Why are you particular about making tea without fertilizers and pesticides?

Why do you make tea without using fertilizers and pesticides?
Why Natural Farming?
Are you the type of person who believes in something you can't see? (In short, the question is, is it spiritual?)
In the first place, if you don't do fertilizer, you can't make tea, right?
Insects and diseases are absolutely amazing, aren't they?
What are you doing with the grass?
If there is no fertilizer, the color and luster will deteriorate, and there will be no umami, right?
And isn't it hard to rub tea?

We are often asked that we are doing conventional farming methods (using chemical fertilizers and pesticides) that ordinary tea farmers do.

Why natural farming (no fertilizer, no pesticide)?

Because, frankly, most people haven't done it yet. Rather, it is because it has not been done. It's fun and motivating to do something that no one else has done, and we don't know if it will succeed or fail.

There are three other reasons for retrofitting.

First, we met a few years before starting TEA FACTORY GEN. I ordered a set of natural farming teas from each prefecture and drank them all. Until now, I thought tea with umami was the best, but when I drank natural farming tea, I thought, "Why is this tea so mellow and lacking umami at all?" rice field.
And after a few days, I added hot water again and drank it, and I remembered the feeling that it was absorbed into my body. It was the second time, "What is this?"

You can't drink a lot of so-called "good tea". It goes around the mouth and enters the stomach from the throat. And the aftertaste is a bit tingling and numbing, like after eating ramen. I thought this was normal.

Naturally farmed tea leaves a refreshing aroma when you exhale through your nose without going through your mouth. And I felt an exhilarating feeling that the fine dust went through my throat without a tingling sensation. And it has a long aftertaste.

I still can't forget the excitement of that time, and looking back now, it may have been the timing that made me decide to try natural farming.

The second is that the conventional farming method of tea production puts a burden on the environment and destroys the ecosystem.
I had no idea what tea making was like until I started working as a farmer. By using a lot of chemical fertilizers, it becomes easy to get insects and diseases, and pesticides are needed. Fertilizer components that cannot be absorbed by tea flow into the soil and contaminate groundwater. Pesticides destroy people and ecosystems when they are sprayed, kill microorganisms on the land, and make the land barren. I think we are now in an era where even if producers produce tea that is very fragrant and has a strong umami flavor and surprises consumers, they should not be complacent about polluting the earth.

The third is to make tea that can only be done in this place (Hiroshima, Sera, Onomichi). It was around the time I was involved in the tea business for several years. "Huh? Where is this tea from?"
Of course, there are subtle differences between production areas, and the differences between varieties are obvious, but Saemidori made in Kagoshima, Saemidori made in Yame, Fukuoka, Asahi of Gyokuro made in Uji, Kyoto, and Gyokuro made in Yame, Fukuoka. Asahi doesn't know the difference. Or rather, I don't think people who are not involved in tea will understand.
In other words, even if the production area changes, if the variety is the same, there is not much difference. This is because similar cultivation methods and fertilization designs are used between production areas. In other words, the taste of fertilizer has a considerable influence on the taste of tea.
At that time, I thought that if we didn't use fertilizers, the minerals and ingredients of the land would really show up in the tea, and the taste of the land would be reflected in the tea, and we could achieve a taste and aroma that was different from any other production area. is.

Of course, we have received advice from our acquaintances on numerous occasions that the option of not using fertilizers and pesticides is abnormal. It is.

These are the three reasons why TEA FACTORY GEN sticks to natural farming methods without fertilizers and pesticides.