Executive summary:
The demand for sources of nutrition to feed the world population continues to increase and to meet demand. The industries thought it should have resorted to genetic changes or intensify culture by guaranteeing greater production by hectare. The quantity of waste produced by simple basic products such as coffee is amazing; Only a small percentage of coffee grain is used to prepare this drink. In some African countries, invasive plant species become a problem and the proposals that are made to eradicate them are absurd. We examine how we can use this omnipresent biomass waste as a substrate to produce affordable animal food and fast growing mushrooms that could appease hunger while creating jobs, sustainable income, food security and women's empowerment in communities struck by poverty. We can use existing resources to blow a wind of change and overcome malnutrition, by creating hope and prosperity where it is most necessary.
Keywords: waste, water hyacinth, coffee, fungi, animal feed, substrate, food security, nutrition sources, renewable resources, genetic modifications, job creation, malnutrition, hope of empowerment of women, recycling, resources existing.
The power of mentors
When Mario Calderon Rivera organized a visit to the Colombian Café triangle (EJE CAFERO) in 1994 to present the new research program and zero programs (ZERI) that I created at the United Nations University (UNU) With the support of Professor Heitor Gurgulino de Souza, the rector and the Japanese government, I was responsible for examining the commercial models of the future in a world without emissions or waste. Mario Calderon had already presented me Paolo Lugari (case 105), but as I was responsible for designing new economic models that would support the Kyoto Protocol (an agreement between all nations to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change ) which was to be decided three years later in 1997, he wanted to impress me with the unexploited opportunities of the Andean tropical highlands. Mario was more than a mentor; He was the godfather of my eldest son, which testifies to our close relationship and our mutual appreciation.
The fungus entrepreneur
After a long flight from Asia, I was invited to a lunch with researchers and entrepreneurs in an outdoor restaurant located outside Manizales, Colombia, and I was seated next to Carmenza Jaramillo, who presented herself as a bankrupt mushroom entrepreneur. Carmenza continued explaining that his company had been declared bankrupt by the court the same morning. She underlined the difficulty of obtaining a quality substrate necessary for the cultivation of fungi, the complexity of compost production and the capital and energy intensity of the culture of mushrooms in Paris (Agaricus bisporus). I had just landed in Latin America after a meeting organized in Beijing (China) by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden and the Academy of Sciences of China, where food security for a world of 10 billion inhabitants was the 'One of the main subjects of debate. By listening to the years of dedication of Carmenza Jaramillo, the teams of researchers she mobilized, as well as the capital and the jobs lost, it appeared to me that the culture of the mushrooms of Paris in the tropical highlands of the Andes is also absurd that the culture of coffee in the greenhouse along the French Loire. If everyone agrees that there is a request for coffee in France and that a cup of coffee in a local coffee is a great tradition, nobody claims to have the soil or the climate to cultivate coffee in France . If someone was trying to get there, the company would be ridiculed because it is likely to fail. The growth conditions are not good and the costs to adapt the site to the requirements are too high1. If we follow the same logic, it is obvious that Carmenza had to go bankrupt and that the only one to have earned money is the Dutch supplier of the equipment.
Genetic changes and limited nutrition sources
The absence of soils, climates and ideal crops leads to the request of genetic modifications to feed the world. If we only practice a few cultures in the world and await the same high yield in very varied conditions, then we abstract ecosystems and must apply a powerful cocktail of modified seeds, fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides for have a chance to succeed. If, on the other hand, we are ready to discover the unique conditions that would make local agriculture highly productive by deploying local biodiversity, then we will create food security and resilience while evolving towards abundance.
In addition to the challenge of the limited number of varieties of crops, the emphasis is too closely placed on cereals and meat as sources of nutrition. As long as the accent is put only on wheat, rice, corn and breeding dominated by chickens, cows and pigs, we lose many opportunities to generate nutrients from largely available resources, growing fast and renewable.
Another challenge is that each food production cycle is considered an autonomous operation. We miss a large number of opportunities because our competitive models focus on creating companies related to basic skills. This narrow focus eliminates the possibility of cascading nutrients and energy, and makes the global system of food production ineffective and unable to nourish everyone in this world. If we were able to one day feed everyone using the current chemical and genetic control system, the poor quality of food would strengthen obesity, diabetes and malnutrition.
Open a new world of mushrooms
From the start of the Uneu Zeri program, we argued that we had to use what we had, which includes the five kingdoms of nature: plants, animals, mushrooms, algae (protista) and the bacteria (Monera). When I attended the Beijing meeting mentioned above and I got to know Professor Shuting Chang, he opened a new world linked to mushrooms to me. It is difficult to avoid talking about mushrooms once they have understood their potential for food security and job creation.
