When we believe of mushrooms and the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca, the very first point which typically arrives to brain is María Sabina, Huautla de Jiménez and hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. But slowly and gradually that’s all shifting as a result of the groundbreaking operate of Josefina Jiménez and Johann Mathieu in mycology, via their business, Mico-lógica.
Dependent in the village of Benito Juárez, situated in Oaxaca’s Ixtlán district (much more generally recognized as the Sierra Norte, the state’s primary ecotourism region), Mico-lógica’s mission is threefold: to practice each Mexicans and guests to the nation in the low-cost cultivation of a variety of mushroom species to teach about the medicinal, nutritional and environmental (sustainable) price of mushrooms and to perform ongoing analysis concerning optimum climatic regions and the range of substrata for mushroom culture.
The French-born Mathieu moved to Mexico, and in reality to Huautla de Jiménez, in 2005. “Of one up mushroom bar , coming all the way to Mexico from France to pursue my curiosity in mushrooms looks like a extended way to journey,” Mathieu defined in a current job interview in Oaxaca. “But there genuinely wasn’t significantly of an prospect to conduct studies and expand a business in Western Europe,” he continues, “given that reverence for mushrooms experienced been all but totally eradicated by The Church more than the training course of hundreds of years and I realized that Mexico still maintains a regard and appreciation for the medicinal and dietary benefit of hongos. Mexico is considerably from mycophobic.”
Huautla de Jiménez is a lot more than a 5 hour push from the closest metropolitan middle. Appropriately, Mathieu sooner or later understood that being in Huautla, although keeping an historic attract and currently being in a geographic area conducive to functioning with mushrooms, would hinder his attempts to expand a business and cultivate popular desire in learning about fungi. Mathieu grew to become 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 competition), held every year in Cuahimoloyas.
Mathieu satisfied Josefina Jiménez at the summertime weekend mushroom event. Jiménez had moved to Oaxaca from hometown Mexico Metropolis in 2002. The two shared equivalent passions Jiménez experienced examined agronomy, and for close to a 10 years had been functioning 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 organization, and then daily life associates in Benito Juárez.
Mathieu and Jiménez are concentrating on a few mushroom species in their hands-on seminars oyster (seta), shitake and reishi. Their one particular-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 are also training a truthful little bit about the medicinal utilizes of mushrooms, so much more time is necessary,” says Mathieu, “and with oyster mushrooms it really is predominantly [but not exclusively] a program on cultivation.”
While training seminars are now only given in Benito Juárez, Mathieu and Jiménez program to expand functions to consist of both the central valleys and coastal locations of Oaxaca. The object is to have a community of producers developing different mushrooms which are optimally suited for cultivation primarily based on the certain microclimate. There are about 70 sub-species of oyster mushrooms, and thus as a species, the adaptability of the oyster mushroom to various climatic locations is remarkable. “The oyster can be developed in a multitude of different substrata, and which is what we are experimenting with right now,” he elucidates. The oyster mushroom can thrive when developed on products which would or else be squander, such as discard from cultivating beans, sugar cane, agave (including the fibrous waste developed in mezcal distillation), peas, the frequent river reed identified as carriso, sawdust, and the listing goes on. Agricultural squander which could normally be left to rot or be burned, every single with adverse environmental implications, can sort substrata for mushroom cultivation. It ought to be noted, although trite, that mushroom cultivation is a very sustainable, eco-friendly market. Above the earlier a number of years Mexico has in reality been at the fore in numerous places of sustainable sector.
Mathieu exemplifies how mushrooms can serve an arguably even increased environmental excellent:
“They can keep up to 30 thousand moments their mass, getting implications for inhibiting erosion. They’ve been utilised to cleanse up oil spills by means of absorption and as a result are an essential car for habitat restoration. Analysis has been done with mushrooms in the struggle towards carpenter ant destruction it really is been suggested that the use of fungi has the prospective to entirely revamp the pesticide market in an environmentally pleasant way. There are actually hundreds of other eco-friendly purposes for mushroom use, and in every single case the mushroom stays an edible by-item. Take a search at the Paul Stamets YouTube lecture, 6 Methods Mushrooms Can Save The World.”
Mathieu and Jiménez can typically be found marketing their products on weekends in the organic and natural marketplaces in Oaxaca. They’re the two more than content to examine the nutritional worth of their items which range from in a natural way their fresh mushrooms, but also as preserves, marinated with both chipotle and nopal or jalapeño and cauliflower. The mushroom’s vitamin B12 can’t be discovered in fruits or veggies, and appropriately a diet which contains fungi is very essential for vegetarians who can’t get B12, most often contained in meats. Mushrooms can simply be a substitute for meats, with the benefit that they are not loaded with antibiotics and hormones often found in industrially processed meat merchandise.
Mico-lógica also market teas and extracts made from distinct mushroom species, every formulated as either a nutritional dietary supplement, or for their medicinal properties. Whilst neither Mathieu nor Jiménez has the pharmacological qualifications to prescribe mycological remedy for critical illnesses, Mathieu’s personal study details to the medicinal use of mushrooms courting from pre-heritage, to the present. He notes qualities of mushrooms which can assist to restore the immune technique, and hence the use of fungi as a complement in the remedy of most cancers and AIDS, and their utility in controlling diabetic issues and dealing with large cholesterol.
“We must all be embracing the organic and natural manufacturing of mushrooms,” Mathieu concludes. “It is so effortless, it requires a small cash investment decision, and it gives important benefits, the two for those ingesting hongos for dietary and medicinal reasons, and for the producers, even tiny scale. Mico-lógica also sells dried mushrooms. However most of the dried mushrooms offered in Mexico are imported from China, and are not natural and organic. It’s a true shame on numerous levels.”
Mexico and mushrooms have occur a long way because the era of Oaxaca’s María Sabina. With the continued attempts of Mathieu, Jiménez and Mico-lógica, it should not be extended just before the planet understands and embraces the magic of mushrooms in a a lot broader context.