When we consider mushrooms and also the southerly Mexico state of Oaxaca, the very first point which commonly enters your mind is María Sabina, Huautla de Jiménez and also hallucinogenic “magic” mushrooms. However slowly that’s all changing as an outcome of the innovative job of Josefina Jiménez and Johann Mathieu in mycology, with their firm, Mico-lógica.

Based in the village of Benito Juárez, located in Oaxaca’s Ixtlán district (even more typically called the Sierra Norte, the state’s major ecotourism region), Mico-lógica’s mission is threefold: to train both Mexicans and also site visitors to the nation in the low-priced cultivation of a range of mushroom types; to educate about the medical, nutritional and environmental (sustainable) value of mushrooms; and to carry out ongoing research study concerning maximum weather regions as well as the diversity of substrata for mushroom culture.

The French-born Mathieu moved to Mexico, and in fact to Huautla de Jiménez, in 2005. “Yes, coming all the way to Mexico from France to pursue my passion in mushrooms seems like a lengthy way to travel,” Mathieu explained in a recent interview in Oaxaca. “Yet there actually had not been much of an opportunity to conduct researches and grow a company in Western Europe,” he continues, “given that reverence for mushrooms had actually been almost totally removed by The Church over the course of centuries; and also I found out that Mexico still maintains a respect and gratitude for the medicinal and also dietary worth of hongos. Mexico is far from mycophobic.”

Huautla de Jiménez is greater than a 5 hour drive from the closest cosmopolitan center. Appropriately, Mathieu ultimately recognized that remaining in Huautla, while holding a historical allure as well as remaining in a geographic region conducive to collaborating with mushrooms, would certainly impede his efforts to expand an organization and also cultivate prevalent passion in learning more about fungi. Mathieu ended up being cognizant of the blossoming online reputation of Oaxaca’s ecotourism neighborhoods of the Sierra Norte, and indeed the Feria Regional de Hongos Silvestres (regional wild mushroom event), held yearly in Cuahimoloyas.

Mathieu fulfilled Josefina Jiménez at the adaptogenic mushrooms summer season weekend break mushroom occasion. Jiménez had moved to Oaxaca from home town Mexico City in 2002. The two common similar rate of interests; Jiménez had actually researched agronomy, and for near a years had been working with lasting farming jobs in country farming neighborhoods in the Huasteca Potosina region of San Luis Potosí, the hills of Guerrero as well as the coastline of Chiapas. Mathieu as well as Jiménez came to be organization, and then life partners in Benito Juárez.

Mathieu as well as Jiménez are focusing on 3 mushroom types in their hands-on workshops; oyster (seta), shitake and reishi. Their one-day workshops are for oyster mushrooms, and also two-day clinics for the last two varieties of fungi. “With reishi, and also to a lesser level shitake, we’re likewise teaching a fair little bit concerning the medicinal uses mushrooms, so more time is called for,” says Mathieu, “as well as with oyster mushrooms it’s predominantly [but not exclusively] a program on farming.”

While training workshops are now just given in Benito Juárez, Mathieu and also Jiménez plan to increase procedures to consist of both the central valleys and seaside areas of Oaxaca. The things is to have a network of producers expanding different mushrooms which are ideally suited for farming based on the specific microclimate. There have to do with 70 sub-species of oyster mushrooms, and also therefore as a species, the adaptability of the oyster mushroom to different climatic regions is impressive. “The oyster can be grown in a wide variety of different substrata, which’s what we’re experimenting with now,” he illuminates. The oyster mushroom can grow when grown on products which would or else be waste, such as dispose of from cultivating beans, sugar walking stick, agave (including the fibrous waste created in mezcal purification), peas, the usual river reed known as carriso, sawdust, as well as the checklist goes on. Agricultural waste which might or else be entrusted to rot or be shed, each with damaging ecological ramifications, can form substrata for mushroom cultivation. It should be kept in mind, though routine, that mushroom cultivation is an extremely sustainable, eco-friendly sector. Over the previous numerous years Mexico has actually in truth been at the fore in numerous locations of sustainable industry.

Mathieu exemplifies exactly how mushrooms can serve an arguably also higher environmental good:

” They can stand up to thirty thousand times their mass, having ramifications for hindering disintegration. They have actually been utilized to tidy up oil spills via absorption as well as thus are an essential vehicle for environment remediation. Study has actually been finished with mushrooms in the fight against woodworker ant damage; it’s been recommended that making use of fungi has the prospective to completely overhaul the chemical industry in an eco-friendly means. There are literally thousands of various other environment-friendly applications for mushroom usage, and also in each situation the mushroom remains an edible spin-off. Have a look at the Paul Stamets YouTube lecture, 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save The Globe.”

Mathieu and Jiménez can typically be discovered selling their products on weekend breaks in the organic markets in Oaxaca. They’re both greater than satisfied to discuss the nutritional value of their products which range from normally their fresh mushrooms, but also as maintains, seasoned with either chipotle and nopal or jalapeño and cauliflower. The mushroom’s vitamin B12 can not be located in fruits or veggies, and also accordingly a diet that includes fungi is incredibly crucial for vegetarians that can not obtain B12, frequently had in meats. Mushrooms can easily be a substitute for meats, with the advantage that they are not packed with antibiotics and hormonal agents frequently discovered in industrially refined meat items.