Living Off The Land

Throw away your artificial pesticides and fertilizers, and instead look to bridging the material and spiritual world as the solution to your problems. In the year before his death in 1925, the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner delivered eight lectures titled “Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture.” The farmlands of Europe had been ravaged by World War I, growing industrialization and the increased use of artificial chemicals in agriculture, and so Austrian farmers had turned to Steiner to address the problem of declining fertility in their lands.

Steiner’s solution was biodynamics, a theory he developed that considers the entirety of a farm as a living being placed within the context of wider lunar patterns and cosmic rhythms. Steiner saw the soil not as a substrate for plant growth, but as an organism in its own right. He recognized the importance of biodiversity and sustainability, both ecological and social, in ensuring that farmlands remained vital. Throughout the 20th century, a number of farmers have attempted to implement Steiner’s ideas in areas as diverse as vine cultivation and dairy farming, but none has done so more comprehensively and with more success than Rajah Banerjee, owner of the Makaibari Tea Estate in Darjeeling, India. 

Makaibari is a 1,574-acre tea estate in the southern part of Darjeeling, two-thirds of which is covered by virgin rainforest. In anyone’s book, the estate’s track record and the passionate leadership of its owner are exceptional: Makaibari was the first Darjeeling estate to be certified as organic in 1988, the first tea estate in the world to gain fair-trade certification and, since 2006, a Makaibari white tea has held the world record for the most expensive tea ever sold at auction. Banerjee credits the estate’s success to the harmony between management, workers and the land, which has been achieved as a result of following Steiner’s principles. He believes Makaibari is a way of life, not just a tea garden.

The aspect of Steiner’s theories that has drawn the most skepticism is undoubtedly his biodynamic preparations, the substances that are added to the soil in place of conventional fertilizers. Steiner’s list of requisite fertilizers includes cow manure fermented in a cow horn and buried in the autumn; ground quartz and rainwater packed in a cow horn and buried in the spring; yarrow flowers fermented in a stag’s bladder; and oak bark fermented in a cow’s skull. These methods are used across the Makaibari estate to enrich the soil with light and dark energy, as well as the life forces associated with each of the buried animal parts.

Conventional scientists have tended to ignore biodynamics, passing off Steiner’s preparations as esoteric and reducing the success of farms such as Makaibari merely to anecdotal evidence. However, the scientific community has begun to look more closely at biodynamism. Articles published in the journal Science in 1993 and 2002 suggest that biodynamic farms have better soil quality, greater biodiversity, and equal or greater net returns per hectare than their conventional counterparts. Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, a postgraduate research student at Washington State University, has shown this to be attributable to the increased temperatures, faster maturation and higher nitrate levels found in composts that have been treated with Steiner’s preparations as compared to composts receiving a placebo.

But Steiner’s theories go far beyond the soil and plants to look at the relationship between people and their natural environment. Taking over the estate from his father in the 1970s, Banerjee’s first action was to halt the felling of virgin rainforest on his land. This was a brave decision as it limited the opportunity for expanding areas under tea cultivation, but Banerjee recognized the importance of retaining wildlife habitats and plant diversity and preventing the soil erosion and landslips that plague so many of Darjeeling’s tea estates during the annual monsoon.

Thirty years on the gamble has paid off, and Makaibari’s topsoil is rich in nutrients and protected from the damage of heavy rainfall by a thick layer of perma-culture mulch made from hundreds of varieties of plants. Wildlife is thriving in the estate to the point that a giant earthworm unseen for 120 years has made its reappearance in Makaibari’s soil, and the Tea Deva, an insect that accurately mimics the tea leaf, has evolved within the confines of the estate. The slightest mention of the Tea Deva elicits an excited response from Banerjee, and he reiterates Steiner’s statement that when a farm becomes truly biodynamic, nature will complement your endeavors in mimicry of your principal crop.

The cows, whose manure is such an important part of Steiner’s preparations, have become integrally linked with the lives of Makaibari workers. Cows have been given to each group of houses, and the manure they produce is sold back to Banerjee for use in the tea fields and also processed in biogas converters to provide power for cooking. Two cows provide enough clean energy for four to five kitchens, and can be produced in a tank in the garden while, perhaps most importantly, freeing up time to tend to other tasks. Whereas previously collecting firewood would take several hours a day and deplete the forests, now the power is quite literally on tap. Women have more time to get involved with affairs on the estate and can also spend time engaging in other activities, such as selling their excess dairy products, growing organic vegetables in their gardens, manufacturing handmade papers, hosting tourists in homestays and running small restaurants that can generate income in addition to what they earn from picking tea. The women have been so successful in these forms of commerce that Banerjee estimates their total monthly income may be as much as 30 times higher than that of women on other estates. The immaculately maintained homes and gardens, well-dressed families and confident, smiling faces certainly support this claim.