Professor Chang is recognized alongside Dr. Philip G. Miles, former professor at the University of Buffalo in Amherst, in New York State, such as the main mycologists who have created a new reference for mushroom science. They met in 1978, when Dr. Miles was a guest professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. They published several books together and collaborated both in science and translation in industrial initiatives, in particular through the World Society of Mushroom Biology and Mushroom Products.
At the beginning, I could not believe the figures, but Professor Chang reported a two -year study that he had undertaken for Kraft Food in 1994. As dean of the Biology Department of the University University Chinese from Hong Kong2, Professor Chang was contacted by the American food company to answer the question of what we could do with huge coffee waste that would appear in China when the Chinese would start drinking coffee. The Chinese currently consume large amounts of tea and tea leaves are thrown. Professor Chang learned that when coffee is treated centrally, only 0.2 % are in a cup of instant coffee. Thousands of tonnes of waste which is left by the process of extraction of the soluble part is considered to be waste. When Professor Chang and his team analyzed the remains, coming from both farms and industrial treatment centers, they noted, as biologists, an excellent oil and a unique fiber.
Coffee waste for cultivation of mushrooms
Professor Chang reported to Kraft Food that coffee grounds represented an ideal substrate for the cultivation of mushrooms. He presented a photographic magazine of the whining mushrooms (Pleurotus sp.), Shiitake (Lentinula Edodes) and Reishi (Ganoderma Lucidum) which thrive on this material rich in fibers which was sterilized during the breeding or extraction process soluble. Kraft Food thanked Professor Chang for his report, but decided not to follow up on any of his suggestions aimed at converting these unique discoveries into industrial initiatives. This explains why the message of Colombia landed in very predisposed ears. The history of Carmenza's bankruptcy and Mario Calderon's wish to build a new industry around the coffee region, which would not replace coffee but would rather engage in the diversification of the coffee economy, seemed to be a luck that we all wanted to explore seriously. This approach is based on the principle of the blue economy, which wants us to use what we have and that we generate more, instead of reducing costs and fighting on the low prices. Professor Chang went to Colombia as a guest of the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros (FNC) and was received by Dr. Jorge Cardenás Gutierrez, the president, and Emilio Echeverri (then Administrative Vice-President, then Governor of Caldas, which is the hub of coffee in Colombia). The welcome from the Colombian university community was great. Cenicafe, the FNC research institute in Chinchiná, was ready to adopt Professor Chang's research program and apply it to the realities of the highlands of the tropical Andes. Scientists from all major universities have converged to Carmenza and learned Professor Chang, Doctor Lucia Atehortua and Doctor Ana Esperanza Franco from the University of Antioquia, and Doctor Julio Cezar Montoya of the Autonomous University of Western Western . Professor Chang said that thanks to the cultivation of coffee and the decentralized structure of production and transformation, Colombia could become the second country producing mushrooms in the world after China.
It was a privilege for the emerging network of Zeri to be able to take advantage of this vast experience, with a clear vision of opportunities and an active network of scientists oriented towards action and distributed worldwide. If I had not had this free and open access to science and implementation, Zeri programs would not have had the possibility of translating science into action, creating jobs and ensuring food security at from existing resources. Since our emerging network was able to draw from this open source of knowledge, we committed to Professor Chang to continue the same generous approach in all our initiatives.
The impact of the cultivation of coffee mushrooms on the empowerment of women
The FNC and Cenicafe have embarked on a seven -year research program to test all the proposals and hypotheses which currently constitute one of the new most remarkable corpus of knowledge on mushrooms and the social impact of food production from agricultural waste. The strength of this research, based both on laboratory tests, field programs and community farms, lies in the fact that it associates biological sciences, including genetics, the social sciences relating to food security , to malnutrition and the creation of jobs in cities and rural areas. Research has clearly demonstrated the impact of the cultivation of coffee mushrooms on the empowerment of women. All the major research institutions in the coffee region, in particular Hugo Salazar García, rector of the University of Manizales, Ricardo Gómez Giraldo, rector of the University of Caldas, Leopoldo Peláez Arbeláez, rector of the Autonomous University of Manizales , and Cezar Vallejo Mejía, Executive Director of the Coffee Economy Research Institute, have formed a solid university support network. If we have moved on 20 years since the first meetings of 1995, it is very rewarding to note that the 8th International Conference on Medicinal Mushrooms (IMMC8) will be held from August 24 to 27, 2015 in Manizales under the presidency of Professor Chang. Colombia was a country that was nowhere on the world map of mycological sciences and certainly not in the top of the range of medicinal mushrooms. On the occasion of the IMMC8, the first office of the Zeri network, which had already been created in 1994 by Professor Carlos Bernal under the name of the Zeri Institute for Latin America, will publish 22 original articles based on the work of Carmenza's search, partly written in collaboration with Nelson Rodriguez (Cenicafe) and a group of peers, highlighting the lessons learned from this initiative. Carmenza and his team were guided by the vision of Dr. Mario Calderon, who then assumed the presidency of the Manizales Chamber of Commerce, to reach the "Madres Cabezas de Familia" or mothers. The work in slums, using any space available or by building simple bamboo huts, started with the scientific support of Dr Sandra Montoya. The initial research work received financial assistance from the Soros Foundation and I was able to report to George Soros of the impact generated when we participated in the Al Gore Committee on Solutions for Climate Change in New York in 2006.
