We are all Seminarians Don’t worry, being a seminarian does not necessarily mean anything religious. I should know. I at-tended two seminaries in my youth. Shall we call it youthful indiscretion? The word is a good one, however. It comes from the Latin seminarium, and from the word seminarius (“of seed”). It literally means a plant nursery, and figuratively, a breeding ground, or a school or acade-my for specialized training. In history seminaries were originally located within monasteries or abbeys. Seeds, education--this is beginning to sound a lot like Finca Luna Nueva. If so, Brother Steven Far-rell would be certainly be the Abbott, and the Very Reverend Tom Newmark would be the Bishop. The Sister Refectorers in the kitchen cook the wonderful organic meals the hungry monks and visitors rel-ish so much. The Costa Rican Lay Brothers work the farms and fields. The Finca interns are the abbey’s Novices. Of course, St. Rudolf Steiner is the patron saint of Luna Nueva Abbey. All visitors, guests, and friends of Luna Nueva Abbey, then, are the seminarians, because it is impos-sible to go to this organic abbey and not brush up against and begin to learn what are easily the most important things in your life. This abbey’s seminary teaches you how to live, which means how to grow and harvest life-maintaining and enhancing organic food that is free from pesticides. The miracle is that you cannot practice sustainable farming and gardening without your life being transformed. And once you have been transformed, you will be driven to share your knowledge with others. What you will realize then is that you are the sacred seed you need for re-growing yourself, and propagating and extending your knowledge and skills of sustainable and life-dynamic living to a world so badly in need of it. -SD

Make a visit to Abbey Finca Luna Nueva and become a real seminarian. Make yourself the seed to regrow a new outlook with knowledge your community and the wider world needs. Write to Abbot Steven and tell him you want to start growing yourself.

PerezosoThe Gastronomic Journal of Finca Luna Nueva, Costa Rica.

EditorsPatricia Spinelli

Stephen Duplantier

Art Direction, Design, & ProductionStephen Duplantier

All Rights Reserved Copyright 2011 Editorial Rizomas

A division of the Center for Gulf South History and Culture, Inc. A 501(C)3 Non-Profit Corporation

D. Eric Bookhardt, DirectorA Special Publication of Neotropica

ISSN 1659-4657

Copyrights are retained by the individual authors and creators of the works. No copyrights on reprint-ed material and artwork have been intentionally violated. All use is fair use for educational purposes. Opinions expressed are solely those of the writers. No medical advice is implied or intended.

James Steven FarrellGeneral Manager,Finca Luna Nueva

Harold EduarteFarm Manager

info@fincalunanuevalodge.comFor information about Slow

Food activities, write to Patricia Spinelli

glitterari@aol.comLetters and Comments on

Perezoso

stephen.duplantier@gmail.com

Finca Luna Nueva LodgeA Costa Rica Hotel

Phone Hotel Reception: (506) 2468-4006, 2468-0874

Silkscreen prints by Melanie Cervantes & Jesus Baraza, Dignidadrebelde.com

For millennia, herbs and plants have sustained tra-ditional societies’s need for medicine and healing.

According to the World Health Organization, 80 per-cent of the population in developing countries relies on ancient ethnomedical knowledge to meet primary health-care needs. Medicinal herbs are also the basis for many pharmaceuticals on which contemporary societies rely. Over-harvesting, deforestation, and global climate change are threatening the 70,000 plants known to have therapeutic value. No one is sure of how many more valuable and useful plant species are disap-pearing before we even have the chance to test them. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) calculates current extinction rates 100 to 1000 times higher than normally occurring in periods

of evolutionary stability, which means the planet is in the midst of an unprecedented mass extinction event. Also endangered are the languages and healing traditions of indigenous cultures. Anthropologists believe that every two weeks a language disappears, a traditional culture comes to an end, and the collective herbal wisdom of a people vanishes. “Around the world

