When we think of mushrooms and the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca, the very first factor which typically will come to head is María Sabina, Huautla de Jiménez and hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. But gradually that’s all modifying as a outcome of the groundbreaking operate of Josefina Jiménez and Johann Mathieu in mycology, via their business, Mico-lógica.
Based in the village of Benito Juárez, found in Oaxaca’s Ixtlán district (a lot more typically acknowledged as the Sierra Norte, the state’s primary ecotourism area), Mico-lógica’s mission is threefold: to prepare the two Mexicans and site visitors to the region in the reduced-price cultivation of a selection of mushroom species to teach about the medicinal, dietary and environmental (sustainable) worth of mushrooms and to carry out ongoing research concerning the best possible climatic areas and the range of substrata for mushroom lifestyle.
The French-born Mathieu moved to Mexico, and in fact to Huautla de Jiménez, in 2005. “Sure, coming all the way to Mexico from France to pursue my desire in mushrooms looks like a extended way to vacation,” Mathieu defined in a recent job interview in Oaxaca. “But there really was not much of an prospect to carry out reports and develop a enterprise in Western Europe,” he carries on, “considering that reverence for mushrooms had been all but completely eradicated by The Church above the program of hundreds of years and I realized that Mexico still maintains a regard and appreciation for the medicinal and dietary worth of hongos. Mexico is much from mycophobic.”
Huautla de Jiménez is much more than a 5 hour push from the closest metropolitan heart. Appropriately, Mathieu eventually recognized that staying in Huautla, although keeping an historic attract and being in a geographic area conducive to operating with mushrooms, would hinder his endeavours to develop a company and cultivate common desire 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 yearly in Cuahimoloyas.
Mathieu met 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 had analyzed agronomy, and for shut to a decade experienced been working with sustainable agriculture assignments in rural farming communities in the Huasteca Potosina location of San Luis Potosí, the mountains of Guerrero and the coastline of Chiapas. Mathieu and Jiménez became enterprise, and then daily life companions in Benito Juárez.
Mathieu and Jiménez are concentrating on a few 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 educating a reasonable bit about the medicinal uses of mushrooms, so a lot more time is required,” claims Mathieu, “and with oyster mushrooms it’s predominantly [but not solely] a course on cultivation.”
While training seminars are now only given in Benito Juárez, Mathieu and Jiménez prepare to broaden operations to include both the central valleys and coastal locations of Oaxaca. The item is to have a network of producers growing distinct mushrooms which are optimally suited for cultivation primarily based 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 various climatic regions is outstanding. “The oyster can be grown in a multitude of different substrata, and that is what we are experimenting with proper now,” he elucidates. The oyster mushroom can thrive when grown on merchandise which would in any other case be waste, this kind of as discard from cultivating beans, sugar cane, agave (like the fibrous squander produced in mezcal distillation), peas, the widespread river reed identified as carriso, sawdust, and the list goes on. Agricultural waste which may possibly otherwise be still left to rot or be burned, each and every with adverse environmental implications, can form substrata for mushroom cultivation. It must be mentioned, though trite, that mushroom cultivation is a hugely sustainable, eco-friendly industry. In excess of the previous several many years Mexico has in fact been at the fore in several locations of sustainable business.
Mathieu exemplifies how mushrooms can serve an arguably even higher environmental good:
“They can maintain up to 30 thousand instances their mass, having implications for inhibiting erosion. They have been utilized to cleanse up oil spills via absorption and thus are an essential automobile for habitat restoration. Investigation has been completed with mushrooms in the struggle from carpenter ant destruction it is been suggested that the use of fungi has the possible to entirely revamp the pesticide market in an environmentally welcoming way. There are actually hundreds of other eco-friendly apps for mushroom use, and in each circumstance the mushroom continues to be an edible by-merchandise. Consider a search at the Paul Stamets YouTube lecture, six Approaches Mushrooms Can Preserve The Globe.”
Mathieu and Jiménez can typically be discovered promoting their products on weekends in the organic and natural marketplaces in Oaxaca. They’re both much more than pleased to examine the nutritional worth of their goods which selection from normally their new mushrooms, but also as preserves, marinated with either chipotle and nopal or jalapeño and cauliflower. The mushroom’s vitamin B12 cannot be found in fruits or vegetables, and accordingly a diet plan which consists of fungi is incredibly essential for vegetarians who cannot get B12, most typically contained in meats. Mushrooms can very easily be a substitute for meats, with the gain that they are not loaded with antibiotics and hormones usually found in industrially processed meat goods.
Mico-lógica also market teas and extracts created from diverse mushroom species, every single formulated as possibly a dietary supplement, or for their medicinal properties. Although neither Mathieu nor Jiménez has the pharmacological track record to prescribe mycological treatment for serious ailments, Mathieu’s personal research factors to the medicinal use of mushrooms courting from pre-history, to the existing. He notes qualities of mushrooms which can support to restore the immune technique, and hence the use of fungi as a enhance in the remedy of most cancers and AIDS, and their utility in controlling diabetic issues and managing substantial cholesterol.
“We need to all be embracing the natural generation of mushrooms,” Mathieu concludes. “It really is so simple, it involves a nominal funds investment decision, and it offers important benefits, each for those ingesting hongos for dietary and medicinal causes, and for the producers, even small scale. mushroom growing kit -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 actual shame on numerous ranges.”