Biodiversity and the Tea Farm of the Future
- Dr. Dave Augeri
- Jun 5
- 8 min read
Updated: Jun 8
Tea is farmed as a monoculture with very low diversity of fauna and flora in most tea gardens. How do we restore and enhance biodiversity in our tea fields to provide the farmer with a biodiversity boost (ensuring ecosystem services such as pollinators, soil microbial activity, etc. exist) and create a “net biodiversity positive tea sector” that contributes to local, regional, and global needs, such as via the Kunming- Montreal Biodiversity Agreement Objectives?
Biodiversity and the Tea Farm of the Future
Annabel Kalmar and Dr. Dave M. Augeri
Annabel Kalmar, MBA, is an Agricultural Economist, CEO of Tea Rebellion, and co-leader of the Regenerative Tea Action Project (RTAP)
Dave M. Augeri, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Conservation Biology, Founder/Board Chair of World Institute for Society and the Environment, and CEO of Biodiversity Unlimited Research and Consulting Group,
In this article, we explore what tea farmers can do to actively restore and enhance biodiversity in and around their tea fields. As part of this we contrast the monocrop that tea is today with the necessity for tea farming of the future, which may allow the tea farmer to not only earn a premium for biodiverse tea, but also earn income directly from creating biodiversity.
Biodiversity in Tea Ecosystems
Tea is a perennial which means that one tea crop is in the field for 30+ years, with pruning happening every three or so years and regular harvests every 7-15 days. For some tea growing areas, the tea harvesting season is all year round (Eastern Africa) or just ½ or ¾ of a year (most Asian tea growing countries). Most current tea farming system are very low in biodiversity as all available farm land (including hill sides) are usually cleared, tilled, and planted to obtain the highest yield. In addition, on conventionally farmed tea estates the normal practice is to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides, etc., which increase soil acidification, create ecological imbalances, and harm and kill above and below ground biodiversity throughout the plantation and portions of the surrounding ecosystem.
The Fallacy of Intercropping
For 30 years intercropping has been promoted to intensify the yield from small acreages, diversify income sources, add crop species to a given area, and supposedly contribute positively to the environment. However, intercropping does not effectively increase biodiversity. Furthermore, it has always been difficult in the tea sector for mostly operational and efficiency reasons and, hence, it never really took off.
We believe it is best for the tea sector, along with the health of the planet and society, to bust this myth once and for all. Stay with us as we explain why most intercropping is not conducive for properly enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem health, in addition to being impractical for a perennial like tea.
Bio-Diversity Explained
Biodiversity is the biological variety and variability of life on Earth. It is a measure of variation in the environment at the genetic, species, taxonomic group, and ecosystem levels. Thus, it encompasses the ecological, biological, and evolutionary processes that sustain all life on Earth, including every tea farm and farmer. Consequently, biodiversity is critical for the functioning of the Earth, integral to a healthy and stable environment, ensures environmental resilience, and is fundamentally essential and irreplaceable for the existence, health and well-being of all life on Earth.
In essence, biodiversity is the fabric and engine of life. The millions of species on Earth are what provide the essential products and services that are vital for the proper functioning of ALL natural and human systems, including all agricultural operations. Biodiversity provides crucial life sustaining services that support all people, economies, societies, cultures, and nations around the world. It is diversity on the multiple levels in this biological array that makes all of this is possible.
Biodiversity Provides:
Supporting Services (e.g., pollination, soil formation, nutrient inputs, water filtration, etc.).
Provisioning Services (e.g., food, medicines, clean water, fuel, timber, oxygen, and other products, etc.).
Regulating Services (e.g., nutrient cycling, CO2 sequestration, climate regulation, disease regulation, erosion mitigation, etc.).
Cultural Services (e.g., educational, aesthetic, spiritual, and cultural heritage values, recreation, and tourism).
Biodiversity drives these ecosystem services that every person on Earth benefits from, including team farmers. A conservative estimate of the global value of all ecosystem services are estimated to be worth at least $125 - $145 trillion USD per year for society, which we get for free. At least 55% of global GDP ($58 trillion USD), including agriculture, is dependent on biodiversity and the environment and, therefore, is highly exposed to environmental damages.
One of the main reasons why intercropping does not increase or enhance biodiversity is because it is assumed that by adding a few additional cash crops to an area, whether that is at the same time or in rotation, this is supposedly equivalent to increasing biodiversity. This is not true. While the number of cash crop species, which are very often non-native, might be increased from one or two to or three or four, this does not equate to biodiversity. Just counting the number of species in an area is not at all sufficient. By contrast, accounting for actual biodiversity must include:
Richness = Number of native species and variety of taxonomic groups.
Evenness = Abundance (number of individuals of each species and taxon)
Distribution = Extent of each species across an area.
These three characteristics are vital for understanding and accounting for the biodiversity of an area. In addition, it must include Functional Diversity, which is the variety of functional roles of species (and taxa) along with that of each individual in that species (and taxon). These roles are essential for ecosystem health, services, and processes. In other words, if there are several species in an area performing the same or similar functions in the system, this results in redundancy and is usually harmful, such as leading to the mortality and possible extinction of native species that provide critical specialty roles and services.