Preserving the World’s Sacred Seeds

Sacred Seeds ßsanctuaries preservebiodiversity and

ancient traditional knowledge

Giant Baobab Tree (Adansonia grandidieri) Morondava, Madagascar

we see more and more young people reluctant to learn their mother tongue, or to carry on the traditions of their elders, whether from internal or external forces,” said Ashley Glenn, Sacred Seeds program manager at the William L. Brown Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden. She added, “When knowledge of medicinal plant use is lost, it is lost forever, discontinuing a legacy of healing and denying future generations the health and prosperity we hold.” Sacred Seeds is a network of living gardens around the world containing locally important plants, includ-ing those of medicinal, ceremonial, food crop, and craft value. Every day the Sacred Seed gardens around the world, tended by hard-working farmers and gar-deners whose names we will never know, are helping to preserve biodiversity and traditional plant knowl-edge. The first Sacred Seeds garden, Santuario Semillas Sagradas, was created at Luna Nueva, an organic and Biodynamic® rainforest education center and lodge in Costa Rica. The sanctuary is a collection of medicinal plants that protects and celebrates not only biological diversity in Costa Rica and the tropics, but also the diversity of cultural knowledge related to these plants worldwide. Santuario Semillas Sagradas is dedicated to protect-ing endangered medicinal plants of the neotropics and is one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive sanctuaries for endangered plant species. Sacred Seeds gardens are also currently located in Huamachuco, Peru, Madagascar, at the Hosagunda Forest in India and hundreds more there, at the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota, and the Missouri Botanical Garden.

The Goals of the Sacred Seed Sanctuaries

b Plant Conservation: Researchers work with each sanctuary to explore all options to ensure the continuous presence of local plant resources.b Harboring Ancient Knowledge: To pre-serve cultural traditions, botanical informa-tion of useful plants is documented and avail-able to the community in the local language.b A Venue for Creating and Sharing: Each sanctuary fosters discussions and encourages traditional practices, experimentation, educa-tion, conservation, and cultural celebration.b Sustainability through Practicality: Bringing economic benefits to the local com-munity, researchers encourage the harvest and use of the cultivated plants for responsible income building.b Engagement of Local Communities: Lo-cal people are involved in every level of cre-ation and management, and the sanctuary is a living testament to their history.b Emphasis on Education: Researchers work with each garden to create programs that focus on conservation education, home gar-dening, sustainable harvest practices, and the cultural history of plant use.b Constructive Communication: Sacred Seeds sanctuaries throughout the world share advice, questions, problems, and successes. This benefits each community, each ecosys-tem, and the world as a whole.A sacred seed expert at work . Research shows Indigenous people who

participate in customary land and sea management practices are healthier and happier.

Sacred Seeds’ world gardens preserve ethnobotanical knowledge to fight plant extinctions

New website helps spread information

Plants make the world green and make possible life as we know it. Most of the world’s oxygen comes from plants, and without plants there would be no food and natural medicines. Yet this botanical bounty is facing enormous risks today. A growing alliance of Sacred Seed gardens is helping to preserve the irreplaceable cultural and botanical knowledge about plants that humans depend upon. The competition of plants for survival over aeons has been the impetus for the dynamic evolutionary processes which produce so much biochemical di-versity in plants. Those complex chemicals have been experimented with by an unknown number of genera-tions of humans looking for medicines. It’s hard-won knowledge to understand which plants to use, and how and when to use these natural medicines. It’s not

antique knowledge: ethnobotanicals continue to be the first line of medical defense for hundreds of millions of people in traditional folk cultures, and they are the source of many commercial medicines sold in pharma-cies. Ethnobotanical practice has served the world’s hu-man communities well, but today the problems are many and serious. The world is in the throes of the Sixth Extinction. Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson has estimated that during this present extinction crisis--which is, at heart, a massive loss of biodiversity--the earth is losing 33,000 species a year. Broken down in smaller numbers, this means that three species per hour are disappearing forever. And guess what--this may be an underestimate! In response to this crisis of biodiversity, New Chap-

Raising taro kong and child, Highlands Region, Papua New Guinea, 1964-1965, Dr W Clarke, Australia National University