To this social program oppose the initiatives of the industrial group Síndneto Antioquieño who, under the leadership of Mr. Fabio Rico, then president of Chocolates de Colombia, decided in 1998 to invest $ 17 million in a large mushroom inspired by Proposals by Professor Chang, with the aim of producing five tonnes per day. The extent of investment and cross -shareholder with the Exito supermarket chain have destabilized many small -scale investments in the cultivation of mushrooms, which have been forced to focus on the local market.
Work in Colombia has evolved in parallel with work in South Africa and the South Pacific. Professor George Chan (see the case 101 on urban agriculture) and Professor Shuting Chang met for the first time at the same Reunion in Beijing. Consequently, the integrated biosystems of George have always been completed by the very impressive and quickly productive component of mushrooms. If the cultivation of fungi in Fiji has never proliferated, the operations carried out in southern Africa have left a lasting impact on the continent.
Control of invasive species: debate on water hyacinth
The Zeri scientific council for Africa held a meeting in Namibia in January 1996 where discussions focused on the pressing needs of the SADC (Southern African Development Community) to find solutions to control the Invasive species such as Acacia (Acacia Adunca), Callisia (Callisia Repens), Chardon (Cirsium Japanicum), Jussie (Ludwigia peruviana) and water hyacinth (Eichhornia Crassipes). Professor Keto Mshigeni, Vice-President of the Scientific and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Namibia at the time, Professor Osmund Mwandemele, dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources of the same University, and Professor Athanasius MPHURU, dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources of Africa University in Mutare (Zimbabwe), decided that the emphasis should be placed on the water hyacinth.
Considered as an invasive species, water hyacinth was originally imported as an ornamental flower of Latin America. Professor Mshigeni said one day: "The colonizers won our coffee in Latin America and gave us water hyacinth in exchange". However, this prolific plant is not really the problem; The deep cause of its rapid propagation is the massive erosion of the soils which concentrates the nutrients involved in the beds of the rivers and especially in the dams, as well as the excessive use of non -soluble synthetic fertilizers which are raised from the agricultural land and end in water bodies. These two combined problems provide a rich flow of nutrients in bad places.
The meeting in Namibia led to a field visit to the Kariba dam on Kariba's throat of the Zambezian river between Zambia and Zimbabwe in 1996. Professor Mishigeni and I were returned to Zambia to consult the University of Copperbelt, where the Institute for Advanced Studies of the United Nations University (UNU/IAS) had a regional office to obtain local expertise. The observations were surprising: chemicals, including DDT, prohibited worldwide, would be deployed to kill this invasive aquatic plant. In case it does not work, an Australian herbivorous beetle (beetle beetle of the Super Family of Curculionidae) is introduced to eat floating plants. We have been surprised by these little judicious solutions, because the water macinth seeds germinate over time (in the space of a decade), which would require the use of these chemicals for several years to obtain a lasting effect. The end result would be the destruction of any other aquatic life and there was no answer to the question of what the beetles would eat after having eliminated the water hyacinth. No one expected this exotic species to put to the diet or stop procreating.
If we really wanted to take care of the water hyacinths, we should tackle soil erosion and fertilizers instead of killing plants which are only a simple manifestation of the problem and not its deep cause . We have shared the conclusion that instead of trying to eradicate this beautiful flower, which feeds on minerals that are lost, we should recover the energy contained in these plants and transform it, by natural processes, in food for food for human and animal consumption. Our conclusions have given rise to a scientific training program in Zimbabwe, coordinated by the University of Africa.
Water hyacinth: become a food and a predilection substrate for the cultivation of fungi
The solution we wanted to test was whether the water hyacinth could be transformed into a substrate for the cultivation of fungi. Professor MPHURU suggested that Ms. Margareth Tagwira, head of his laboratory at the University of Africa and specialist in fabric culture, studies the possibilities. Professor Shu-Ting Chang agreed to come to Zimbabwe to assess the situation, develop a research program and offer training. Research results have been considerable and led to the publication of several scientific articles that have left the nutrition specialists perplexed, both in the field of social sciences and in that of breeding. Carl-Göran Hedén, MD, member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Sweden, which expressed the news to the Academy and organized annual updates on revolutionary discoveries linked to food security for five years. This project obtained funding from Mistra, the Swedish National Foundation for the Environment. The most robust animals in the bush do not eat the water hyacinths harvested. However, after cultivating fungi, this biomass has become a favorite food. As soon as Mrs. Margaret Tagwira focused on the production of fungi, the productivity levels measured by the quantity of mushrooms freshly cultivated on the substrate (dry base) have exceeded all expectations. As fungi digest the substrate and absorb nitrogen and humidity of the environment, productivity levels could reach 240 kg of mushrooms per 100 kg of dried water hyacinthes. It didn't take long for local newspapers to resume the news and declare the end of hunger in Africa thanks to this invasive species.
