiped them out in the late 60's and early 70's while it's still a problem the eagles are making a come back.
DDT and many other chemicals have a huge problem with persistence. The environmental half life can be in the decades, so even after we stopped using it, it still hangs around. When William was talking about the aggressiveness of difference pesticides, I think he seriously underestimates how harmful some things are. One of the big problems we have in medicine right now is that the anti-fungal treatment options remaining as last line of defense are all super aggressive. Same for some of the reserve antibiotics. Pesticides are not that different in nature. But for pesticides we have the additional problem that we have a huge ecosystem that shouldn't be damaged by them either.
@@joergsonnenberger6836 I didn't make any estimations myself, I read some papers (linked in the description) and tried to give an overview of the issue. If you have more sources regarding the harm of pesticides, feel free to post. For this topic, I will only look at peer reviewed papers because the subject is controversial, you can't trust what you read about it in traditional media.
@@farmerleaf61 I don't dispute your sources, but sadly the published research papers cover only part of the problem. The big elephant in the room noone wants to talk about is that the risk assessment is done with the suggested dose from the vendor, but the real world use is often significantly higher. A number of papers I found explicitly mentioned that there is little data beyond aggregated totals on the use of pesticides like glyphosate and the specific dose and application method by individual farmers is secret. You already mentioned that it is seen by many farmers as "unmanly" to use proper protection equipment or that their application is lax at best. The combination is not healthy. The other big topic is the bioaccumulation of pesticides, even and especially in areas not directly exposed to them. This was seen especially in the on-going (in the EU) debate about the long-term impact of glyphosate. A number of independent studies have shown such bioaccumulation, but the majority of the research in this field is sponsored by the very companies that profit from the sales. If fish in nature preserves shows significant contamination not just with heavy metals, but also various pesticides, it means that pesticides have a far larger mobility than often acknowledged.
I brewed a tea from big trees of Ao Wa Du garden in Jingmai Mountain, it's one of the best teas we've made this year, very powerful, helped me get more talkative throughout the interview. We haven't released it yet.
Thank you for this video! Great research. It helped me a lot with anxiety. I have a chinese oolong tea. I am going to rinse it from now on. and keep enjoying it.
Interesting discussion. I suspect that we underestimate the long term effects of pesticides, especially of glyphosate, on the soil microbiome. Has soil health wrt pesticide load been looked in any detail?
The effect are researched and the effects are unclear. You could even argue that glyphosate helps preserve the soil microorganisms because they are an alternative for a till, which would for sure disturb the top soil. Glyphosate is widely used in conservation agriculture, which advocates for keeping the soil intact in order to have more life in it (microbes, funguns, nematodes, worms).
The scary part is, while we don't know the impact of glyphosate on most ecosystems, we can find this molecule and its byproducts almost everywhere in nature.
It really depends on the pesticide used, how much independent testing has been done on it to establish an accurate safety profile for the products grown using that pesticide and what long-term effects it could possibly have on local populations of insects and in turn on the birds, lizards, amphibians, fish, mammals, ect. that depend on those insects as a major source of food and how the pesticide might also affect them after ingesting a contaminated source. For instance, there is a meme that was popularized several years ago concerning a certain rambunctious political commentator who during a rant made a comment amounting to "I don't like them turning the frogs gay". At the time people laughed this off as another crazy statement made by a crazy guy, but the reality is that he was talking about the pesticide Atrazine. Atrazine as it turns out actually does have a hormonal effect on frogs which alters the physical sex of the frog from male to female, literally turning male organs female. The creator of the chemical has constantly tried to cover this fact up and has published notably weak and biased studies supporting their stance, but there has been a lot of independent testing that verifies the pesticide actually does have such an effect and not only does it have that effect on frogs, but there is also evidence to suggest it lowers testosterone in children and increases estrogen and has been linked to several biological deformities related to that such as shrinking the average distance between the testes and anus of male children born in areas where there is heavy usage of the chemical. What really is disturbing about this, since you cite the FDA, is that the FDA has on numerous occasions published their own extremely weak and biased studies attempting to refute this information to support the pesticide manufacturer AND that the pesticide manufacture just so happens to donate large sums of money to the FDA to "fund research". The point here is that there are pesticides on the market of which there exists reams of evidence of major toxicity and either through incompetence or corruption they are still allowed to be used on crops and other land even though independent testing from major universities across the world shows they present an unacceptable risk to the locality and to anyone who might ingest crops using those chemicals.
