When we feel of mushrooms and the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca, the initial thing which typically arrives to brain is María Sabina, Huautla de Jiménez and hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. But gradually which is all modifying as a outcome of the groundbreaking perform of Josefina Jiménez and Johann Mathieu in mycology, via their organization, Mico-lógica.
Based mostly in the village of Benito Juárez, positioned in Oaxaca’s Ixtlán district (more commonly acknowledged as the Sierra Norte, the state’s primary ecotourism region), Mico-lógica’s mission is threefold: to train the two Mexicans and site visitors to the country in the lower-value cultivation of a variety of mushroom species to teach about the medicinal, dietary and environmental (sustainable) value of mushrooms and to carry out ongoing analysis with regards to ideal climatic areas and the range of substrata for mushroom culture.
The French-born Mathieu moved to Mexico, and in fact to Huautla de Jiménez, in 2005. “Indeed, coming all the way to Mexico from France to pursue my fascination in mushrooms looks like a extended way to travel,” Mathieu described in a current job interview in Oaxaca. “But there truly was not a lot of an prospect to perform scientific studies and expand a company in Western Europe,” he continues, “because reverence for mushrooms experienced been all but totally eradicated by The Church in excess of the system of centuries and I learned that Mexico nonetheless maintains a respect and appreciation for the medicinal and dietary benefit of hongos. Mexico is significantly from mycophobic.”
Huautla de Jiménez is more than a five hour generate from the closest metropolitan middle. Accordingly, Mathieu sooner or later realized that being in Huautla, although keeping an historic allure and currently being in a geographic region conducive to functioning with mushrooms, would hinder his initiatives to develop a enterprise and cultivate prevalent interest in learning about fungi. Mathieu turned cognizant of the burgeoning track record of Oaxaca’s ecotourism communities of the Sierra Norte, and indeed the Feria Regional de Hongos Silvestres (regional wild mushroom festival), held each year in Cuahimoloyas.
Mathieu fulfilled Josefina Jiménez at the summertime weekend mushroom function. Jiménez had moved to Oaxaca from hometown Mexico Metropolis in 2002. The two shared related pursuits Jiménez experienced researched agronomy, and for shut to a 10 years experienced been working with sustainable agriculture tasks in rural farming communities in the Huasteca Potosina location of San Luis Potosí, the mountains of Guerrero and the coast of Chiapas. Mathieu and Jiménez turned company, and then lifestyle companions in Benito Juárez.
Mathieu and Jiménez are concentrating on three mushroom species in their palms-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 are also instructing a honest little bit about the medicinal employs of mushrooms, so far more time is necessary,” says Mathieu, “and with oyster mushrooms it really is predominantly [but not completely] a course on cultivation.”
Whilst training seminars are now only presented in Benito Juárez, Mathieu and Jiménez prepare to grow operations to include equally the central valleys and coastal locations of Oaxaca. The object is to have a community of producers developing distinct mushrooms which are optimally suited for cultivation dependent on the specific microclimate. There are about 70 sub-species of oyster mushrooms, and hence as a species, the adaptability of the oyster mushroom to various climatic areas is remarkable. “The oyster can be developed in a multitude of different substrata, and that is what we’re experimenting with correct now,” he elucidates. The oyster mushroom can prosper when developed on products which would otherwise be squander, this kind of as discard from cultivating beans, sugar cane, agave (like the fibrous squander produced in mezcal distillation), peas, the typical river reed identified as carriso, sawdust, and the checklist goes on. Agricultural squander which may or else be left to rot or be burned, each with adverse environmental implications, can sort substrata for mushroom cultivation. It should be observed, though trite, that mushroom cultivation is a very sustainable, environmentally friendly business. In excess of the past numerous several years Mexico has in reality been at the fore in a lot of locations of sustainable sector.
Mathieu exemplifies how mushrooms can serve an arguably even higher environmental very good:
“They can hold up to 30 thousand times their mass, obtaining implications for inhibiting erosion. They have been used to clean up oil spills via absorption and thus are an essential motor vehicle for habitat restoration. Research has been accomplished with mushrooms in the battle in opposition to carpenter ant destruction it’s been suggested that the use of fungi has the likely to fully revamp the pesticide business in an environmentally friendly way. There are actually hundreds of other eco-friendly applications for mushroom use, and in every single case the mushroom stays an edible by-item. Get a appear at the Paul Stamets YouTube lecture, six Methods Mushrooms Can Preserve The Entire world.”
Mathieu and Jiménez can frequently be identified selling their merchandise on weekends in the organic and natural markets in Oaxaca. They are equally much more than pleased to examine the dietary price of their goods which variety from in a natural way their refreshing mushrooms, but also as preserves, marinated with both 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 regime which includes fungi is extremely critical for vegetarians who cannot get B12, most often contained in meats. Mushrooms can effortlessly be a substitute for meats, with the edge that they are not loaded with antibiotics and hormones frequently discovered in industrially processed meat items.
Mico-lógica also market teas and extracts produced from different mushroom species, each and every formulated as both a nutritional supplement, or for their medicinal qualities. Although neither Mathieu nor Jiménez has the pharmacological background to prescribe mycological treatment for serious ailments, Mathieu’s very own investigation details to the medicinal use of mushrooms relationship from pre-background, to the current. He notes properties of mushrooms which can help to restore the immune method, and therefore the use of fungi as a complement in the remedy of cancer and AIDS, and their utility in managing diabetes and treating substantial cholesterol.
“We ought to all be embracing the organic generation of mushrooms,” Mathieu concludes. “It’s so effortless, it entails a small money investment decision, and it provides significant rewards, each for these ingesting hongos for nutritional and medicinal reasons, 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 natural and organic. mushroom growing kit is a actual disgrace on several stages.”