Zimbabwean political decision -makers did not see things of the same eye. They feared that the success of the cultivation of fungi on water hyacinths will result in a proliferation of hyacinths of human origin in all the water bodies of the country, which could cause a break in supply in water from hydroelectric dams. While tests had been successfully conducted at the Cleveland dam in Harare, creating hundreds of jobs for women collecting the thick water mats, they were quickly prohibited by the administration.
If we understood the danger of the proliferation of water hyacinths, we also knew that the import of chemicals, the spraying by aircraft or the handling of the weevils constituted a significant expenditure managed by a few delegates thanks to assistance funds The foreigner, while cultivation of mushrooms would represent a source of income for thousands of people. The second obstacle we heard several times was that Africans do not eat mushrooms. This argument was not new since we also heard it in Latin America.
African taste for mushrooms
It is true that for two generations, Africans had lost the habit and the taste for eating mushrooms. Fast urbanization, large -scale deforestation and soil erosion, as well as the adoption of the food traditions of colonizers are the reasons. Africa is home to 5,000 edible mushrooms and offers 20% of world fungal biodiversity. The only species marketed is the Paris mushroom (Agaricus bisporus). With the help of our network of scientists in southern Africa, which includes Dr. Dawid Abate of the College of Natural Sciences, Department of Biology, University of Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dr. Kenneth Yongabi Anchang of the Catholic University ( Cameroon) and Professor Eduard Ayensu, Chairman of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Ghana and President of the Pan -African Union for Science and Technology, we discovered that there was not a single bank of Indigenous mushroom spores for commercial use on the whole continent. Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Director General of UNESCO and member of the Rome club, drew my attention to a study sponsored by UNESCO which confirms that there are two generations, 92 % of African tribes used to pick Mushrooms in nature and to dry them to fill the gap between the harvests. The abundance of nutrients for the cultivation of fungi, stimulated by the volume of water hyacinths, the richness of biodiversity which remains to be discovered, and the urgent need to engage in a massive program which provides food and Nutrition to poor people in rural and urban areas, have led to the conclusion that the Zeri network should engage in a vast program to inspire people, share science, discover nutrition, and develop industrial activities that generate food security and jobs, and provide a prospect of hope. Ms. Thelma Awori, then Director of the Regional Office for Africa to the UNDP, saw the potential for the empowerment of women and encouraged us to continue it, with the support of Anders Wijkman, Director of PUBLIC Policy and Member of the 'Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden. If our scientific network quickly found an attentive ear among the few mycologists in the region, we concluded that the future of fungi in Africa would not be limited to another research program or the design of another industry export that would only bring back foreign currencies. Inspired by the work of Professor Shu-Ting Chang, we wanted to fully understand the potential of this activity for populations, by creating jobs and ensuring food security. We wanted to find a way to reach the left-hand, starting with rural communities, where we were focusing on food, nutrition, health and hygiene for the growing number of HIV orphans. Everyone agreed, and our goal was to embark on an accelerated implementation. When you attack poverty, you cannot ask people deeply affected to be patient.
China: mycology at the service of food and safety
I organized a field visit to Qingyuan (清远) in the province of Guangdong (广东 😉 Coordinated
by Professor Shuting Chan. This opened our eyes: a city the size of San Francisco made work 250,000 people in The cultivation of mushrooms in the city.
The only goal of food and security. Continue a comparable strategy. A component of their productive life and their daily diet.
Go forward: Zimbabwe mushroom production centers and university degrees
Once we have had a clear idea of the path to follow, we united our efforts and, with the support and flawless participation of Professor Chang, we took the first steps starting with Zimbabwe. Even if it was not "an obvious choice" according to many, we wanted to show our respect for the role of pioneer of Margaret Tagwira, who was supported by her husband, Dr. Fanuel Tagwira, who later became Vice-Chancelier The University of Africa. Professor Chang did not wait long to ensure that the key people with whom we decided to work receive high -level practical training in China, thanks to UNESCO scholarships coordinated by Dr Edgar J. Dasilva From the Paris headquarters. The University of Africa in Mutare has become the first "mushroom", soon followed by the University of Namibia. The University of Africa was only created in 1992 and the University of Namibia, older, had to be completely restructured after independence and the end of apartheid in 1990. Cecil Rhodes bequeathed its field in Rhodesia3 at the Methodist church, which decided to return the land to the Zimbabwean people with an endowment of nearly $ 100 million to create a university during the following century. The main objective of the new university institution was to reverse the decades of apartheid under which Africans were not allowed to obtain university degrees in agricultural sciences. This situation was at the heart of the self-realizing prophecy according to which, once the white man has gone, agriculture collapses. The two universities have decided to focus on food security and created faculties to reverse planned ignorance. The cultivation of mushrooms has been adopted as one of the new priorities due to the desire to go beyond standard agricultural practices.