ter’s Tom Newmark, Finca Luna Nueva’s Steven Farrell, and Rafael Ocampo created Santuario Semillas Sagra-das and developed the first Sacred Seed Sanctuary in the neotropical rainforest of Costa Rica. The creation of this garden for the preservation of the ethnobotani-cal diversity of Costa Rica requires expert botanical knowledge and expert anthropological sleuthing about the folk practices of traditional rural people. Santuario Semillas Sagradas is a living expression of Costa Rica’s folk cultural past and present and a reservoir of hope for the future. This sanctuary is one of the new world’s largest and most comprehensive sanctuaries for endan-gered medicinal plant species of the neotropics. Today the Sacred Seed Garden at Finca Luna Nueva is thriving and has spawned similar work around the world through the creation of Sacred Seeds, an interna-tional non-profit that supports plant conservation.Sacred Seeds is managed by a board comprised of founders Tom Newmark, Vice Chairman of New Chapter and Steven Farrell, President of Finca Luna Nueva, plus Michael Balick, Ph.D., and Rainer Buss-mann, Ph.D. Ashley Glenn is Sacred Seeds Program Manager. Relatives of wild crops and traditional varieties–the repository of genetic diversity within and among food plants–have been the foundation of crop domestica-tion, plant breeding and the modern agriculture that feeds Earth’s six and a half billion people. Plants pro-vide the biochemical basis of many pharmaceuticals that can alleviate or cure certain diseases. Across the globe, countless communities, families and organiza-tions are working to preserve traditional plant use and safeguard their most important species or varieties of plants used for medicine, food, building and craft, ceremony and adornments. This type of integrative conservation work requires significant use of innovation and planning; many of these communities are starting from scratch using only local knowledge, resources, and experience. The website will enable people around the globe to better communicate, sharing and learning from each other and from the scientific community.  Participants will help further the project by posting videos, photos, questions, and solutions to the issues they face such as programming, education, volun-

teer recruitment, plant conservation, reforestation, documentation of traditional knowledge, and basic horticulture. Website visitors will gain access to the collections of books, databases and scientific articles that may help people to create their own Sacred Seeds sanctuaries. Stewardship of such valuable plant re-sources requires rigorous science which values tradi-tional knowledge systems and includes methods to ensure culturally sensitive solutions. With economic development empowering a greater percentage of the world’s people, urban areas continu-ing to expand and human populations projected to add 2.5 billion more hungry and sick people in the next 50 years, it seems certain that natural resources will face increasing threat. Habitat loss, unsustain-able extraction of plants, spread of invasive species, climate change and other human activities will have tremendous impact. Plant species will be lost, genetic diversity of surviving species will be diminished and traditional knowledge associated with plant use will be eroded. Perhaps never before in human history has there been a more pressing need to discover, under-stand, conserve and sustainably use the plant resourc-es that are essential for the benefit of humanity. “There is no one solution to halt the rapid loss of biodiversity and traditional knowledge,” said, Ashley Glenn. “The solution will be thousands of people in thousands of ecosystems, mixing the collective knowl-edge of the world with their own ingenuity to save their own local knowledge and plants. Every person, every plant, and every innovation is valuable, and Sa-cred Seeds connects this global community to raise all of our efforts to a higher level,” she added. The Sacred Seeds gardens around the world are living biological havens which preserve not only the seeds themselves, but the techniques of their propa-gation and conservation. Looming behind all these gardens is the dense and deep nexus of indigenous knowledge gathered anonymously by millions of people around the world. These Sacred Seeds gardens are truly a distributed world-wide heritage treasure.

a

Sacred Seeds has recently launched a new web-site that showcases various worldwide solutions

to the biodiversity crisis. On the new site, which can be accessed at www.sacredseedssanctuary.org, you can keep up with the location and work of the sacred seed gardens around the world. There are hundreds of sacred seed gardens in India, which is the mother territory of so many plants that have travelled around the world. In the Caribbean, there is a virtual sacred seed garden. The varieties of dis-tinct bioregional differences among these gardens is breath-taking. Here are a few of the locations of the current sanctuaries and gardens.

Santuario Semillas Sagradas, Finca Luna Nueva, Costa Rica

Semillas Sagradas de Huamachuco, Peru

Jardín Botánico de Semillas Sagradas de Chan Chan, Peru

Crow Creek Indian Reservation, Sioux Nation, North America

Ambalabe Sacred Seeds Sanctuary, Antalaha, Madagascar

Intervale Center, Abenaki Heritage Garden, Wôbanakiak Confederacy, North America

Rodale Institute, Pennsylvania, United States, North America

Bastyr University, Washington, United States, North America

American Botanical Council, Texas, United States, North America

Sitting Bull College. Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Sioux Na-tion, North America

Kindle Farm School, Newfane, Vermont, North America, United States

The Green Farmacy Garden, Vermont, United States, North America

You can find out about these far-flung gardens on the new website. The Sacred Seeds website will help link-ups among like-minded activists and colleagues around the world.  Link-ups are vital to understand and share ideas and seeds. When you plan vacations, consider visiting these green jewels of biodiversity.

