When we feel of mushrooms and the southern Mexico condition of Oaxaca, the first issue which traditionally comes to mind is María Sabina, Huautla de Jiménez and hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. But gradually that’s all changing as a result of the groundbreaking perform of Josefina Jiménez and Johann Mathieu in mycology, by way of their organization, Mico-lógica.
Based mostly in the village of Benito Juárez, positioned in Oaxaca’s Ixtlán district (far more typically known as the Sierra Norte, the state’s major ecotourism location), Mico-lógica’s mission is threefold: to prepare both Mexicans and site visitors to the region in the low-expense cultivation of a assortment of mushroom species to educate about the medicinal, dietary and environmental (sustainable) benefit of mushrooms and to conduct ongoing investigation concerning optimum 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. “Indeed, coming all the way to Mexico from France to pursue my desire in mushrooms would seem like a long way to vacation,” Mathieu described in a modern job interview in Oaxaca. “But there genuinely was One up mushroom bar of an prospect to conduct studies and grow a business in Western Europe,” he carries on, “because reverence for mushrooms experienced been all but completely eradicated by The Church over the course of centuries and I learned that Mexico still maintains a regard and appreciation for the medicinal and dietary benefit of hongos. Mexico is far from mycophobic.”
Huautla de Jiménez is a lot more than a 5 hour push from the closest metropolitan center. Appropriately, Mathieu sooner or later realized that remaining in Huautla, whilst holding an historic allure and currently being in a geographic region conducive to doing work with mushrooms, would hinder his endeavours to expand a organization and cultivate prevalent fascination in studying about fungi. Mathieu became cognizant of the burgeoning status of Oaxaca’s ecotourism communities of the Sierra Norte, and without a doubt the Feria Regional de Hongos Silvestres (regional wild mushroom festival), held yearly in Cuahimoloyas.
Mathieu fulfilled Josefina Jiménez at the summertime weekend mushroom event. Jiménez experienced moved to Oaxaca from hometown Mexico Metropolis in 2002. The two shared comparable pursuits Jiménez experienced researched agronomy, and for close to a decade experienced been doing work with sustainable agriculture assignments 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 company, and then existence associates in Benito Juárez.
Mathieu and Jiménez are concentrating on 3 mushroom species in their hands-on seminars oyster (seta), shitake and reishi. Their one particular-working 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 educating a truthful little bit about the medicinal employs of mushrooms, so more time is required,” states Mathieu, “and with oyster mushrooms it really is predominantly [but not completely] a training course on cultivation.”
While education seminars are now only offered in Benito Juárez, Mathieu and Jiménez program to broaden functions to incorporate both the central valleys and coastal locations of Oaxaca. The object is to have a network of producers increasing various mushrooms which are optimally suited for cultivation based mostly on the distinct microclimate. There are about 70 sub-species of oyster mushrooms, and as a result as a species, the adaptability of the oyster mushroom to distinct climatic areas is impressive. “The oyster can be grown in a multitude of distinct substrata, and that’s what we are experimenting with correct now,” he elucidates. The oyster mushroom can prosper when grown on merchandise which would otherwise be waste, these kinds of as discard from cultivating beans, sugar cane, agave (including the fibrous waste created in mezcal distillation), peas, the frequent river reed recognized as carriso, sawdust, and the checklist goes on. Agricultural squander which could otherwise be remaining to rot or be burned, every single with adverse environmental implications, can sort substrata for mushroom cultivation. It ought to be famous, however trite, that mushroom cultivation is a hugely sustainable, inexperienced market. Above the earlier several many years Mexico has in fact been at the fore in numerous regions of sustainable sector.
Mathieu exemplifies how mushrooms can provide an arguably even greater environmental good:
“They can hold up to thirty thousand times their mass, getting implications for inhibiting erosion. They have been utilized to thoroughly clean up oil spills by way of absorption and hence are an important vehicle for habitat restoration. Analysis has been accomplished with mushrooms in the fight towards carpenter ant destruction it truly is been suggested that the use of fungi has the likely to fully revamp the pesticide industry in an environmentally friendly way. There are practically hundreds of other eco-friendly apps for mushroom use, and in each situation the mushroom remains an edible by-solution. Get a look at the Paul Stamets YouTube lecture, six Methods Mushrooms Can Help save The Entire world.”
Mathieu and Jiménez can frequently be discovered offering their goods on weekends in the organic marketplaces in Oaxaca. They are the two much more than pleased to go over the dietary benefit of their goods which range from by natural means their refreshing mushrooms, but also as preserves, marinated with both chipotle and nopal or jalapeño and cauliflower. The mushroom’s vitamin B12 can’t be found in fruits or veggies, and accordingly a diet program which contains fungi is really essential for vegetarians who can not get B12, most typically contained in meats. Mushrooms can effortlessly be a substitute for meats, with the edge that they are not loaded with antibiotics and hormones usually identified in industrially processed meat items.
Mico-lógica also sell teas and extracts manufactured from various mushroom species, each and every formulated as possibly a dietary dietary supplement, or for their medicinal homes. While neither Mathieu nor Jiménez has the pharmacological history to prescribe mycological remedy for serious ailments, Mathieu’s very own research factors to the medicinal use of mushrooms dating from pre-background, to the current. He notes homes of mushrooms which can assist to restore the immune method, and therefore the use of fungi as a enhance in the treatment method of cancer and AIDS, and their utility in controlling diabetic issues and treating substantial cholesterol.
“We should all be embracing the organic manufacturing of mushrooms,” Mathieu concludes. “It really is so effortless, it includes a minimum funds investment decision, and it offers substantial benefits, the two for individuals ingesting hongos for nutritional and medicinal motives, and for the producers, even little scale. Mico-lógica also sells dried mushrooms. Yet most of the dried mushrooms sold in Mexico are imported from China, and are not organic. It truly is a true shame on many stages.”
Mexico and mushrooms have come a extended way given that the period of Oaxaca’s María Sabina. With the ongoing efforts of Mathieu, Jiménez and Mico-lógica, it ought to not be long just before the world understands and embraces the magic of mushrooms within a significantly broader context.