Support for orphans
Margaret Tagwira added a strong social component to food security plans, addressing the orphans. With the support of Professor Chang, she undertook a research program which she then adapted to the local resources available and the needs of the population. While Colombia has embarked on a investigation into the nutritional value of mushrooms, starting with coffee waste, Zimbabwe started the program with water hyacinths and Namibia used Brasserie and the Elephant grass as a starting point. Ms. Tagwira created a local network of villagers around the African University of Mutare to train orphans and the first 15 girls spent a few weeks at the campus. These young girls aged 10 to 12 have returned to their villages with all the basic skills necessary to embark on mushroom agriculture. To everyone's surprise, a few months after the end of their training, 13 of the 15 girls were married. The fact that girls have acquired the competence to produce food increased their "value" on the market, which allowed "the guardian uncle" to sell it in a marriage where he would receive 4 to 5 cows in exchange.
A girl named Chido refused the offer to get married and have a "safe life". Ms. Tagwira was very clear in her communications: "This girl with green and gold fingers will be forced to marry unless she has a father". I was far from suspecting that the father was going to be me.
Chido: an unexpected trip
When I met Chido a few months later, we reached an agreement: I will be her father and she will realize her dream of saving the girls of slavery imposed by uncles and cousins. Over the years, Chido has established itself as one of the best trainers, speaking with unique strength and diligence to women around the world and giving them the means to pass from the role of victim to that of agent of Change in the local community, by resisting abuse and guaranteeing food security. As Chido was not ready to leave Zimbabwe, Ms. Tagwira not only proposed to be her adoptive mother, but she also trained her for years in the laboratory of the University of Africa to become One of the youngest experts in fabric culture.
Chido was only 16 years old when Ponam Alhuwalia, who had been heading the Yes, the YES campaign (United States) campaign for years, organized the United States Employment Summit in the United Nations in Nairobi, Kenya. Half of the UN conference room was in tears when Chido shared with the 2,000 guests around the world that HIV orphans should not be considered victims and that they are confident and trust them and Give them a chance to change the face of the world. It was clear that the fact of "reaching the left-handed" implies an empowerment that we rarely see if we only speak of children who have lost their father and their mother. When a strong spirit and a flawless determination associate emotions with the science and the art of the culture of mushrooms, we start a powerful process of transformation. Chido then overshadowed the work of his adoptive mother and, with the agreement of the Tagwira Fan, then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Africa and the key person of the Leed Program of the Rockefeller Foundation, she embarked on culture Mushrooms to first ensure the food of her small family nucleus made up of her almost blind grandmother and her little brother, and win enough additional funds to finance the schooling of her brother.
Move in motion
The fungus launched by Margaret on the outskirts of Mutare were going to generate revenues by sales on local markets and reach productivity levels that would make all professionals blush. It was from this small initiative that we designed a program in which Margaret, then Chido, visited villagers by offering them to prepare a meal based on mushrooms. We convinced people starting with their palaces and when their children said they appreciated the taste and high nutritional value, many wanted to know how they could do it themselves.
The Mutare team organized "mushroom safaris" during the rainy season, during which it found wild mushrooms that have been part of the local diet for centuries. It has practiced the cultivation of fabrics and exploited spore banks that provide mycelium (mushroom seeds) for local production. Agricultural farms were multiplied and the training technique adapted to the needs of rural communities was very incentive.
Chido decided to follow his own path and acquired practical experience thanks to prolonged visits to India in 2006, Colombia in 2007 and the design of field projects in Australia with Aborigines. Thanks to his work with women of the lower castes in India and New Dehli schoolchildren, in cooperation with Alternative Development (DA) and with the help of Dr. Ashok Khosla, president of DA and co -president of the Rome club at the 'A period, Chido discovered how the science and the art of the culture of fungi can be integrated into culture and tradition, in particular the culinary skills of mothers all over the world. International opening has crystallized in a series of training programs that Chido wanted to lead for the Zimbabwe orphans. Thanks to cooperation with Marianne Knuth from the village of Kufunda, the Dutch entrepreneur Robi Valkhof of the Caos Foundation and the network that Chido has created over the years, a first series of Karoi orphans (Zimbabwe) have been trained in cultivation of mushrooms.
Mushrooms are part of a broader initiative that includes hygiene (a clean environment increases productivity) and self -esteem. Given that many orphans had been victims of abuse, mainly from their immediate family members, it was necessary to strengthen their emotional intelligence. Brooke McDonnell and Helen Russell, the founders of Equator Coffee and Teas, based in San Rafael, California (United States), wanted to promote the vision of Chido in California during his visits and therefore sponsored his Culture Culture Project Coffee waste in Tanzania through an organization called Sustainable Harvest. A team led by David Griswold and Sara Morrocchi made it possible that Chido could create another regional production center.
