When we feel of mushrooms and the southern Mexico condition of Oaxaca, the very first point which usually comes to mind is María Sabina, Huautla de Jiménez and hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. But gradually that’s all modifying as a outcome of the groundbreaking perform of Josefina Jiménez and Johann Mathieu in mycology, via their firm, Mico-lógica.
Based mostly in the village of Benito Juárez, situated in Oaxaca’s Ixtlán district (much more frequently identified as the Sierra Norte, the state’s primary ecotourism area), Mico-lógica’s mission is threefold: to practice the two Mexicans and site visitors to the nation in the minimal-cost cultivation of a assortment of mushroom species to teach about the medicinal, nutritional and environmental (sustainable) benefit of mushrooms and to carry out ongoing research relating to optimum climatic regions and the variety of substrata for mushroom society.
The French-born Mathieu moved to Mexico, and in simple fact to Huautla de Jiménez, in 2005. “Sure, coming all the way to Mexico from France to go after my fascination in mushrooms seems like a lengthy way to journey,” Mathieu explained in a latest interview in Oaxaca. “But there actually wasn’t significantly of an chance to carry out studies and develop a business in Western Europe,” he continues, “given that reverence for mushrooms had been all but totally eradicated by The Church above the course of generations and I uncovered that Mexico nonetheless maintains a respect and appreciation for the medicinal and dietary worth of hongos. Mexico is much from mycophobic.”
Huautla de Jiménez is a lot more than a 5 hour travel from the closest metropolitan center. Accordingly, Mathieu at some point realized that staying in Huautla, while holding an historic attract and currently being in a geographic location conducive to functioning with mushrooms, would hinder his attempts to grow a company and cultivate prevalent curiosity in finding out about fungi. Mathieu turned cognizant of the burgeoning status of Oaxaca’s ecotourism communities of the Sierra Norte, and indeed the Feria Regional de Hongos Silvestres (regional wild mushroom festival), held annually in Cuahimoloyas.
Mathieu fulfilled Josefina Jiménez at the summertime weekend mushroom celebration. Jiménez had moved to Oaxaca from hometown Mexico Metropolis in 2002. The two shared equivalent interests Jiménez experienced analyzed agronomy, and for close to a decade had been functioning with sustainable agriculture tasks in rural farming communities in the Huasteca Potosina area of San Luis Potosí, the mountains of Guerrero and the coastline of Chiapas. Mathieu and Jiménez grew to become business, and then lifestyle companions in Benito Juárez.
Mathieu and Jiménez are concentrating on three mushroom species in their palms-on seminars oyster (seta), shitake and reishi. Their one-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’re also educating a truthful little bit about the medicinal makes use of of mushrooms, so a lot more time is needed,” suggests Mathieu, “and with oyster mushrooms it truly is predominantly [but not exclusively] a course on cultivation.”
Whilst education seminars are now only presented in Benito Juárez, Mathieu and Jiménez plan to expand operations to contain equally the central valleys and coastal areas of Oaxaca. The item is to have a community of producers growing different mushrooms which are optimally suited for cultivation based on the specific microclimate. There are about 70 sub-species of oyster mushrooms, and therefore as a species, the adaptability of the oyster mushroom to different climatic locations is outstanding. “The oyster can be developed in a multitude of different substrata, and that’s what we are experimenting with right now,” he elucidates. The oyster mushroom can prosper when developed on merchandise which would in any other case be squander, this kind of as discard from cultivating beans, sugar cane, agave (such as the fibrous squander produced in mezcal distillation), peas, the typical river reed recognized as carriso, sawdust, and the record goes on. Agricultural waste which may or else be remaining to rot or be burned, every single with adverse environmental implications, can form substrata for mushroom cultivation. It should be noted, however trite, that mushroom cultivation is a hugely sustainable, eco-friendly business. In excess of the earlier many a long time Mexico has in fact been at the fore in a lot of places of sustainable business.
Mathieu exemplifies how mushrooms can provide an arguably even better environmental very good:
“They can hold up to thirty thousand times their mass, having implications for inhibiting erosion. mushroom gummies ‘ve been employed to cleanse up oil spills through absorption and thus are an important vehicle for habitat restoration. Research has been done with mushrooms in the fight in opposition to carpenter ant destruction it truly is been proposed that the use of fungi has the likely to fully revamp the pesticide industry in an environmentally pleasant way. There are virtually hundreds of other eco-welcoming programs for mushroom use, and in each scenario the mushroom stays an edible by-item. Get a look at the Paul Stamets YouTube lecture, 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Preserve The Entire world.”
Mathieu and Jiménez can often be identified marketing their items on weekends in the organic and natural markets in Oaxaca. They are each much more than satisfied to discuss the nutritional price of their goods which assortment from by natural means their new mushrooms, but also as preserves, marinated with either chipotle and nopal or jalapeño and cauliflower. The mushroom’s vitamin B12 can not be located in fruits or vegetables, and accordingly a diet regime which includes fungi is extremely essential for vegetarians who are not able to get B12, most usually contained in meats. Mushrooms can simply be a substitute for meats, with the advantage that they are not loaded with antibiotics and hormones usually located in industrially processed meat goods.
Mico-lógica also sell teas and extracts created from distinct mushroom species, each formulated as both a nutritional dietary supplement, or for their medicinal houses. Even though neither Mathieu nor Jiménez has the pharmacological history to prescribe mycological remedy for serious conditions, Mathieu’s personal analysis points to the medicinal use of mushrooms courting from pre-history, to the present. He notes properties of mushrooms which can assist to restore the immune system, and as a result the use of fungi as a enhance in the treatment of cancer and AIDS, and their utility in controlling diabetes and managing large cholesterol.
“We ought to all be embracing the organic and natural manufacturing of mushrooms,” Mathieu concludes. “It truly is so effortless, it requires a minimum money expenditure, and it gives important rewards, both for individuals ingesting hongos for dietary and medicinal causes, and for the producers, even little scale. Mico-lógica also sells dried mushrooms. Nevertheless most of the dried mushrooms marketed in Mexico are imported from China, and are not organic and natural. It truly is a true disgrace on many ranges.”
Mexico and mushrooms have arrive a prolonged way considering that the period of Oaxaca’s María Sabina. With the ongoing endeavours of Mathieu, Jiménez and Mico-lógica, it should not be prolonged just before the planet understands and embraces the magic of mushrooms inside of a much broader context.