Therefore, the biodiversity of an area includes the diversity, abundance, richness, and distribution of all of its species and taxonomic groups of plants, insects, mammals, birds, herpetofauna, macro- and micro-organisms, and others in the soils and above ground. All of these species provide the crucial functional roles and services that enable farms and farmers to exist and flourish. Thus, whether it is monoculture farms and plantations, or adding a few additional cash crops to them, intercropping does not help and may actually harm the biodiversity and vital ecosystem services in an area that are ironically necessary for those farms and plantations.
Importantly, regenerative farming can not only enhance biodiversity, but also reduce costs while increasing productivity and income. With its dual focus on soil fertility and ecosystem resilience, recommended practices for tea (such as no till in the first 20 cm of topsoil, mulching, and agroforestry with native species) have multiple agronomic benefits. These include water retention, enhanced soil organic matter, more microbial activity in the soil, and increased above and below ground biodiversity. They also all directly create global benefits by increasing Soil Organic Carbon (SOC).
How can Biodiversity Generate Income?
Biodiversity becomes sustainable for local farming communities if it is directly linked to income sources that together create livelihoods. There are many ways in which this might work:
Payment for Ecosystem Services – Various schemes exist in this realm. In essence, farmers are paid to create, maintain, and enhance ecosystem services and co-benefits of the natural area(s) surrounding their farms. In addition, while still relatively new and much more complex than Carbon Credits – Biodiversity Credits can directly pay a farmer for creating, maintaining, and enhancing biodiversity on their land.
Premiums for Biodiverse Tea - This already exists for Forest Grown tea, but very little innovation is happening for tea grown in actual farming systems. However, we hope that by creating the “Tea Farm of the Future” we will stimulate AI driven innovation to reward farmers for enhancing biodiversity in and around their tea fields. The GSMA tracking app might be a suitable too and can help understanding of what species thrive in a tea dominated ecosystem.
Income from Native Species: Examples include Wild Honey and Butterfly Farming, which do not require giving up tea bushes and can be farmed in parallel from tea fields and biodiversity corridors. Examples of this are found throughout Southeast Asia, such as in Sumatra with Forum Konservasi Leuser.
Creating Native ‘Polycultures’ that attract the right pollinators, insects, and other flora and fauna while diversifying income sources: Examples of this might be bamboo and hemp that are native to many tea growing areas. If they are planted and managed appropriately via regenerative farming, protection of surrounding native habitats, and are limited in extent and interspersed with biodiversity corridors (which should also be interspersed throughout a tea farm), these native crop species are a good income source for local and international markets while also helping to enhance the biodiversity of an area more than other cash crops.
The Tea Farm of the Future
Creating biodiversity in a perennial farming ecosystem is a long-term investment, from which benefits will accrue over many years. Our tea farm of the future aims to build a system that creates ecosystem resilience by restoring natural species that are endemic and beneficial for biodiversity and surrounding ecosystems. This allows farmers to benefit agronomically from having key ecosystem services like pollinators on their lands and making this economically sustainable by earning income from biodiversity as outlined in 1-4 above.
A key design criterion for our tea farm of the future are natural biodiversity corridors to attract native species and increase biodiversity, which will support the tea fields and other activities in the area. The best thing to do is to leave this area without actually clearing that land to avoid losing it in the first place. The second best is to let it develop naturally and possibly enhance with native seedings. These native seedlings can be used to enhance the biodiversity corridors in the main tea fields as well as reclaimed natural habitats on the borders of tea land, which will increase and enhance native pollinators and other ecosystem services. Our vision is that community organizations are managing both the seedlings and reclaimed habitats, including any nearby water sources.
In this scenario the tea farmer would earn a premium on producing biodiversity-friendly tea as well as income from other natural sources, such as wild honey, butterfly farming, and perhaps bamboo and native flowers. In addition, the farmer could earn payment for ecosystem services (pollinators in this example). Note: We excluded any carbon related payments for simplicity in this example.
Recommendations for Tea & Biodiversity
Here is a list practices used in different locations to help tea farmers pilot new practices and learn from what already works.
Allow biodiversity to remain in place (do not plant all your land) – when you are clearing for farmland, you are destroying something that is very hard to rebuild. So, the best thing is to NOT destroy at all and work with the existing farm land. But if you have to clear, do not clear all of it. We recommend that you keep a minimum of 25% of the existing farmland as a biodiversity buffer sprinkled across your total area as suggested in Figure 1.
Create Biodiversity Corridors – where #1 is not an option, you can create wild seedling and shrub corridors (ranging in width from 2-5 metres wide) in your tea fields that connect with reclaimed natural habitats and raise resilience in your system. Enhance this overtime by adding more and more native species.
Track your Species & Wildlife: By knowing what species co-exist with the Tea Farm of the future you can better understand your ecosystem and ensure balance. Consider tracking species counts and diversities in your area with tracking devices such as the GSMA Biodiversity Tracking app. This app was launched with the Monsoon Tea traceability system that uses solar-powered sensors to record the sound of the tea forests and transmit the daily recordings. The sounds are analyzed using AI tools that identify the exact insect, bird, and animal species and then translated into species counts to assess the level of biodiversity.
Innovate with physical or Integrated Pest Management – Pests in our biodiverse Tea Farm of the Future will be kept in balance through methods that organic tea farms have successfully used for many decades. Examples include thrashing top leaves and raking weeds against snakes or physical collectors of pests near tea fields through light or noise makers against certain birds or pigeons.
Call to Action: Join the Regenerative Tea Action Project to work together to accelerate climate and biodiversity positive practices in the tea sector.