Indeed, a lot is at stake regarding pesticides regulations. While we acknowledge the damage some of them can cause, we have no technical alternative for a given crop. There is currently a debate in France about the prohibition of neonicotinoids, a family of insecticides proven to have a large impact on bee colonies. These pesticides are crucial for beet cultivation, forbidding them will mean the farmers will have to grow other crops and several supply chains will be altered. The politicians will decide on what will be done. The issue is complex, but your vote matters.
@@farmerleaf61 I don't begrudge the farmers for using the pesticides and agree that they absolutely are necessary if we intend to be able to support the current needs of the world population, I just think that more research should be put into finding effective pesticides with less severe potential side-effects. One example that comes to mind of a pesticide that doesn't have anything to do with farming, yet still affects people all over the world are those pesticides meant to treat or eradicate bed bugs. There are a bunch of pesticides used to treat the issue, but the problem is that the bugs have become extremely resistant to them, so much so that most commercial pesticides used to treat them in lab studies are barely more effective than tap water. The interesting twist though is that bed bugs are highly susceptible to two very basic methods of elimination, both of which are non-toxic and have near 100% efficacies and those simple treatments are diatomaceous earth and heat over 50C over the course of at least 15 minutes will kill 100% of them and their eggs. The diatomaceous earth is also extremely effective due to it being an extremely potent desiccant which is also an extremely fine powder. The powder will get stuck to their exoskeleton and literally suck the water out of them until they die of rapid dehydration and they thus far have been completely unable to evolve defenses to either of these methods. So the options in this case are to spread around a pesticide that is mildly toxic to pets and humans in order to have barely any effect of the bed bugs OR to put a powerful space heater in the room for an hour or to spread around a light dusting of powder. I realize the correlation between outdoor pests and inside ones certainly can't be examined 1:1, but I just want to illustrate the possibility that there are better methods out there for keeping crops safe. Agriculture and industry just need to put in the efforts needed to research and find them.
Great topic, one that's concerned me. Red Blossom Tea Company tests their teas for pesticides. Are there other companies that share this test information?
I think Yunnan sourcing does it as well. We sometimes do pesticide controls, but I think a field inspection tells a lot about how the tea gardens are managed.
@@farmerleaf61 thank you for even discussing it, and being willing to share and promote others. Thank you for all your efforts. I look forward to considering these things more in the future.
At the end of the video William said that you can avoid pesticides (not completely) by drinking "high quality" tea. I wonder what this definition is? Boutique vendors only? Is there factory tea that he considers high quality?
In this context, I would define high quality by tea that is sold at a relatively high price to small tea buyers (private collectors, tea shop owners, small businesses like us). The price of the tea depends on reputation, which is largely caused by taste but also by the cleanliness of the environment and the agricultural practices. In the past, Mahei village, in Yiwu, took a hit to its reputation because it was said they were spraying pesticides on the old trees. This led the buyers to favor the more natural and wild Eastern Yiwu terroirs instead. The reputation of Mahei has recovered and its tea sells for a high price, but it took some years...
Factories can ensure standards through contract farming with specific requirements regarding pesticides use, they can also take direct ownership of the plantations. Due to the large quantities produced, it would be harder to ensure no pesticides at all in their tea blends. Since most large factories lean on the cheaper side of the market, they will source tea from plantations in which pesticides are used, so you're more likely to find pesticides in a factory blends than in a boutique tea. Since most factories don't export abroad, EU or US regulations are not a concern. This is where an organic certification can make sense, I know Mengku Rongshi has organic tea which they grow themselves.
This content seems great for thinking this topic through, and reviewing some reliable background, but it doesn't extend to providing input into whether or not there are pesticides in any teas. An online contact set up sales in Europe and had a number of pu'er cakes he wanted to list tested, and as I recall a main outcome was that he couldn't sell one Xiaguan cake that registered too high for one compound. The other teas, which he bought promoted as from natural growth sources, claims of which often seem dubious to me, were all ok. Next one might consider if those limits really make sense, where they stand in relation to food content, or how that would've went differently if he had been trying to sell other tea types. Another tea contact warned that test results can be misleading, used as marketing rather than risk prevention, because vendors might test for what is easiest and least expensive to test for, not what might really pose a risk.