Although more than 50,000 plants in the world are edible, only a few hundred are consumed in sig-

nificant amounts. 90 percent of the world’s food energy intake comes from a mere 15 crops with rice, corn and wheat contributing two-thirds of this. These three are the staples of more than 4,000,000,000 people, with rice being consumed by almost one-half of the world population. Staple crops are plants grown for their parts which are used as staple food. A staple food is one that is regularly consumed in large quantities as to form the basis of a traditional diet and which serves as a major source of energy and nutrients. Staple crops may be grouped into the starchy type and protein-rich type. The starchy type consists of the cereal crops, root and tuber crops, fruit crops and the sago palm. The pulses belong to the protein-rich group. Many traditional diets in developing countries consist of both starchy and legume staples to obtain a more nourishing food. Botanically, the plant part that is consumed may be a seed, fruit, modified root, modified stem, or pith of the stem (as in sago palm). Many cereals, roots and tuber crops are staple crops but are also grown exten-sively for processing into industrial products such as vegetable oil and biofuel.

Major Staple Crops of the WorldCommon names and scientific names

A. Cereal CropsBarley (Hordeum vulgare)Corn , maize, mais (Zea mays)Millet- common millet (Panicum miliaceum), fin-ger millet (Eleusine coracana), Foxtail millet (Setaria italica), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum)Oat (Avena sativa)Rice, palay (Oryza sativa)Rye (Secale cereale)Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor)Teff (Eragrostis teff)Wheat- bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), durum wheat (Triticum turgidum)

B. Root and Tuber CropsArrowroot, araro (Maranta arundinacea)Cassava, tapioca, manioc, kamoteng kahoy, balanghoy (Manihot esculenta)Jerusalem artichoke, sunchoke, French potato, Canada potato, topinambour, lambchoke (Helianthus tuberos-us)Potato, white potato, irish potato, patatas (Solanum tuberosum)Sweet potato, camote (Ipomoea batatas)Taro, gabi, ordinary taro, cocoyam, dalo, talo, arum, dasheen, daun keladi, eddoe, gaui, tayoba (Colocasia esculenta)Yam, greater yam, water yam, ubi (Dioscorea alata)Yautia, tannia, karlang, palawan, bisol, Chinese taro, kong kong taro (Xanthosoma sagittifolium)

C. Fruit CropsBanana, bananier, pisang, saging, nget pyo thee, kluai, chuôí (Musa spp.)Breadfruit, rimas, kulo (Artocarpus altilis)Plantain, cooking banana (Musa spp.)

D. PalmSago palm, sagu, landang (Metroxylon sagus)

E. PulsesChickpea (Cicer arietinum)Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris)Lentil (Lens culinaris ssp. culinaris)Pea (Pisum sativum)Soybean (Glycine max)

Source: http://www.cropsreview.com/staple-crops.html

The Sacred Food of the World

Oryza sativa--the world’s most important food

Peter H. Raven is a friend and supporter of Finca Luna Nueva’s Sacred Seed initiatives. Raven is one of the world's leading bota-nists and a champion of biodiversity and conservation. He is enthusiastic in his admiration for Finca Luna Nueva’s pioneering Sacred Seeds Sanctuary in preserving biodiversity. Dr. Raven's activism on behalf of the plant world. and everything that depends on plants (which includes you, me, and every person and animal on the planet) is far-sighted and deep. Nothing is more important to this "Hero for the Planet," as Time magazine described him, than saving the evolutionary legacy of millions of years. In Northwest coast Native American mythology, the Raven is a numinous trickster figure who created the world. Dr. Peter Ra-ven would not take credit for that, but, along with the Sacred Seeds initiatives, he will be amongst those who help save it. Despite his achievements, he would be too modest to make that claim, but his lifetime of work, education, and practical activism almost makes it true. But the work is not done yet, as he would be the first to say. The species extinctions are upon us and it takes dogged, daily work to slow the tide and prevent extinction events of tsunami-like proportions. Peter is the author of numerous books and reports, including Biology of Plants, an internationally best-selling textbook, now in its sixth edition. He also co-authored Environment, a leading textbook on the environment.

