Sri Lanka Hotel Guide

Ceylon Tea, Ceylon Coffee & United Biology

Black Tea has been the most consumed & healthiest of the premier beverages including Black Coffee. All right stuff come with a cost & Black Tea hasn’t been an exception. Popularity of Black Tea in British Empire had the Chinese hooked onto narcotic opium till Black Tea from India & Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) took over the European market from China. Though China had its opium addiction reversed, in the case of Sri Lanka, the ancient Sinhalese irrigation network in the north central province was long neglected in view of the Black Tea cultivation in the Central Highlands of  Sri Lanka.

Ceylon Tea Plantation, Central Highlands, Sri Lanka

Ancient Sinhalese of Sri Lanka, from the very beginning of their civilization had practiced sustainable agriculture with a view of United Biology: the deep human need to be surrounded by other living things. The world’s oldest protected & recorded tree is in Anuradhapura; the world’s first ever wildlife reserve is Sri Lanka Holidays Mihintale; the world’s first recorded Veterinary hospital was established in Sri Lanka Holidays Anuradhapura during the reign of King Buddhadasa (340-368 AD) of Sri Lanka, who himself was an illustrious Ayurvedic physician & Veterinary  surgeon.
Ancient Sinhalese record of live and let live principle towards all living beings has been unparalleled throughout the 2552 years of unbroken recorded history as chronicled in Mahawamsa. Such was the Sinhalese history & tradition shattered by the British colonialists [1805 – 1948] in Ceylon.

CeylonTea & indentured labor from South India by the British colonialists in Ceylon
Moreover, tea being an all year crop, the indentured South Indian labor brought into Ceylon for the purpose of cultivation was to create untold disturbances in the ancient island of the Aryan Sinhalese, albeit short of the devastating scale wreaked upon the island nation by Malabars brought into Jaffna peninsula for the cultivation of Tobacco by the Dutch (1685-1798). The induction of Dravidian coolies into Sri Lanka of Aryan Sinhalese by the Dutch firstly, the British secondly, were to disturb the demography & social fabric of the ancient island to unfathomable depth. Europeans enjoyed Ceylon tobacco & Ceylon Tea, the finest Black Tea in the world. The little island nation paid a heavy price.

Ceylon Coffee
it was with coffee that the high yield plantation industry of Sri Lanka (forced change-over from subsistence crops to commercial crops) began in the year 1825. By 1867, acreage under coffee rose to 162,700. The Central Highlands of Sri Lanka being ideal for coffee growing, at the peak of coffee industry, the highest annual production exceeded 50 million kg of highest quality Ceylon coffee.

No shade, no protection; failed mono culture
The British having set up plantations of mono culture coffee without shade, the conditions resulted in the emergence of a devastating leaf disease known as the “coffee rust” Hemileia vastatrix, in the year 1869. During the next twenty years, in spite of a frantic effort to arrest the spread of disease, the coffee industry in Sri Lanka then called Ceylon declined. The lion-hearted planters of Ceylon (to give the devils their due) wouldn’t be denied of their due success story yet to be unraveled by a single calamitous misfortune. In an attempt to avoid financial ruin, the Ceylonese planters (mainly British) converted their decimated acreage of Ceylon Coffee to CeylonTea: millions of infected bushes were uprooted & set fire with untold heartache. With awe-inspiring courage, tea was planted in every inch of what were once hills of Ceylon coffee. Tea took root and flourished in the Sri Lanka Holidays Central Highlands: Ceylon tea. Since then Sri Lanka has been the producer of finest Black Tea in the world: Ceylon Tea. Ceylon Coffee production of Sri Lanka, today is a low-key industry geared solely for the local consumption in Sri Lanka.

Snowballing Folly of US AID & World Bank
In traditional wisdom, Coffee is grown in the shade under protection of forest canopy. In the 1950s USAID & World Bank launched a project in under-developed countries to promote so called sun-grown coffee. In order to secure bank credit, the planters were required to cut down the trees & switch over from their traditional shade grown coffee to modern sun grown coffee. It was to turn into a major folly: coffee is the most chemical intensive crop consumed by the humans.
The shade trees were cut down depriving the birds their habitat. Loss of bird population caused the spread of worms: infestation of worms called for pesticides. Then again the plants stressed by the exposure to direst sun and sprays of pesticide, in turn required chemical fertilizers. Moreover direst sun resulting in increased weed growth necessitated the use of weed killers. At last, but not least, with coffee berries getting ripened quicker in the direst sun, the quality of coffee was called into question.
Then again the farmers without the know-how of using chemicals safely were exposed to vapors & fumes resulting in health complication; groundwater began to be contaminated; the pulp of the coffee berries, which constitutes about 60% by weight, thrown into the rivers deduced the PH wreaking havoc in the marine life of the rivers that originate in the Sri Lanka Holidays Central Highlands and runs in the radial pattern to the surrounding plains.

Ceylon Coffee in poly culture
In Poly Culture, farmers provide shade for the coffee plantation with particular tree and plant species, including fruits and vegetable for the farmer as well as for the market. At present, it is estimated that there are over 3000 farmers of shade-grown Ceylon Coffee in Sri Lanka. Spurning pesticides & chemical fertilizers, Lawrence Goldberg of Sri Lanka’s Hansa Coffee has been engaged in the industry of Ceylon Coffee to regain the reputation for quality won and lost nearly a century and a half ago. The concept herein is termed Analog Forest Garden.

Quote Hansa Coffee of  Sri Lanka
An Analog Forest Garden is a tree dominated environment established on the principals of Analog Forestry, where crop plants are grown so that they form a physical structure to the original forest. The planting exhibits ecological relations that are also analogous to those of the original forest and provides micro-habitat to many species that could not exist without it. Unquote

Live and let live: co exists with other living beings; go with the concept of United Biology. That is to go with the god.

Tags: Coffee, Sri Lanka Holidays, Tea

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2012 at 1:53 pm and is filed under ~Ceylon Coffee. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.