You can check the links in the description, a couple of studies do testings on many teas. Pesticides were most prevalent in fujian and taiwan oolong tea, and are found in all kinds of teas.
A lot of the limits are an educated guess at best, it can also be influenced by lobbies. There is always a trade-off to make between harm/risk and utility. Usually, we don't phase out a pesticide until we find an alternative to it.
Frankly, one should assume pesticide use due to the nature and scale of the tea economy. Whether these pesticides have an impact on human health, what these impacts are, and whether the severity of these impacts justifies any of the various possible interventions or behavioural modifications is a separate - and exceedingly complex issue.
@@adhocsophist right, and given all that some common sense approaches should offset risk. buying a couple of kilograms of the cheapest, unmarked tea from a local market probably maximizes risk, drinking a lot of the same thing, and knowing nothing about tea origin. just diversifying sources should spread out the risk. from there one can believe all the stores about organic natural growth or not; sometimes they would actually be true.
@@adhocsophist that is the problem really. These chemicals and their possible effects is so complex and we humans just use them without being able to completely understand all effects and possible effects they can have.
In my opinion with pesticides it's like with antibiotics. They are too tempting to use, because they are cheap and very effective, but have a risk of having side effects and the thing you want to fight might adapt to it. It is not dramatic to use them, but it really should be the last resort instead of the first try. There are often other, also effective ways, but they might require more effort and are not as comfortable as using a chemical substance.
For the consumer it is still a concern: u might live longer but at the expense of bad health from a host of priblems they cause. Eg, disrupted microbiome.
insect infestations were synthesized in the making of DFMR to allow these insects to attack the young shoots/leaves for a month, and then insecticide was applied to stop it - this is the trick used to mimick DFMR n fool innocent consumers
Jacobiasca formosana will thrive in an environment devoid of predators, pesticides can actually be used to give a clear ground and allow the jassid to colonize the garden more easily. Organic oriental beauty can still be produced (we sell one on the website), but you won't have a consistent harvest, they might not colonize the garden every year. Weather influences its propagation a lot, so it's quite a hit and miss tea.
This is such an emotive issue - the whole natural v synthetic thing is nonsense - one has to take any chemical on it merits or not. Of course the dose makes the poison - tea contains thousands of chemicals which could be harmful at the wrong level; see what harm l-theanine suppliments have done. As I understand it the vast majority of insecticide we consume are the natural products of the plants not what is sprayed. I am sure we will find more various negatives to these chemicals but that's true of many things - anyone concerned about pesticides thrown their mobile phones away for example?
I really don't like any of this. It's so sad because to me tea is a very natural and traditional feeling thing and act and all of this soulless and questionable modern chemistry really taints it. There is never any telling minor effects from things over time or what might come up in the future. Too many people, too much consumption, too much science and too many people that are too certain they have accounted for every eventuality when they have not. Not even touching on how much poison and processed things are in life in general now. Especially in the US here, lots of processed foods, chemicals and even things shoved in our water like fluoride we have no say in. Then also there is the industrialization issue. Heavy metals, soil changes, chemicals lingering.... so many things. Like how people were so sure for so long things like asbestos were safe or leaded gasoline. What is the next gigantic mistake humanity in their arrogance and naivety will make....
And yet ... we have access to completely unprecedented levels of life expentancy, medical breakthroughs allowing treatment of previously untreatable diseases, and so on. Sure, the choice exists for people to live unheatlhy lifestyles with poor diets, but again, it's a choice. I think, on sum, we can't consider ourselves less fortunate than previous generations, all things considered. And when it comes to tea, hardly a staple crop, I (maybe ignorantly) don't see how even a moderate consumption could lead to a significantly increased likelihood of illness.
@@daniel.lopresti levels of life expectancy are only higher because children don't die. The life expectancy of people in the medieval ages, if they survived childhood disease, was actually very high.
As with other forms of agriculture, the issue that really concerns me is the economic pressures that drive the industrialization of tea production. It's simply not ecologically sustainable to continue large scale monoculture, but neither is it economical to convert the entire sector over to sustainable farming practices. The available trade-offs exist at the margins and are unlikely to produce radical, let alone beneficial, change.