Kristi Foster, Missouri Botanical Garden

Peter RavenSupporter of Sacred Seeds Sanctuaries

Biodiversity is the source of sustainability for our planet, essential for sustaining human life and en-vironmental health. The greatest threat to biodi-versity is habitat destruction, now proceeding rap-idly all over the world, particularly in the world’s tropical forests. It may be that half of all species will become extinct by the end of this century, victims of climate change, crowding out by invasive plants and animals, and reduction in numbers through se-lective hunting and gathering. Stuart Pimm and I have estimated that, by the middle of this century, there may be an extinction rate of 50,000 per mil-lion species each decade, a frightening number. However, while we offered that gloomy scenario in 2000, I personally am optimistic that we humans will not—cannot—let this happen. We are paying more attention to biodiversity for a variety of dif-ferent reasons. Although we have discovered and described a relatively small fraction of the species that inhabit this earth with us, we do know well that we depend fully upon them for our survival. Through the process of photosynthesis, plants, al-gae, and some bacteria capture a small proportion of the energy from the sun that bombards our plan-et and convert it into chemical bonds, thus making possible life on earth. Biodiversity is the source of

Peter Raven’s Forward to Plants of Semillas Sagradas: An Ethnomedical Garden in Costa Rica

our food, much of our medicine, our construction materials, and many other commodities vital to life. Globally, the best way to capture the carbon dioxide being released in the atmosphere is to preserve and expand wilderness habitats, including planting new forests. People are starting to see the crucial impor-tance of biodiversity, and understand that we are in a race against time to preserve as much of it as pos-sible. I am particularly pleased that New Chapter, Inc., a company whose environmental and social values I admire immensely, has chosen to create the world’s first seed sanctuary for local plants used in tradi-tional medical systems at Finca Luna Nueva, their organic farm in Costa Rica. In addition, as part of their business model, New Chapter has made a substantial commitment to rainforest conservation and habitat preservation, helping to save forest cor-ridors that connect important protected areas. They believe, as I do, that the world would be greatly impoverished without biodiversity and wilderness habitats, and that we must continue our conserva-tion work and remain optimistic about its chances for success, despite the global changes happening around us.

10

Preface

One hundred and fifty years ago, The Origin of Species revealed the gifts of Mother Nature working through the biological history of our planet. Darwin’s masterpiece celebrated the play and display of evolution, and finally humankind could appreciate the exquisite diversity of Nature as the consequence of clever responses to the struggle for existence.

The struggle for existence has gotten a lot tougher. Scientists now understand that we are in the midst of a mass extinction – an end game for biodiversity – and that human misconduct is responsible for the frightening rate of disappearance of our sister species. Our destructive behaviors are well chronicled: aggressive agricultural practices, habitat destruction, global climate change, and pollution all hammer away at biodiversity. Modern society is collectively at fault, which leads us to ponder how we as individuals can do anything to preserve what remains of our ecosystem.

On the one hand, the problems are thousands of years in the creation, and the destructive forces seem too powerful to resist. What can one person do to make a difference? We have an idea, but it requires small steps and a love of plants. If plant species in your ecosystem are disappearing, perhaps you can create a preservation garden that will protect some of the endangered genetic treasures. By creating such a garden – a sanctuary for the seeds that support life – we can create a living seed bank for the future. That impulse led to the creation of Semillas Sagradas, the Sacred Seeds Sanctuary.

But that is just a part of the story. Traditional societies have long lived in reliance on the healing power of medicinal herbs. Throughout the world, the guardians of traditional healing have passed this knowledge from generation to generation – from grandmother to mother to daughter, from shaman to apprentice – but the knowledge is disappearing. As ethnobotanist Wade Davis has noted, every two weeks a native language is lost as the last lonely speaker of that mother tongue falls silent.

The Sacred Seeds Sanctuary is dedicated to preserving both medicinal plant species and cultural memory. Think of the garden as a living encyclopedia of ethnobotany, growing larger every day when grandmothers come and tell us how they, in their village, work with these healing botanicals.