The stories have spread and the demand for Chido exceeded the time she had. She worked in Cameroon, Congo and Ghana, sharing her experience and building a fungus after the other. The United Nations committed him as an expert and these unique experiences made Chido so versatile that third-world and industrialized world entrepreneurs were ready to listen to and learn from his wisdom.
Nikhil Aurora and Alejandro Velez learned Chido's first lessons to build their Back to the Roots (BTTR) mushroom in San Francisco Bay in California, working with Peet's Coffee and Tea coffee waste. Willem Jan Bosman Jansen, a distributor of films in the Netherlands, was inspired by this opportunity and began to base himself on the basic experience of Chido by cultivating mushrooms through the GRO company which collected waste from Coffee of the restaurant chain, in disused greenhouses left by the failed floral industry in Egmont, some 60 kilometers north of Amsterdam. It would be too long to quote all the projects in which Chido participated. She has her "finger" in at least 200 mushroom farms on 4 continents. Despite its success and influence in the development of a new way of seeing mushrooms, his life as an orphan and entrepreneur, Chido has always wanted to learn more.
Animal feed and medicinal fungi
Ivanka Milenkovic had published in 1998 an article on animal feed produced from remains of mushroom substrates at Elsevier Science while she taught and did research at the University of Belgrade. She then created her Ekofungi mushroom business outside the capital and received the "entrepreneur prize for the year" in Serbia in 2014. Milenkovic trained Chido on the use of the worn Mushroom Substrate to feed the Animals, in particular chickens, widening the food cycle with nutrition that was considered to be worthless for humans in a productive waterfall of food for food ... and more food. Over the years, Chido’s interest has oriented with medicinal fungi because many orphans and isolated communities that it also needs drugs. I met Mr. Han Sheng Hua in Qindao ten years earlier and he invited Chido to learn medicinal mushrooms on his farm in Hangzhou (China). China has pioneering entrepreneurs and more than a hundred research institutes devoted to mushrooms.
Mr. Han makes classical music play (preferably Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) to his Ganoderma Lucidum and demonstrated, thanks to years of scientific monitoring, that the Shiitake mushrooms exposed to music grow better. He produces some of the best medicinal mushrooms, free from heavy metals, which Dr. Robin Tan Mua li transforms into powerful drugs through his Primart company in Singapore. The network of medicinal fungi is very united. The quality of mushrooms is often not checked. When I asked Professor Shuting Chang which were the best products he knew, he immediately turned me to Primart.
I went to visit the treatment facilities in Singapore and I was impressed by the way in which the Singaporean government had facilitated the construction of a medicinal mushroom processing unit, used by various companies. As Robin and his team needed only access to it only day per week, capital investment would have been too high for his independent business. The sharing of equipment goods therefore enabled the emerging group of Singapore medicinal mushroom companies, including International Advanced Bio-Pharmaceutical Industries, HST Medical PTE. Ltd and Tong of Tang can Rong Zhong Xin to prosper alongside Primart. Thanks to the cooperation of Robin Li and Han Sheng Hua, Chido has received intensive training on medicinal fungi and is now ready to return to his passion, which is to provide a livelihood to African orphans.
The future of hope
The transformation of Chido, of an orphan mistreated to agent of change in remote villages, poor communities and urban cities, has inspired many people and has received support from Rotary Clubs (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Zimbabwe ), artists (Koen Vanmechelen in Hasselt) and entrepreneurs to create his own center in Zimbabwe under the promising name of "The Future of Hope". This title is borrowed from a conference of laureates of the Nobel Prize that I helped to organize in 1995 in Hiroshima (Japan). After a series of meetings with Elie Wiesel (Nobel Peace Prize in 1986), we have concluded that the world lost hope and that if there is no hope, there is no future . We brought together 12 Nobel Prize winners to discuss this trend of companies to have pessimistic prospects, with the conviction that little could be done to reverse negative trends. Asahi Shimbun is the second largest Japanese newspaper, led by Sho Ueno, who sponsored the event. Chido and I had our first conversation about her future in 1997, when she was only 11 years old. We agreed that we had to work in a hopeful future and that the best way to achieve it was to save the girls abandoned by their parents because of the AIDS epidemic and find a way to give them the means to become agents of change in their society. It would bring hope, provided we have something concrete to show, and it was in the form of simple mushrooms.
