Differentiating Organics: Performing Multiple Objects to Organize Singular Markets for Organic Tea and Biscuits in the UK - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 66

fertilizer use. This was an often-cited example of how the smallholders were organic
by default , since synthetic insecticides are not used in Tanzania and synthetic
herbicides (glyphosate) 4 also fall into the same category of low access to inputs
that smallholders face. While the smallholders were organic by default in practice,
they were not certified as such again due to their financial situation.
There were clear distinctions in the organic practices between the two certified
estates that also reflect the resource constraints faced even by the estate sector. One
estate was specifically categorized as organic by default based on the perceived
neglect in its farming practices. A manager explained that the main constraints for
maintaining organic practices were the procurement of proper composting materials
and conducting the manual weeding. While using tea waste from the factory as a
fertilizer is common practice in conventional farming, it also constitutes an organic
compost material. While the use of sunflower cake, black wattle waste, cow manure
and spent brewer grains are also available in Tanzania as organic composting
materials, the costs of procuring enough to cover the entire estate was explained
as being prohibitive and thus it was common practice to only use tea waste by the
organic by default estate. This was perceived as a 'default' practice, often because of
the low levels of N in the tea waste. The presence of weeds is a second indicator for
organic by default . Weeds cause problems for young tea during the first 4 years
after the initial planting. After this, the tree bush is strong enough to withstand
the stress and the canopy cover created by the tea bushes reduces the frequency
of weeding later in the bush's life. Forking is the preferred method for weeding in
the organic tea estates, but as the organic by default estate noted, this requires a lot
of man-days, which are difficult to pay for on a small budget. Therefore, weeding
was completed infrequently. This practice was noted as being the key indicator of
their 'organicness': “all the inspector has to do is see the weeds and he knows that
we are Organic” (Estate Manager).
These performances of resource-poor organic by default have an additional angle
in their enactments in Tanzania. This is the displacement of traditional agriculture
by conventional agriculture in the Tanzanian context. One inspector explained:
Organic is quite good. In Iringa, in the seventies we used to harvest a lot of maize from one
hectare, 26 bags, 90 kg per bag. Now you go around nobody is getting 26 bags per hectare
anymore, they are getting 5-6 bags, it has gone down like that. Why? It is because we were
doing organic before, I think, and later we added a lot of artificial fertilizers on the soils and
the soil structure changed completely. So that way you add the same amount of artificial
fertilizer and it seems it is leaking, it goes down and the soil cannot contain the artificial
fertilizer, so maybe the roots cannot get the artificial fertilizer. So as a result, even if you
add more, maybe because the structure is gone, and maybe the acidity has gone up and the
acidity has killed some beneficial organisms. You see it is very bad to be conventional. So
something good for the world now is that we are going organic.
4 Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto's non-specific herbicide Roundup. It is generally
considered to be of low toxicity to humans (lethal to most plants), but recent research has shown
detrimental health effects for humans.