Steven Farrell and Tom Newmark examining tuber of Dracontium gigas

Steve and Tom on Sacred Seeds

11

Preface, continued

The first Sacred Seeds Sanctuary is based at Finca Luna Nueva in the volcanic rainforest of northern Costa Rica. Finca Luna Nueva was established in 1994 by Paul Schulick, the visionary founder of New Chapter, a certified organic manufacturer of vitamins and herbal supplements. He wanted to secure a source of certified organic ginger, and fortune smiled on him when he joined with Steven Farrell in finding this piece of paradise and establishing a world model of Biodynamic® farming. With the support of local artisans, farmers, Mother Nature, and some cooperative oxen and water buffalo, Finca Luna Nueva is now a center of research and education. We are especially honored that leaders of the scientific community such as Michael Balick, Jim Duke, and Rafael Ocampo have guided us in creating the Sacred Seeds Sanctuary at Finca Luna Nueva. This sanctuary will help preserve biodiversity for our seasonal rainforest ecosystem, but the greater preservation mission requires the creation of such sanctuaries in as many diverse ecosystems as possible. We have a special love for this seasonal rainforest, but we know that some people deeply resonate with deserts, high plains, prairies, cloud forests, and tundra. Wherever your love of Nature flows, protect that biodiversity. We urge you to create a Sacred Seeds Sanctuary in your habitat – either on your own or working with community groups, religious groups, or schools. We are grateful to our friends Rafael Ocampo and Michael Balick for writing this book, as we believe it will be a “how to” manual for Sacred Seeds Sanctuaries in Central America and across the world.

We confront a biodiversity crisis, and the challenges are daunting. Start small, start with what you love and treasure, and maybe, together, we can help protect life on Earth for generations to come.

¡Pura vida!

–Steven Farrell President, Finca Luna Nueva

–Thomas M. Newmark CEO, New Chapter

Steven Farrell and Tom Newmark

“If plant species in your ecosystem are disappearing, perhaps you can create a preservation garden that will protect some of the endangered genetic treasure.”

Steven FarrellPresident, Finca Luna Nueva

Tom NewmarkVice-Chairman, New Chapter, Inc

12

Introduction

Since the beginning of time, humans have depended on seeds for survival. Seeds of many different plant species provided essentials such as foods, fibers, medicines, and combustible oils. At some point in time, people, most likely in many different places, noticed that seeds dropping from the plants they were using had sprouted, quickly multiplying the plant populations.

The development and spread of agriculture is thought to have begun over 10,000 years ago, when people begain to intentionally collect and plant seeds of species important to them. Agricultural practices developed independently in many parts of the world—the Middle East, China, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Pacific and the Americas. Human society quickly learned how vital seeds were to feeding, fueling, and healing their rapidly evolving world. In fact, agriculture made it possible for human civilization to develop, and people to move to new regions, build settlements, feed, clothe, house, and heal growing populations, store and barter or sell their surpluses. This newfound treasure based on seeds and agriculture, allowed people to travel outside of their settlements – to begin to explore planet Earth and appreciate the magnitude of its diversity and beauty.

It was the recognition of the essentiality of crop seeds that led people to create the first seed banks—these precious propagules were originally stored in earthen pots in cool areas underground or in caves protected from the elements. Great advances in seed storage technology have been made since those early days, with large international projects now underway to protect the Earth’s plant diversity–sometimes in deep freezers at -20° Celsius. At the same time as the world scientific community, using its latest technological tools, takes on the massive challenge of preserving seeds as a hedge against calamity, it is now clear that small farmers around the world are essential to seed and genetic preservation—by maintaining crop diversity through cultivation and use, and protection of nature habitats, including agricultural ecosystems. Speak to any small farmer in Costa Rica and they will share with you stories of their favorite bean or squash variety, often pointing out how some of their plants differ from their neighbors.

Steeped in this spirit and purpose was the creation of Semillas Sagradas—the Sacred Seed Santuary of Finca Luna Nueva. As Tom Newmark and Steven Farrell have pointed out in their introduction, Finca Luna Nueva, and New Chapter, are devoted to preserving the diversity of plants so important in traditional healing and the field of botanical medicine.

Rafael Ocampo and Michael Balick examining seeds in Semillas Sagradas

From Semillas Sagradas

The Traditional Wisdom of Healing Herbs

Rafael Ocampo and Michael Balick

13

Introduction, continued

This volume contains information on a very small number of the more than 250 plant species currently growing in Semillas Sagradas. The senior author selected these species as representative of the range of plants he, Steven Farrell, and the staff of Finca Luna Nueva began to grow in the garden. Rafael Ocampo developed the early edition of what has become this manuscript based on decades of experience, personal research, and bibliographic research.

