North of Peru, 09.28.08

The quechua community of Marahuayca-Incahuasi, located in the department of Lambayeque, to the North of Peru, has begun a phase with a growing industry of the most exquisite edible mushrooms of the country, that grow around hectares of pines that sowed with the support of Pronamachcs. The commoners decided to plant pines in the regions adjoining several hectares of pines with the support of Pronamachcs to market the woods in a time limit of 20 years. Around the pines they began to appear mushrooms ones that previously were rejected for 15 years by the belief that was weeds, weed or poisonous elements. With time, they have learned to take advantage of these mushrooms and they discovered that they are one of the delights in the world gastronomy. "It is a nutritious food, which in epochs of rain they obtain more than 3 tons of this fresh mushroom per hectare of pine and they have 60 hectares on the whole", as indicated Bernardino Lalopú Forest, Chief Pronamachcs Incahuasi-Ferreñafe. Incahuasi is one of the most forgot districts of Peru, where they survive quechua towns. In the population of Incahuasi, their work begins since there where large communal breeding ground and boys free the weeds to the small pines that come to to be sown at the rate of 100 hectares per year. According to Lalopú Forest, between the pine and the mushroom, there is an exchange of proteins, the pine gives the protein to the mushroom and the mushroom at the same time delivers the humidity that requires the pine. "The mushroom is fleshy and the yellowish part is the food, it is a vegetable meat, 100% ecological," added. In the meantime, in that same zone a wasp lives that has become the better controller of plagues, therefore permits to save thousands of dollars in insecticides. The Pronamachcs has raised a humble plant where the mushroom is peeled cut and dried in an oven and they use the wood drought of the same forest where they put its communal mark and its cost is of 35 suns the kilogram.