The message of the past 18 years has had a resounding echo and many have been inspired by our pragmatic approach. Unfortunately, the name and fame of Chido led to a new form of abuse. Some self -proclaimed Berlin social entrepreneurs prompted Chido to be part of their new company, which bore its name. Over time, Chido realized that she had made a bad choice and felt abused. His request for a change in the company's course, which was based on the exclusive exploitation of his know-how and his name, led him to adopt a specific business ethics in Europe. Chido’s demand for these “social” trading partners has only aroused insensitivity. Indeed, mushrooms are a profitable trade since the raw materials are free, the demand for freshly cultivated exotic mushrooms is high. If these painful operations motivated by investment, profit and selfishness are a reality of life, we all delight the proliferation of new farms of mushrooms in the world. The mushroom trade is expanding. There are already 20 school farms in Zimbabwe and three times more in Delhi. There are around 60 village farms in Ghana thanks to the first program with Anglogold Ashanti coordinated by Prishani Satyapal in the cities of Obuasi and Iduapriem, and the promotion of UNDP in the north of the country. Namibia is a place where no one would have expected the creation and exploitation of 17 functional farms, which makes an example in Africa which continues to extend to Tanzania, Congo and Cameroon. Uganda is the most efficient African nation, with more than 300 mushroom farms between Entebbe and Kampala. It is thanks to the work of Professor Keto Mshigeni, who directed the scientific initiative on fungi between 2000 and 2003, sponsored by the UNDP, that the network of southern African Mushrooms, coordinated today by the CSIR of South Africa was born. This network has 30 mycologists which make the social dimension of the cultivation of fungi an essential priority.
Professor Mshigeni also created the first research center on medicinal fungi at Hubert Kairuki Memorial University in Dar Es Salaam, thus completing medical studies by natural medicinal science. Kenneth Yongabi Anchang, associate professor at the Catholic University of Cameroon in Bamenda, heads the network in West and East Africa, jointly with Professor Dawid Abate, who contributed to the creation of a hundred of Initiatives related to mushrooms in Ethiopia, including special programs for street children in Addis Ababa.
The strength of the network and the creation of around a thousand farms throughout Africa would make many people proud and happy. However, the potential is a hundred times more important and I am sad to see that it takes so long to create a much larger impact. The missing link is not money but rather passionate people who master science and who undertake to make the difference on the ground.
This is what motivates the researchers from Latin America, where the first seeds were also planted by Professor Chang, to adopt a comparable development. Ms. Carmenza Jaramillo, Colombia, is surrounded by Julio Montoya, Ana Esperanza Franco, Sandra Montoya Barto, Edgardo Albertó (Universidad Nacional by General San Martin, Argentina), Angel R. Trigos (Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico) and Maria Angela Amanozas (Centro Nation of Pesquisa de Florestas - Embrapa, Brazil).
While the original initiative started in Caldas (Colombia), a young enthusiastic scientist named Ms. Francenid Perceomo has created more than 80 production units in farms from El Huila (Colombia). The Mexican Luis Martín del Campo created the "Seeds of Hope" network under the name of "Sporah" and designed the modular company involving regions and cities of all Mexico. His social enterprise, a real company of heart and mind, is based on the support of large cafes like Starbucks, but also works in close collaboration with Perla Pacheco Cortez and the network of women entrepreneurs in Mexico (Associación Mexicana de Mujeres Empresarias or AMMJE). This initiative benefits from the personal support of Laura Frati Gucci, president of the World Association of Women Entrepreneurs, and is spread around the world, carried by this incredible opportunity to empower women.
Success beyond all expectations
This file on mushrooms would fill out more than a hundred pages if we gave a place to each of the entrepreneurs with whom I have been in contact over the years. I have to apologize for my inability to pay tribute to all those who deserve attention. In the last part of this file, I would like to highlight a few extraordinary people that I have known over the years. They inspired me because they succeeded against all odds.
Jasmin and Slay Herro, associated with the indigenous Australian Minority Supply Council, followed one of my webinaries in 2010 and wanted to implement the culture of mushrooms in their Aboriginal community. Chido proposed practical training and the program took off thanks to the support of Campos Coffee in Sydney and Professor John Crawford, holder of the Coffey Chair in Sustainable Agriculture at the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment of the University of Sydney. The European network began in Switzerland in 1997, where Patrick Romanens Pilz GmbH in Sulgen, in the state of Thurgovie. Patrick and its production director Michael Mannale then created Fine Funghi AG. They have continued to develop the activity and today provide 100 tonnes of shiitakes and other exotic mushrooms on their Gossau farm, at the gates of Zurich. A network then emerged in Spain, inspired by the work carried out in Colombia and the role of pioneer of Chido. Iñaki Mielgo and Beltran Orío (Resetea - Setas responsible or mushrooms responsible for www.resetea.es) supported by the University of Santiago de Compostela. The Italian team started at the Turin Polytechnic School in 2000 with Professor Luigi Bistagnino and Silvia Barbera, who demonstrated during the Slow Food festival in 2008 how all the coffee waste of this unique rally of 300,000 people from the The whole world to celebrate a local and healthy diet could be used to cultivate mushrooms on site. This demonstration has given rise to hundreds of initiatives and it would take hundreds of pages to cover all those we know. We can say that mushroom initiatives are booming. Funghi espresso (www.funghiespresso.com) shows how the most diverse young people can unite their forces and make them success: Antonio Di Giovanni (agronomist), Vincenzo Sangiovanni (Oriental languages and architecture), Tomohiro Sato (Japanese entrepreneur in Italy) , Camilla Piccinini (one of my students and designer of industrial products) and Raffaele Sangiovanni (Information Expert). Their Florence company will be present at the Milan Universal Exhibition this year and will offer another platform after the Mushroom Farm that we presented to the Hanover Universal Exhibition in 2000. The initiative was supported by the Local team of mycologists led by Nicola Krämer (www.shii-take.de) who had launched his mushroom business only a few months before the opening of the exhibition and who benefited from a formidable platform during the Universal Exhibition.
