When we think of mushrooms and the southern Mexico condition of Oaxaca, the very first issue which historically arrives to thoughts is María Sabina, Huautla de Jiménez and hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. But little by little that is all altering as a result of the groundbreaking function of Josefina Jiménez and Johann Mathieu in mycology, by way of their business, Mico-lógica.
Based in the village of Benito Juárez, situated in Oaxaca’s Ixtlán district (a lot more frequently acknowledged as the Sierra Norte, the state’s primary ecotourism location), Mico-lógica’s mission is threefold: to teach both Mexicans and visitors to the place in the minimal-price cultivation of a variety of mushroom species to teach about the medicinal, nutritional and environmental (sustainable) price of mushrooms and to perform ongoing investigation concerning 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. “Yes, coming all the way to Mexico from France to pursue my curiosity in mushrooms would seem like a lengthy way to journey,” Mathieu described in a current job interview in Oaxaca. “But there actually wasn’t a lot of an prospect to conduct reports and increase a business in Western Europe,” he continues, “because reverence for mushrooms experienced been all but completely eradicated by The Church above the training course of generations and I discovered that Mexico nonetheless maintains a respect and appreciation for the medicinal and nutritional benefit of hongos. Mexico is far from mycophobic.”
Huautla de Jiménez is much more than a five hour generate from the closest metropolitan centre. Appropriately, Mathieu ultimately recognized that staying in Huautla, although holding an historic attract and becoming in a geographic region conducive to working with mushrooms, would hinder his efforts to increase a enterprise and cultivate prevalent curiosity in learning about fungi. Mathieu grew to become 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 met Josefina Jiménez at the summertime weekend mushroom event. Jiménez had moved to Oaxaca from hometown Mexico Town in 2002. The two shared equivalent pursuits Jiménez experienced analyzed agronomy, and for close to a 10 years had been working with sustainable agriculture initiatives 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 organization, and then life partners 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-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 uses of mushrooms, so much more time is necessary,” claims Mathieu, “and with oyster mushrooms it truly is predominantly [but not exclusively] a course on cultivation.”
While education seminars are now only offered in Benito Juárez, Mathieu and Jiménez program to expand functions to contain the two the central valleys and coastal areas of Oaxaca. The object is to have a community of producers expanding various mushrooms which are optimally suited for cultivation primarily based 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 areas is remarkable. “The oyster can be developed in a multitude of distinct substrata, and that is what we are experimenting with appropriate now,” he elucidates. The oyster mushroom can prosper when grown on goods which would in any other case be squander, this sort of as discard from cultivating beans, sugar cane, agave (including the fibrous waste developed in mezcal distillation), peas, the common river reed known as carriso, sawdust, and the record goes on. Agricultural waste which might otherwise be left to rot or be burned, every with adverse environmental implications, can sort substrata for mushroom cultivation. It must be noted, although trite, that mushroom cultivation is a highly sustainable, eco-friendly industry. More than the earlier numerous years Mexico has in truth been at the fore in a lot of areas of sustainable market.
Mathieu exemplifies how mushrooms can provide an arguably even increased environmental good:
“They can maintain up to thirty thousand times their mass, having implications for inhibiting erosion. They have been employed to clear up oil spills via absorption and hence are an important vehicle for habitat restoration. Study has been completed with mushrooms in the fight from carpenter ant destruction it’s been advised that the use of fungi has the likely to entirely revamp the pesticide market in an environmentally welcoming way. There are literally hundreds of other eco-welcoming programs for mushroom use, and in every scenario the mushroom stays an edible by-solution. Just take a search at the Paul Stamets YouTube lecture, 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Help save The World.”
Mathieu and Jiménez can often be discovered selling their merchandise on weekends in the natural marketplaces in Oaxaca. They’re equally a lot more than pleased to go over the dietary value of their goods which range from by natural means their fresh mushrooms, but also as preserves, marinated with either chipotle and nopal or jalapeño and cauliflower. The mushroom’s vitamin B12 are not able to be identified in fruits or greens, and appropriately a diet which involves fungi is very important for vegetarians who are not able to get B12, most often contained in meats. Mushrooms can simply be a substitute for meats, with the advantage that they are not loaded with antibiotics and hormones often identified in industrially processed meat products.
Mico-lógica also promote teas and extracts produced from different mushroom species, every formulated as possibly a nutritional health supplement, or for their medicinal properties. Although Psilocybin capsules nor Jiménez has the pharmacological track record to prescribe mycological treatment method for serious ailments, Mathieu’s very own investigation factors to the medicinal use of mushrooms relationship from pre-background, to the existing. He notes homes of mushrooms which can aid to restore the immune method, and thus the use of fungi as a enhance in the treatment method of cancer and AIDS, and their utility in controlling diabetes and managing higher cholesterol.
“We ought to all be embracing the natural and organic generation of mushrooms,” Mathieu concludes. “It really is so straightforward, it involves a minimum capital investment, and it gives substantial benefits, each for those ingesting hongos for dietary and medicinal factors, and for the producers, even tiny scale. Mico-lógica also sells dried mushrooms. Nevertheless most of the dried mushrooms bought in Mexico are imported from China, and are not organic and natural. It is a true disgrace on numerous levels.”
Mexico and mushrooms have occur a prolonged way considering that the era of Oaxaca’s María Sabina. With the ongoing efforts of Mathieu, Jiménez and Mico-lógica, it need to not be extended ahead of the world understands and embraces the magic of mushrooms within a significantly broader context.