Pesticides are a very complex topic. The problem is not so much that it is a chemical, but that it often has a lot of poorly understood impacts. Those are often also not reflected in the LD50. For example, birth defects as a result of harmful chemicals is completely unaccounted. For a farmer, it is often a vicious cycle too, because you need specially cultivated plants that can survive your pesticides, so you have to pay twice. There is the open question whether certain modern pesticides are responsible for the death of insect populations here, most noticable the bee populations.
The counter question is how can agriculture work without pesticides. Historically farmers used to grow a combination of vegetables, so that certain pests are kept away. E.g. garlic and onion can be used to help against voles. Certain plants help to keep away lices etc. But all this doesn't agree with industrial agriculture...
In other words, as usual, it all comes down to price.
@@LongDistanceCall11 William mentioned it and I fully with that part: we don't have a good replacement for many pesticides. It's not a question of price per se but what trades you are willing to accept.
@@joergsonnenberger6836 this is what it really boils down to. Uncertainty about the risks, scarcity of resources available to allocated in any one direction, and a limited ability to evaluate the trade offs of various alternatives.
Neonicotinoids are suspected of harming the bees populations. It required a lot of research to come to this conclusion because, unlike measuring the LD50, it requires long term studies with many more factors to measure. Even when we identify the source of the problem, we need to find a way to fix it, and most of the time, it requires an alternative product. Implementing the change also requires time because lobbies will slow down the process and people need to change their habits.
Not using pesticides at all would be an ideal solution, and it is possible in some cases. But some crops rely on them if you want a cheap product. We can implement techniques used in the past as an alternative to pesticides, but if we want to keep the cheap food prices we have today, we can't go back to a traditional farming system. Tea enthusiasts are willing to buy expensive tea, but what about the bottled ice tea industry? As long as there are buyers for the cheap products and that governments make it legal, the pesticides will be used.
Organic farming is the way
Thank you for sharing this information and your thought. The depth in which you approach many topics that are not widely discussed regarding the world of tea is deeply insightful.
PPE...personal protective equipment. SO IMPORTANT. Was in secondary school, and we were working on a car. Guy was using a torch to remove a strut, and a flaming piece of rubber landed in the center of where his eyeball was, but he was wearing his PPE / Safety Glasses! Him and I exchanged a look that verified he would of been blinded in that eye, less the glassess, and I've used PPE always, since then.
Thank you for these important insights. I would add that measuring the effects of single or even multiple pesticides gives little indication of actual the level of effect. Many people have reached a toxic saturation point, called “toxic load”, after which even minor assaults on human biology can produce serious effects. Factors that influence toxic load include insecticides as well as medications, metals, parasites, viruses and bacteria, molds, pollens, electromagnetic fields, liver and other organ dysfunction, gut microbiome, genetics, and lifestyle choices such as smoking, alcohol, diet, noise and light pollution. Also, for a more comprehensive view of the effects of persistent and disruptive environmental contaminants, especially on the endocrine system, I highly recommend Our Stolen Future by Theo Colborn (Foreword by former Vice President Al Gore).
I really like your content sir, no matter what you choose to film it's always very insightful and interesting to watch. Please keep it up!
Thank you for watching!
Thank you very much for the insight.
What is your opinion on the half-life (at long term tea storing conditions) of the concerning chemicals?
I assume even if some amount is present in the tea, it degrades thus becomes inactive after a few months gradualy. So teas meant to be stored long term, may be even less concerning by that regard.
You can't compare it to the half life of radioactive products. The time it takes to degrade will vary massively depending on the environment: exposure to sunlight, temperature, humidity... You'd have to look at the degradation process of each pesticide. Regarding glyphosate, its original molecule degrades in a matter of days in a natural environment, but it creates byproducts: secondary molecules which stay longer and are the one which can be found widely in the environment. When studying the degradation of a product, you have to look at the chain of products, until they break down into more basic molecules.
the bird in the story about DDT was the bald eagle DDT nearly wiped them out in the late 60's and early 70's while it's still a problem the eagles are making a come back.
DDT and many other chemicals have a huge problem with persistence. The environmental half life can be in the decades, so even after we stopped using it, it still hangs around.
When William was talking about the aggressiveness of difference pesticides, I think he seriously underestimates how harmful some things are. One of the big problems we have in medicine right now is that the anti-fungal treatment options remaining as last line of defense are all super aggressive. Same for some of the reserve antibiotics. Pesticides are not that different in nature. But for pesticides we have the additional problem that we have a huge ecosystem that shouldn't be damaged by them either.
