Shade-Grown Tea Not As Sustainable As Shade-Grown Coffee

Feb. 4, 2012 - PRLog -- Alex Zorach of RateTea has published an essay outlining the critical differences between shade-grown coffee and shade-grown tea, and arguing that the term "shade-grown" is misused or used in a misleading way to refer to tea production.  He argues for the use of the term "shaded" to replace "shade-grown" in referring to modern tea cultivation practices.

Shade-grown coffee refers to coffee that has been grown under a forest canopy.  Shade-grown tea, on the other hand, refers to a very different practice, in which tea is grown in full sun, under conventional agricultural methods, and then is shaded by a mesh or screen during the last phase of its growing cycle, before harvest.  This process of shading tea is used in the production of some Japanese teas, such as gyokuro, and is also sometimes used in oolong teas.

Shade-grown coffee has grown in popularity due to the fact that it is a more environmentally sustainable practice.  Shade-grown coffee plantations provide valuable habitats for migrating birds and provide a semi-natural rainforest ecosystem that can help sustain healthy populations of plants, animals, and other organisms.  Because of this, the "shade-grown" label carries strong positive connotations.

"Shade-grown" tea on the other hand refers merely to a production process that is used to influence the flavor, and has no additional positive impact on ecology or sustainability.  There is no forest canopy, and there is thus no benefit in terms of biodiversity or sustainability.

More information:

http://cazort.blogspot.com/2011/07/shade-grown-tea-vs-sha...

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Alex Zorach's tea blog is a blog about tea, including ecological and cultural issues relating to tea. Loosely associated with, but separate from RateTea, this blog is a place for musings and any writings of a more personal nature that are tea-related but outside the scope of individual tea reviews on RateTea.