When we feel of mushrooms and the southern Mexico condition of Oaxaca, the initial point which typically will come to head is María Sabina, Huautla de Jiménez and hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. But slowly which is all modifying as a consequence of the groundbreaking function of Josefina Jiménez and Johann Mathieu in mycology, through their company, Mico-lógica.
Dependent in the village of Benito Juárez, positioned in Oaxaca’s Ixtlán district (much more typically known as the Sierra Norte, the state’s principal ecotourism area), Mico-lógica’s mission is threefold: to teach each Mexicans and guests to the country in the reduced-value cultivation of a range of mushroom species to teach about the medicinal, dietary and environmental (sustainable) price of mushrooms and to carry out ongoing analysis regarding optimum climatic regions and the diversity of substrata for mushroom tradition.
The French-born Mathieu moved to Mexico, and in reality to Huautla de Jiménez, in 2005. “Of course, coming all the way to Mexico from France to pursue my curiosity in mushrooms looks like a prolonged way to vacation,” Mathieu defined in a latest job interview in Oaxaca. “But there truly was not much of an possibility to conduct scientific studies and increase a enterprise in Western Europe,” he proceeds, “considering that reverence for mushrooms experienced been all but totally eradicated by The Church more than the program of hundreds of years and I discovered that Mexico nevertheless maintains a regard and appreciation for the medicinal and nutritional value of hongos. Mexico is far from mycophobic.”
Huautla de Jiménez is more than a five hour drive from the closest metropolitan heart. Appropriately, Mathieu ultimately understood that staying in Huautla, even though keeping an historic attract and becoming in a geographic location conducive to doing work with mushrooms, would hinder his initiatives to increase a enterprise and cultivate widespread interest in finding out about fungi. Mathieu became cognizant of the burgeoning track record of Oaxaca’s ecotourism communities of the Sierra Norte, and without a doubt the Feria Regional de Hongos Silvestres (regional wild mushroom competition), held annually in Cuahimoloyas.
Mathieu met Josefina Jiménez at the summertime weekend mushroom event. Jiménez experienced moved to Oaxaca from hometown Mexico City in 2002. The two shared related pursuits Jiménez had examined agronomy, and for close to a 10 years had been doing work with sustainable agriculture projects 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 turned organization, and then daily life associates in Benito Juárez.
Mathieu and Jiménez are concentrating on three mushroom species in their fingers-on seminars oyster (seta), shitake and reishi. Their a single-working day workshops are for oyster mushrooms, and two-working day clinics for the latter two species of fungus. “With reishi, and to a lesser extent shitake, we’re also training a truthful bit about the medicinal employs of mushrooms, so a lot more time is required,” claims Mathieu, “and with oyster mushrooms it is predominantly [but not solely] a course on cultivation.”
Although coaching seminars are now only given in Benito Juárez, Mathieu and Jiménez prepare to broaden operations to include equally the central valleys and coastal locations of Oaxaca. The item is to have a community of producers expanding various mushrooms which are optimally suited for cultivation based mostly on the specific microclimate. There are about 70 sub-species of oyster mushrooms, and thus as a species, the adaptability of the oyster mushroom to different climatic regions is exceptional. “The oyster can be developed in a multitude of diverse substrata, and that’s what we’re experimenting with proper now,” he elucidates. The oyster mushroom can thrive when developed on items which would in any other case be waste, this kind of as discard from cultivating beans, sugar cane, agave (which includes the fibrous waste created in mezcal distillation), peas, the frequent river reed recognized as carriso, sawdust, and the checklist goes on. Agricultural squander which may otherwise be remaining to rot or be burned, every single with adverse environmental implications, can sort substrata for mushroom cultivation. It should be mentioned, although trite, that mushroom cultivation is a very sustainable, inexperienced sector. In excess of the past many a long time Mexico has in fact been at the fore in numerous regions of sustainable market.
Mathieu exemplifies how mushrooms can serve an arguably even increased environmental good:
“They can hold up to thirty thousand instances their mass, having implications for inhibiting erosion. One up mushroom bar ‘ve been used to clean up oil spills by way of absorption and therefore are an important automobile for habitat restoration. Investigation has been done with mushrooms in the fight from carpenter ant destruction it really is been suggested that the use of fungi has the possible to fully revamp the pesticide business in an environmentally friendly way. There are literally hundreds of other eco-friendly programs for mushroom use, and in every single case the mushroom stays an edible by-solution. Get a look at the Paul Stamets YouTube lecture, 6 Techniques Mushrooms Can Preserve The Planet.”
Mathieu and Jiménez can frequently be discovered selling their products on weekends in the natural and organic markets in Oaxaca. They’re the two more than pleased to talk about the nutritional price of their goods which assortment from normally their fresh mushrooms, but also as preserves, marinated with possibly chipotle and nopal or jalapeño and cauliflower. The mushroom’s vitamin B12 can not be identified in fruits or veggies, and accordingly a diet regime which contains fungi is incredibly crucial for vegetarians who cannot get B12, most frequently contained in meats. Mushrooms can very easily be a substitute for meats, with the edge that they are not loaded with antibiotics and hormones usually discovered in industrially processed meat merchandise.
Mico-lógica also promote teas and extracts created from distinct mushroom species, every formulated as possibly a dietary supplement, or for their medicinal houses. Whilst neither Mathieu nor Jiménez has the pharmacological history to prescribe mycological treatment method for critical conditions, Mathieu’s personal study points to the medicinal use of mushrooms dating from pre-heritage, to the present. He notes homes of mushrooms which can help to restore the immune technique, and thus the use of fungi as a complement in the remedy of most cancers and AIDS, and their utility in controlling diabetes and dealing with large cholesterol.
“We need to all be embracing the organic manufacturing of mushrooms,” Mathieu concludes. “It’s so simple, it includes a nominal funds expenditure, and it provides considerable benefits, both for those ingesting hongos for dietary and medicinal motives, and for the producers, even small scale. Mico-lógica also sells dried mushrooms. Yet most of the dried mushrooms sold in Mexico are imported from China, and are not natural. It’s a real disgrace on numerous levels.”
Mexico and mushrooms have appear a prolonged way considering that the period of Oaxaca’s María Sabina. With the ongoing initiatives of Mathieu, Jiménez and Mico-lógica, it should not be prolonged before the planet understands and embraces the magic of mushrooms inside of a a lot broader context.