Thanks!
@@joergsonnenberger6836 I didn't make any estimations myself, I read some papers (linked in the description) and tried to give an overview of the issue. If you have more sources regarding the harm of pesticides, feel free to post. For this topic, I will only look at peer reviewed papers because the subject is controversial, you can't trust what you read about it in traditional media.
@@farmerleaf61 I don't dispute your sources, but sadly the published research papers cover only part of the problem.
The big elephant in the room noone wants to talk about is that the risk assessment is done with the suggested dose from the vendor, but the real world use is often significantly higher. A number of papers I found explicitly mentioned that there is little data beyond aggregated totals on the use of pesticides like glyphosate and the specific dose and application method by individual farmers is secret. You already mentioned that it is seen by many farmers as "unmanly" to use proper protection equipment or that their application is lax at best. The combination is not healthy.
The other big topic is the bioaccumulation of pesticides, even and especially in areas not directly exposed to them. This was seen especially in the on-going (in the EU) debate about the long-term impact of glyphosate. A number of independent studies have shown such bioaccumulation, but the majority of the research in this field is sponsored by the very companies that profit from the sales. If fish in nature preserves shows significant contamination not just with heavy metals, but also various pesticides, it means that pesticides have a far larger mobility than often acknowledged.
Where is DDT still being used, apart from professional wrestling?
I’m interested in how much tea you used and how much water in the tea you’re drinking since you brewed it for over a minute.
I brewed a tea from big trees of Ao Wa Du garden in Jingmai Mountain, it's one of the best teas we've made this year, very powerful, helped me get more talkative throughout the interview. We haven't released it yet.
Thank you for this video! Great research. It helped me a lot with anxiety. I have a chinese oolong tea. I am going to rinse it from now on. and keep enjoying it.
Interesting discussion. I suspect that we underestimate the long term effects of pesticides, especially of glyphosate, on the soil microbiome. Has soil health wrt pesticide load been looked in any detail?
The effect are researched and the effects are unclear. You could even argue that glyphosate helps preserve the soil microorganisms because they are an alternative for a till, which would for sure disturb the top soil. Glyphosate is widely used in conservation agriculture, which advocates for keeping the soil intact in order to have more life in it (microbes, funguns, nematodes, worms).
The scary part is, while we don't know the impact of glyphosate on most ecosystems, we can find this molecule and its byproducts almost everywhere in nature.
@@farmerleaf61 Pesticide efficacy likely scales with persistence in the environment: the more effective, the more dangerous.
It really depends on the pesticide used, how much independent testing has been done on it to establish an accurate safety profile for the products grown using that pesticide and what long-term effects it could possibly have on local populations of insects and in turn on the birds, lizards, amphibians, fish, mammals, ect. that depend on those insects as a major source of food and how the pesticide might also affect them after ingesting a contaminated source. For instance, there is a meme that was popularized several years ago concerning a certain rambunctious political commentator who during a rant made a comment amounting to "I don't like them turning the frogs gay". At the time people laughed this off as another crazy statement made by a crazy guy, but the reality is that he was talking about the pesticide Atrazine. Atrazine as it turns out actually does have a hormonal effect on frogs which alters the physical sex of the frog from male to female, literally turning male organs female. The creator of the chemical has constantly tried to cover this fact up and has published notably weak and biased studies supporting their stance, but there has been a lot of independent testing that verifies the pesticide actually does have such an effect and not only does it have that effect on frogs, but there is also evidence to suggest it lowers testosterone in children and increases estrogen and has been linked to several biological deformities related to that such as shrinking the average distance between the testes and anus of male children born in areas where there is heavy usage of the chemical. What really is disturbing about this, since you cite the FDA, is that the FDA has on numerous occasions published their own extremely weak and biased studies attempting to refute this information to support the pesticide manufacturer AND that the pesticide manufacture just so happens to donate large sums of money to the FDA to "fund research". The point here is that there are pesticides on the market of which there exists reams of evidence of major toxicity and either through incompetence or corruption they are still allowed to be used on crops and other land even though independent testing from major universities across the world shows they present an unacceptable risk to the locality and to anyone who might ingest crops using those chemicals.