Makaibari also stands apart from other estates in Darjeeling and further afield because of its management hierarchy or, perhaps more accurately, its lack thereof. Top-down management does not easily correspond with the social harmony required by Steiner, and so Banerjee has adopted a novel approach to running the estate. Rather than structuring his relationship with the workers as one between an employer and employees, he has propounded instead stakeholder partnerships in which all of the workers are required to take an active role in running the estate and the direction of its development. Joint body meetings of elected members, predominantly women, take place fortnightly to cover development issues and determine how funds are to be spent.

Another uniquely Darjeeling experience:
Glenburn Tea Estate

 If you saw Wes Anderson’s film “The Darjeeling Limited” and thought you might like to re-create the adventure, start well before the plot begins and take a pilgrimage to Glenburn. It was while staying at this, the most magical of tea estates, that Anderson conceived the idea for the film. Quite frankly, he could hardly have been anything but inspired.
    Some 370 miles from Kolkata and an hour or so from Darjeeling town, the Glenburn Tea Estate clings to the foothills of the Himalayas, bordering the kingdom of Sikkim. Kanchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain, dominates the horizon, and two rivers, the Rungeet and the Rung Dung, entwine themselves as they run through valleys that would not be out of place in a Tolkien novel. Overlooking it all is the Burra Bungalow, Glenburn’s boutique hotel and former home of the estate manager, Sanjay Sharma.
    Other than the spectacular natural environment, there are two things that set Glenburn apart from other places to stay in Darjeeling or, indeed, anywhere else in the world. First, you will never be crowded by other people. There are just four rooms in the Burra Bungalow, with another four due to open later this year. The result is that it simply doesn’t feel like a hotel; you are a guest in a home, welcome to roam around the estate all day and then return for drinks, dinner and lively conversation around the giant dining table once darkness falls. Next, the attention to detail of Glenburn’s staff (who outnumber guests five to one) is second to none. Freshly prepared picnics, afternoon tea and fresh juice appear from nowhere across the estate, whether you are trekking the two hours down to the river or merely mooching in the garden. The food, ingredients for which are grown organically on the estate wherever possible, is exquisite, and guests are treated to both Nepali and Naga dishes as well as international cuisine.
    Lest you think that Glenburn exists to provide a tourist paradise, think again. Huge energy is undoubtedly put into making the Glenburn experience perfect for visitors, but the fact remains that the estate’s principal business is tea. The estate comprises 1,600 acres of tea and jungle, and employs around 900 people in tea production. A population of 4,700 people is supported by the estate, which clothes and feeds them as well as providing health care and education. The estate’s management takes responsibility for local development, and if you’re interested, they will share every aspect of their work with you, from factory tours and tea tastings to school and hospital visits. Glenburn offers an unrivaled opportunity to retreat from the rest of the world, but also the chance to understand and engage with the community that works and lives there.

Current priorities for the group are the improvement of sanitation and building toilets, as well as educating people about the importance of cleanliness for good health. Members of the group have designed and made illustrated, laminated posters showing the consequences of good and bad hygiene habits so that the message can reach everyone in the villages, regardless of whether or not they can read. Banerjee himself is a member of the committee, but in the 17 years the joint body has been running, he has yet to cast a vote; all matters have been satisfactorily settled by a democratic majority of the other committee members. So confident is Banerjee of the efficacy of this method of running Makaibari that once he retires he intends to leave the estate not to his two sons but to the stakeholders who live and work on the estate.

Whatever soil samples, ecological data and household incomes may imply, the success or failure of any production method in the tea industry will ultimately be judged at the point of sale only by the quality of its tea. A single sip of Makaibari’s Silver Needle or Muscatel teas will tell you that Rudolf Steiner and Rajah Banerjee are on to something very special indeed: the liquor is light and fragrant, surprisingly sweet on the tongue, and after every cup you are left in no doubt that cow horns and quartz, stags’ bladders and a workforce in touch with its environment really do produce a superior cup of tea, regardless of whether cosmic energy or more conventional scientific forces are at play. Banerjee no longer sells his tea at auction, preferring instead to use the reputation of Makaibari and the effectively guaranteed return of previous customers to ensure his tea prices remain high. In these private sales, he regularly breaks his own world-record auction price, and does so content in the knowledge that all the profits made from sales of Makaibari tea can be plowed straight back into the estate’s development without losing a cut to agents.

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