This book is not intended as a complete guide to Semillas Sagradas, but rather an illustration of the richness of information that exists about the many species under protection and study there. How fascinating to find that a species of plant is used for the same healing purpose in various parts of the world. One can only imagine the trial and error experimentation that led to those simultaneous discoveries—or did people disperse seeds and plants, along with knowledge of their healing properties, on their journeys? The answer, most likely, is that both scenarios occurred. We know that some plants are employed for the same medicinal uses by cultures that have never been in contact, while we have evidence of other species being dispersed to far off places by botanically and medicinally-inclined travelers and explorers.

Semillas Sagradas is a contribution to preserving and teaching traditional wisdom involving healing herbs. It honors the reverence that ancient cultures had for their seeds and plants, such as the sacred lotus, according them the highest status possible through religious symbolism, myth, and legend. As mentioned, the information presented in an earlier version of this manuscript was originally compiled by the senior author. The co-author and editors expanded that version, updated nomenclature and synonyms, added local names through conversations with the San Isidro de las Peñas Blancas community, and collected additional references on uses, chemistry, and pharmacology.

We hope that the readers of this book will find inspiration in its pages, and enjoy learning about the wisdom of nature as much as we, the authors and editors have. Perhaps some of you will find a way to create your own Semillas Sagradas, in Costa Rica or wherever you make your home, contributing both to the preservation of plant diversity and the knowledge of traditional medicines around the world.

–Rafael Ocampo, BSc. –Michael J. Balick, Ph.D.

Black pepper

"Semillas Sagradas is a contribution to preserving and teaching traditional wisdom involving healing herbs."

“The right of corpora-tions to force-feed citi-zens of the world with culturally inappropriate and hazardous foods has been made abso-lute [in the globalizing economy]. The right to food, the right to safety, the right to culture are all being treated as trade barriers that need to be dismantled…we have to reclaim our right to nutrition and food safety. We have to reclaim our right to protect the earth and her diverse species. We have to stop this corporate theft from the poor and from nature. Food democracy…is the new agenda for eco-logical sustainability and social justice.”—Vandana Shiva in “Stolen Harvest”

Toward Food DemocracySeeds are sacred...and they’re political too. Traditional wisdom and ethnomedical knowledge can only thrive in living communities. But these traditional repositories of both seeds and wisdom are under as-sault by forces of globalization.

Vandana Shiva Speaks“In nature’s economy the currency is not money, it is life.”

“Globalized industrialized food is not cheap: it is too costly for the Earth, for the farmers, for our health. The Earth can no longer carry the burden of groundwater mining, pesticide pollu-tion, disappearance of species and destabilization of the climate. Farmers can no longer carry the burden of debt, which is inevitable in industrial farming with its high costs of production. It is incapable of producing safe, culturally appropriate, tasty, quality food. And it is incapable of producing enough food for all because it is wasteful of land, water and energy. Industrial agri-culture uses ten times more energy than it produces. It is thus ten times less efficient.”

“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it cre-ates.”

“As usual, in every scheme that worsens the position of the poor, it is the poor who are invoked as beneficiaries.”

Shiva dancing on the corpse of ignorance

Vandana Shiva Speaks“Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence.”

“ I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy — not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to ev-eryone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human societies are based.”

“I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I be-lieve that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that itself creates new potential. And I’ve learned to detach myself from the results of what I do, because those are not in my hands. The context is not in your control, but your commitment is yours to make, and you can make the deepest commitment with a total detachment about where it will take you. You want it to lead to a better world, and you shape your actions and take full responsibility for them, but then you have detachment. And that combination of deep passion and deep detachment allows me to take on the next challenge. I think what we owe each other is a celebration of life and to replace fear and hopelessness with fearlessness and joy.”

Can you imagine Costa Rica and Central American food-ways without bananas, plantains, coffee, sugarcane, water-melon, mango, oranges, lemons, rice, and wheat? Hardly! These plants have been indigenized in the Americas, but they are foods that came from the Old World to the New World as part of the botanical and ecological interchange of seeds and rhizomes that is known as the Columbian Exchange. The food traffic went two ways. Can you imgine the diverse foodways of India without hot chili peppers, potatoes, cassava, peanuts? The exchange of seeds, rhizomes, and tubers has been go-ing on for half a millenium under the aegis of trade, conquest and colonization. Actually, there have been natural ecological exchanges going on much longer than that. Coconuts originally from South Asia and the Pacific littoral have been circum-navigating the oceans before there were people to harvest them. Coconuts have been pan-tropical for a long time. Finca Luna Nueva’s Semillas Sagradas seed sanctuary is now pan-tropical too. In May 2011, Finca Luna Nueva in the neotropics of Central America became twinned to the Sri Uma Maheshwara Seva Trust in Karnataka state in India. This area is the site of the Hosagunda forest. “Hosagunda is a Sacred Forest rich with archeological relics of religious and cultural significance,” said a spokesman for the project in this

