One of the things we pride ourselves on is our commitment to natural farming. Our partner farmers never use chemicals or sprays of any kind, holding to standards of farming that are even stricter than those required for organic certification in Japan.
This is incredibly rare, especially in the world of high-end matcha. Typically, the term "organic" is associated with lower quality tea, since it is only large factory farms that can afford the official designation. Consequently, even matcha snobs are surprised when they find a good matcha that was grown organically. They have come to expect a flavor profile that can typically only be achieved through copious quantities of chemical fertilizers dumped into the soil, which increases the production of savory amino acids. Needless to say, this is not representative of what matcha tasted like in pre-industrial Japan, before these farming methods were available. Tastes change, and that's okay, so long as the change is sustainable. Chemically treated tea, however, is not sustainable. It is not good for the bushes, the environment, or consumers. I could go on and on, because these practices honestly get me worked up, but I want to focus today on the use of pesticides in Japan, and exactly what the costs of these pesticides are.
How prevalent are pesticides in Japanese Tea?
Lots of fertilizer, as mentioned, is the norm. This makes the tea leaves taste better not only to humans, but to bugs. That is to say, it is virtually impossible to grow tea using standard fertilizing methods without also spraying the leaves with insecticide. The main types of insecticides used in Japan are Neonicotinoids. Basically, synthetic analogues of nicotine. We'll get into the effects of these pesticides later, but let's start by looking into how widespread they are.
In a 2021 study out of Japan entitled "Neonicotinoid residues in commercial Japanese Tea leaves produced by organic and conventional farming methods," researchers analyzed 103 samples of tea leaves for the residues of 7 varieties of pesticides. The findings were quite frightening. The most common chemical, thiacloprid, was found in 84.47% of the samples. Dinotefuran was in 74.76%, and imidacloprid and clothianidin in 69.90%. 94.20% of the leaves were found to have at least two types of neonicotinoid simultaneously.
Organic tea leaves were found to still have residues of these pesticides, but at substantially lower concentrations than the conventionally-grown ones. This is theorized to be due to soil and water contamination from neighboring conventional farms, or from previously conventional farms that have recently turned organic. Neonicotinoids can have an incredibly long half-life, and as a result can linger in the environment for years after last being sprayed. So, the good news is that organic farming methods reduce noenicotinoids. The bad news is that they won't be completely absent until organic methods are the norm.
Why is this a problem?
From a health standpoint, neonicotinoids are seen as preferable to older forms of pesticides. Emerging evidence indicates that, on the whole, they are still pretty bad. Take, for instance, a study entitled "Neurotoxic Effects of Neonicotinoids on Mammals." The name already tells you quite a lot. The study explains that neonicotinoids are structurally very similar to Nicotine, a known neurotoxin. It was previously believed that these compounds were only toxic to insects, but not mammals. However, mammals very much have receptors that respond to nicotine analogues - principally the Nicotinic Acetylcholine receptors, which are widely distributed throughout the entire nervous system. It is true, nicotine does not kill us as readily as it kills beetles and flies, but the view that it is completely benign is unquestionably outdated.
It would be a bit too ambitious of me to try to catalogue the entire array of toxic effects of neonicotinoids - and probably unnecessary, as I'm sure most of you are familiar with the harms of nicotine itself - but the study above does have a nice chart with the results of several different studies conducted on rats and mice (it is generally considered unethical to test for toxic effects on human subjects, so such studies are lacking). Here are some findings that grabbed me in particular:
1. Less exploratory behavior - a general test of depressive behavior in rodents.
2. Reduced serotonin, dopamine, and GABA
3. Neural degeneration
4. Hippocampal damage (hippocampal neurogenesis is particularly linked to mental illness, with lower rates of neuronal growth among those who are depressed, anxious, etc.).
5. Alteration of learning, consolidation, and memory retrieval
6. Poorer mitochondrial health
7. Anxiety-like behavior
Bear in mind I have a particular interest in mental health, and this study looked at neurotoxicity in particular. The likelihood of toxic effects in other parts of the body is high, given the wide distribution of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors throughout the nervous system.
In fact, there is already a growing collection of case reports of adverse health effects of neonicotinoids, particularly out of Japan. Yet another study, "Human neonicotinoids exposure in Japan," paints a picture of clear harm upon even modest exposure to these chemicals. The researchers compiled data from 1,111 cases where neonicotinoid exposure was determined to be the principal cause of various health symptoms, including tremors, impaired short term memory, fever, fatigue, headache, heart palpitations and chest pain, abdominal pain, muscle pain/weakness/spasms, and cough. In each of these cases, avoiding further exposure to these pesticides helped resolve symptoms. Furthermore, 549 of these cases were found to be due to neonicotinoid exposure from consuming conventionally grown fruit, veggies, and tea. For some patients, simply consuming 500ml of conventionally grown green tea per day for a few months was enough to cause symptoms. That is to say, these symptoms can show up while drinking rather normal volumes of tea.
There are many, many more studies going into further health risks of neonicotinoids. There are perhaps even more unveiling their environmental risk, especially when it comes to beneficial insects, like bees. It is for these environmental reasons that the EU has seriously limited the amount of neonicotinoids allowed for domestically-grown produce. The US, too, has put limits in place that are much stronger than those imposed in Japan. In Japan, the upper legal limit for the use of these chemicals is still very high.
What can we do about it?
If you recall the first study I mentioned, it noted that organic farming really does work in bringing down the overall level of pesticide exposure. It happens slowly, and we won't have zero environmental exposure to neonicotinoids until everyone adopts organic methods, but it does work. In the meantime, it is important to support those farmers who do pursue organic methods, especially because they have a particularly tough hill to climb in Japan. People seriously look down on non-conventional tea farmers, assuming that good matcha just cannot be grown using organic methods. This is true not only in Japan, but among aficionados in the West. This absolutely needs to change. They did not use chemical fertilizers in pre-industrial Japan. To assume that, as a rule, the matcha of, say, the 1600s was inherently worse than our chemical-laden tea today is an incredibly arrogant position - yet it is the one most matcha aficionados adopt. The teas of today are perhaps different than the teas of yesterday, but they are also unsustainable, less healthy, and less aromatically complex as a result of a fixation on Umami above all other flavors. So, whether you're ordering your matcha from us or from others, please consider giving organic and/or natural tea farmers a chance to prove to you that great tea can still be grown without chemicals. Only when the market changes will all of those conventional farmers change with it.
Links:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214750021001670
http://jsce-ac.umin.jp/200725/jjce23_1_14.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8395098/