Cédric Péchard, former manager at Oracle France, took the time to visit Chido in Zimbabwe and followed Ivanka's research work in Belgrade. He joined the field visits to Ghana and decided to create the NGO Upcycle (inspired by my Upcycling book published in 1999). He created an urban farm in Paris with the support of ESAT (the French employment aid program) producing coffee in containers in the city in cooperation with Fabre Coffee - a subsidiary of Kraft. The loop has been completed since the start of the adventure in 1992.
Mr. Péchard then created an exploitation of mushrooms at the Ferme de l'Aigrefoin in Saint-Rémy- Les-Chevreuse, integrating people with physical and mental disabilities in the production process. If Péchard took more than a year to refine the process, realizing that science must be supplemented by art, it managed to put the product on the market with a sale price of 13 euros per kilogram. The most important platform in Europe is perhaps the conversion of the old tropical swimming pool in the center of Rotterdam into a mushroom training and culture center, which has become Rotterzwam (www.rotterzwam.nl), "zwam" meaning "Mushroom" in Dutch. Siemen Cox, Mark Slegers, Nate Surrett and Melissa Van Der Beek are linked to Blue Café, Bright Future Lab and Blue Consultants initiated by the Network of Blue Economy Practitioners in the Netherlands and led by Hilke de Wit, Jan Jonger, Patty Kluytmans and Jules Rijniers under the general coordination of Charles Van Der Haegen, the director of Zeri Europe in Brussels.
"Café au mushroom" initiative: job creation and income
The "Café au Mushroom" initiative involved thousands of people, created approximately more than 3,000 companies and mobilized cash investments of approximately $ 62 million, the lowest investments encrypted in hundreds of dollars and the more important (in Colombia) generating $ 17 million. These initiatives only concern the work to which we have been linked and associated and are completely independent of large -scale investments in the field of mushrooms, in which Professor Shting Chang played a decisive role. We know that these investments amount to hundreds of millions of dollars, including the largest farm in world mushrooms in Indonesia.
We only reported our initiatives in Africa, Latin America and Europe, with brief references to India and Australia. We believe that the number of direct jobs created by these programs amounts to 75,000 for agricultural activities. If we include all indirect jobs related to packaging, sale, tests, quality control, transformation, drying, cooking and catering, we must add around 260,000 jobs.
There is no doubt in our mind that with this knowledge made available as an open source and the spirit of going beyond the simple production of a fungus to place these opportunities in a more social and ecological context Large, we can hope that if we have reached 3000 companies in 20 years, from 1995 to 2014, then we can reach at least 50,000 companies in the next 20 years. It is not logical to continue to burn coffee waste to create energy and safe energy. Although we applaud composting, there are better options than stressing earthworms in compost bins with caffeine, while we can get so much food and repercussions. One million tonnes of coffee waste on an industrial site will generate at least 500,000 tonnes of protein and at least 5 billion euros in income at only 1 euro per kilo, while providing half a million jobs.
The time has come to realize that we can evolve from our desire to reduce the impact on the environment towards a proactive commitment where we will do more good to people and provide cheap food for animals. Indeed, it is upcycling and upsizing, generate more with what we have helps us to achieve many social and ecological objectives more than we could imagine. This is the blue economy in practice: do more with what you have and be surprised by what you did not know.
Translation in Gunter Fables
The mushroom trade inspired me very early on the writing of three fables: the fable n ° 10 "Colombian mushrooms", dedicated to Mario Calderon Rivera, the fable n ° 14 entitled "Shiitake Love Caffine", dedicated to Carmenza Jaramillo, And the fable n ° 23 "The Smart Mushroom", dedicated to Shu Ting Chang. They inspired the creation of this pole in 1994, during my discussions on the cultivation of mushrooms from agricultural waste.
Documentation
www.ecomushrooms.com.au/
Archive.unu.edu/unupress/unuPbooks/80362e/80362e00.htm
http://tal.tv/es/video/los-hongos-de-francenid-perdomo/