Indeed, a lot is at stake regarding pesticides regulations. While we acknowledge the damage some of them can cause, we have no technical alternative for a given crop. There is currently a debate in France about the prohibition of neonicotinoids, a family of insecticides proven to have a large impact on bee colonies. These pesticides are crucial for beet cultivation, forbidding them will mean the farmers will have to grow other crops and several supply chains will be altered. The politicians will decide on what will be done. The issue is complex, but your vote matters.
@@farmerleaf61 I don't begrudge the farmers for using the pesticides and agree that they absolutely are necessary if we intend to be able to support the current needs of the world population, I just think that more research should be put into finding effective pesticides with less severe potential side-effects.
One example that comes to mind of a pesticide that doesn't have anything to do with farming, yet still affects people all over the world are those pesticides meant to treat or eradicate bed bugs. There are a bunch of pesticides used to treat the issue, but the problem is that the bugs have become extremely resistant to them, so much so that most commercial pesticides used to treat them in lab studies are barely more effective than tap water. The interesting twist though is that bed bugs are highly susceptible to two very basic methods of elimination, both of which are non-toxic and have near 100% efficacies and those simple treatments are diatomaceous earth and heat over 50C over the course of at least 15 minutes will kill 100% of them and their eggs. The diatomaceous earth is also extremely effective due to it being an extremely potent desiccant which is also an extremely fine powder. The powder will get stuck to their exoskeleton and literally suck the water out of them until they die of rapid dehydration and they thus far have been completely unable to evolve defenses to either of these methods. So the options in this case are to spread around a pesticide that is mildly toxic to pets and humans in order to have barely any effect of the bed bugs OR to put a powerful space heater in the room for an hour or to spread around a light dusting of powder.
I realize the correlation between outdoor pests and inside ones certainly can't be examined 1:1, but I just want to illustrate the possibility that there are better methods out there for keeping crops safe. Agriculture and industry just need to put in the efforts needed to research and find them.
Great topic, one that's concerned me. Red Blossom Tea Company tests their teas for pesticides. Are there other companies that share this test information?
I think Yunnan sourcing does it as well. We sometimes do pesticide controls, but I think a field inspection tells a lot about how the tea gardens are managed.
@@farmerleaf61 thank you for even discussing it, and being willing to share and promote others. Thank you for all your efforts.
I look forward to considering these things more in the future.
Does this include USDA Organically grown tea?
At the end of the video William said that you can avoid pesticides (not completely) by drinking "high quality" tea. I wonder what this definition is? Boutique vendors only? Is there factory tea that he considers high quality?
In this context, I would define high quality by tea that is sold at a relatively high price to small tea buyers (private collectors, tea shop owners, small businesses like us). The price of the tea depends on reputation, which is largely caused by taste but also by the cleanliness of the environment and the agricultural practices. In the past, Mahei village, in Yiwu, took a hit to its reputation because it was said they were spraying pesticides on the old trees. This led the buyers to favor the more natural and wild Eastern Yiwu terroirs instead. The reputation of Mahei has recovered and its tea sells for a high price, but it took some years...
Factories can ensure standards through contract farming with specific requirements regarding pesticides use, they can also take direct ownership of the plantations. Due to the large quantities produced, it would be harder to ensure no pesticides at all in their tea blends. Since most large factories lean on the cheaper side of the market, they will source tea from plantations in which pesticides are used, so you're more likely to find pesticides in a factory blends than in a boutique tea. Since most factories don't export abroad, EU or US regulations are not a concern. This is where an organic certification can make sense, I know Mengku Rongshi has organic tea which they grow themselves.
Its a great piece of information! Could you please tell what are the most harmful pesticides used in tea plantation. And also their organic options.
This content seems great for thinking this topic through, and reviewing some reliable background, but it doesn't extend to providing input into whether or not there are pesticides in any teas. An online contact set up sales in Europe and had a number of pu'er cakes he wanted to list tested, and as I recall a main outcome was that he couldn't sell one Xiaguan cake that registered too high for one compound. The other teas, which he bought promoted as from natural growth sources, claims of which often seem dubious to me, were all ok.
Next one might consider if those limits really make sense, where they stand in relation to food content, or how that would've went differently if he had been trying to sell other tea types. Another tea contact warned that test results can be misleading, used as marketing rather than risk prevention, because vendors might test for what is easiest and least expensive to test for, not what might really pose a risk.
