When we think of mushrooms and the southern Mexico point out of Oaxaca, the first factor which historically comes to thoughts is María Sabina, Huautla de Jiménez and hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. But slowly that’s all altering as a outcome of the groundbreaking perform of Josefina Jiménez and Johann Mathieu in mycology, via their organization, Mico-lógica.
Dependent in the village of Benito Juárez, positioned in Oaxaca’s Ixtlán district (a lot more frequently recognized as the Sierra Norte, the state’s main ecotourism location), Mico-lógica’s mission is threefold: to train each Mexicans and site visitors to the place in the lower-cost cultivation of a selection of mushroom species to educate about the medicinal, nutritional and environmental (sustainable) value of mushrooms and to perform ongoing study with regards to ideal climatic regions and the range of substrata for mushroom tradition.
The French-born Mathieu moved to Mexico, and in reality to Huautla de Jiménez, in 2005. “Sure, coming all the way to Mexico from France to go after my desire in mushrooms appears like a long way to vacation,” Mathieu described in a latest job interview in Oaxaca. “But there actually was not significantly of an opportunity to perform studies and develop a organization in Western Europe,” he carries on, “since reverence for mushrooms experienced been all but totally eradicated by The Church in excess of the program of hundreds of years and I learned that Mexico even now maintains a respect and appreciation for the medicinal and nutritional value of hongos. Mexico is significantly from mycophobic.”
Huautla de Jiménez is a lot more than a 5 hour travel from the closest metropolitan middle. Accordingly, Mathieu eventually recognized that staying in Huautla, while keeping an historic allure and currently being in a geographic region conducive to working with mushrooms, would hinder his efforts to grow a business and cultivate prevalent fascination in finding out about fungi. Mathieu turned cognizant of the burgeoning popularity of Oaxaca’s ecotourism communities of the Sierra Norte, and certainly the Feria Regional de Hongos Silvestres (regional wild mushroom competition), held each year in Cuahimoloyas.
Mathieu met Josefina Jiménez at the summertime weekend mushroom celebration. Jiménez experienced moved to Oaxaca from hometown Mexico Town in 2002. The two shared similar passions Jiménez had analyzed agronomy, and for close to a 10 years had been functioning with sustainable agriculture initiatives in rural farming communities in the Huasteca Potosina location of San Luis Potosí, the mountains of Guerrero and the coast of Chiapas. Mathieu and Jiménez became organization, and then daily life companions in Benito Juárez.
Mathieu and Jiménez are concentrating on 3 mushroom species in their palms-on seminars oyster (seta), shitake and reishi. Their one particular-day workshops are for oyster mushrooms, and two-day clinics for the latter two species of fungus. “With reishi, and to a lesser extent shitake, we are also teaching a truthful little bit about the medicinal makes use of of mushrooms, so much more time is necessary,” claims Mathieu, “and with oyster mushrooms it really is predominantly [but not completely] a program on cultivation.”
Whilst education seminars are now only given in Benito Juárez, Mathieu and Jiménez plan to broaden operations to contain the two the central valleys and coastal locations of Oaxaca. The object is to have a community of producers increasing various mushrooms which are optimally suited for cultivation dependent on the distinct microclimate. There are about 70 sub-species of oyster mushrooms, and therefore as a species, the adaptability of the oyster mushroom to different climatic areas is remarkable. “The oyster can be grown in a multitude of diverse substrata, and which is what we’re experimenting with appropriate now,” he elucidates. The oyster mushroom can thrive when developed on merchandise which would otherwise be waste, these kinds of as discard from cultivating beans, sugar cane, agave (including the fibrous waste made in mezcal distillation), peas, the frequent river reed known as carriso, sawdust, and the list goes on. Agricultural squander which could or else be still left to rot or be burned, every single with adverse environmental implications, can type substrata for mushroom cultivation. It ought to be observed, even though trite, that mushroom cultivation is a very sustainable, green industry. In excess of the previous a number of many years Mexico has in fact been at the fore in many locations of sustainable industry.
Mathieu exemplifies how mushrooms can provide an arguably even better environmental excellent:
“They can maintain up to 30 thousand occasions their mass, possessing implications for inhibiting erosion. They’ve been employed to clean up oil spills via absorption and therefore are an crucial automobile for habitat restoration. Investigation has been accomplished with mushrooms in the fight against carpenter ant destruction it’s been advised that the use of fungi has the possible to entirely revamp the pesticide business in an environmentally helpful way. There are actually hundreds of other eco-friendly purposes for mushroom use, and in each scenario the mushroom remains an edible by-solution. Take a search at the Paul Stamets YouTube lecture, 6 Techniques Mushrooms Can Save The Planet.”
Mathieu and Jiménez can typically be identified offering their merchandise on weekends in the organic and natural markets in Oaxaca. They’re equally a lot more than content to talk about the nutritional worth of their products which assortment from naturally their new mushrooms, but also as preserves, marinated with both chipotle and nopal or jalapeño and cauliflower. mushroom growing kit cannot be identified in fruits or greens, and accordingly a diet which contains fungi is really important for vegetarians who can’t get B12, most usually contained in meats. Mushrooms can easily be a substitute for meats, with the edge that they are not loaded with antibiotics and hormones typically found in industrially processed meat merchandise.
Mico-lógica also market teas and extracts produced from diverse mushroom species, each formulated as possibly a dietary supplement, or for their medicinal houses. Although neither Mathieu nor Jiménez has the pharmacological qualifications to prescribe mycological remedy for serious ailments, Mathieu’s possess investigation points to the medicinal use of mushrooms dating from pre-historical past, to the existing. He notes qualities of mushrooms which can aid to restore the immune system, and as a result the use of fungi as a complement in the treatment of cancer and AIDS, and their utility in controlling diabetes and dealing with large cholesterol.
“We ought to all be embracing the natural and organic production of mushrooms,” Mathieu concludes. “It really is so effortless, it entails a nominal cash expenditure, and it provides important rewards, both for those ingesting hongos for nutritional and medicinal reasons, and for the producers, even tiny scale. Mico-lógica also sells dried mushrooms. However most of the dried mushrooms bought in Mexico are imported from China, and are not organic and natural. It really is a genuine shame on quite a few levels.”