You can check the links in the description, a couple of studies do testings on many teas. Pesticides were most prevalent in fujian and taiwan oolong tea, and are found in all kinds of teas.
A lot of the limits are an educated guess at best, it can also be influenced by lobbies. There is always a trade-off to make between harm/risk and utility. Usually, we don't phase out a pesticide until we find an alternative to it.
Frankly, one should assume pesticide use due to the nature and scale of the tea economy.
Whether these pesticides have an impact on human health, what these impacts are, and whether the severity of these impacts justifies any of the various possible interventions or behavioural modifications is a separate - and exceedingly complex issue.
@@adhocsophist right, and given all that some common sense approaches should offset risk. buying a couple of kilograms of the cheapest, unmarked tea from a local market probably maximizes risk, drinking a lot of the same thing, and knowing nothing about tea origin. just diversifying sources should spread out the risk. from there one can believe all the stores about organic natural growth or not; sometimes they would actually be true.
@@adhocsophist that is the problem really. These chemicals and their possible effects is so complex and we humans just use them without being able to completely understand all effects and possible effects they can have.
In my opinion with pesticides it's like with antibiotics. They are too tempting to use, because they are cheap and very effective, but have a risk of having side effects and the thing you want to fight might adapt to it.
It is not dramatic to use them, but it really should be the last resort instead of the first try. There are often other, also effective ways, but they might require more effort and are not as comfortable as using a chemical substance.
For the consumer it is still a concern: u might live longer but at the expense of bad health from a host of priblems they cause. Eg, disrupted microbiome.
Hi, how was you Yiwu sample pack?
it was very good, I very much enjoyed the Chaqi of some of the teas, I still have a few sessions left.
can I avoid pesticides by drinking only dongfang meiren ?
No, there are a lot of pesticides which can use in DFMR production
insect infestations were synthesized in the making of DFMR to allow these insects to attack the young shoots/leaves for a month, and then insecticide was applied to stop it - this is the trick used to mimick DFMR n fool innocent consumers
@@milliemillennium7640 what do you mean by „synthesized“?
Jacobiasca formosana will thrive in an environment devoid of predators, pesticides can actually be used to give a clear ground and allow the jassid to colonize the garden more easily. Organic oriental beauty can still be produced (we sell one on the website), but you won't have a consistent harvest, they might not colonize the garden every year. Weather influences its propagation a lot, so it's quite a hit and miss tea.
This is such an emotive issue - the whole natural v synthetic thing is nonsense - one has to take any chemical on it merits or not. Of course the dose makes the poison - tea contains thousands of chemicals which could be harmful at the wrong level; see what harm l-theanine suppliments have done. As I understand it the vast majority of insecticide we consume are the natural products of the plants not what is sprayed. I am sure we will find more various negatives to these chemicals but that's true of many things - anyone concerned about pesticides thrown their mobile phones away for example?
Roundup and Agent Orange
I really don't like any of this. It's so sad because to me tea is a very natural and traditional feeling thing and act and all of this soulless and questionable modern chemistry really taints it. There is never any telling minor effects from things over time or what might come up in the future.
Too many people, too much consumption, too much science and too many people that are too certain they have accounted for every eventuality when they have not.
Not even touching on how much poison and processed things are in life in general now. Especially in the US here, lots of processed foods, chemicals and even things shoved in our water like fluoride we have no say in.
Then also there is the industrialization issue. Heavy metals, soil changes, chemicals lingering.... so many things. Like how people were so sure for so long things like asbestos were safe or leaded gasoline. What is the next gigantic mistake humanity in their arrogance and naivety will make....
And yet ... we have access to completely unprecedented levels of life expentancy, medical breakthroughs allowing treatment of previously untreatable diseases, and so on. Sure, the choice exists for people to live unheatlhy lifestyles with poor diets, but again, it's a choice. I think, on sum, we can't consider ourselves less fortunate than previous generations, all things considered. And when it comes to tea, hardly a staple crop, I (maybe ignorantly) don't see how even a moderate consumption could lead to a significantly increased likelihood of illness.
@@daniel.lopresti levels of life expectancy are only higher because children don't die. The life expectancy of people in the medieval ages, if they survived childhood disease, was actually very high.
Taiwanese milk oolong is pesticide free
No they use pesticides on the milk so it's not
How many tea farmers contract Parkinson’s?
You don't contract Parkinson's you develop Parkinson's