storied land in the southwest of India. Restoration of the an-cient temples is going hand in hand with the reintroduction of the native herbal species of sacred and medicinal plants of the great Ayurvedic and Sidha medical systems of India, noted Tom Newmark, Vice-chairman of New Chapter and founding mem-ber and President of Sacred Seeds. He added,”these traditions have brilliantly appreciated the healing power of medicinal plants for thousands of years, and Sacred Seeds is delighted that Hosagunda will represent those healing traditions in our family of plant sanctuaries.”

Coconuts are a symbol of pan-tropical exchange of seeds

Botanical Globalization--from Costa Rica to Karnataka

Vandana was born in India in 1952, and holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science and a Ph.D. in particle physics. She is also the founder of Navdanya (“nine seeds”) the move-ment that promotes biodiversity and the use of native seeds. The Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology was founded in her mother’s cowshed in 1997, and its purpose is to validate the ecological value of traditional farming and fight destructive development proj-ects in India .

Vandana Shiva is to the fight for food sovereignty what Gloria Steinem is to the women’s move-ment. Basically, Dr. Shiva is a one-woman movement for peace, sustainability, and social justice, and has blended her views on the environment, agriculture, and spirituality into a global philoso-

phy. Ms. Magazine praised her this way, “Shiva … has de-voted her life to fighting for the rights of the ordinary people of India … her fierce intellect and her disarmingly friendly, accessible manner, have made her a valuable advocate for people all over the developing world.”

She is the author of many books, including Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development (South End Press, 2010) Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis (South End Press, 2008), Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (South End Press, 2005),Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization (South End Press, 2001), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997), Monocultures of the Mind (Zed, 1993), and The Violence of the Green Revolution (Zed, 1992).

Shiva, along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin, is a leader in the International Forum on Globalization. She has addressed the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, 1999, as well as the World Economic Forum in Melbourne, 2000, and is a frequent guest speaker at the Terra Madre seminars in Italy sponsored by Slow Food International. In 2010, she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for her commitment to social justice.

In India, she is instrumental in creating a food democracy through freedom farms, freedom villages, and free-dom zones. Organic farms free of chemicals and toxins and zones free of corporate (GMOs) and patented seeds are creating a bottoms-up democracy of food to counter the top-down food dictatorship that is spread-ing throughout the world. We currently live in a world where 80,000 edible plants exist, but only about 150 are being cultivated, and only eight are traded globally. The world produces enough food for 12 billion people even though the world population is 6.3 billion and yet 800 million are suffering from malnutrition. Clearly, the cor-porate model for food production is not working. Vandana wants to see a return to traditional farming methods, where women are the keepers of the seed, where seeds can be freely traded amongst farmers, and where seeds are not breed for uniformity and monocultures, but for diversity and freedom. We could not have a better warrior than Vandana Shiva in this fight.

Aztec Plant Sprites

Seeds are sacred because they conserve the heritage not only of the germ plasm itself--the accumulated evolutionary changes

over millions of generations of living, dying and passing on the changes--but also of the human communities which patiently tended those plants and carefully collected the seeds.

The practices which grew up around the uses and lore of plants for food and medicine constitute a folk culture essential for the co-evolved human/natural system. This is the realm of indigenous knowledge.

The United Nations Education Program ex-plains it this way:

Indigenous Knowledge can be broadly de-fined as the knowledge that an indigenous (local) community accumulates over gener-ations of living in a particular environment. 

This definition encompasses all forms of knowledge – technologies, know-how skills, practices and beliefs – that enable the com-munity to achieve stable livelihoods in their environment.   

Indigenous Knowledge is unique to every culture and society and it is embedded in community practices, institutions, relation-ships and rituals. Indigenous Knowledge is considered a part of the local knowledge in the sense that it is rooted in a particular community and situated within broader cultural traditions.  It is a set of experiences generated by people living in those commu-nities.

Indigenous Knowledge is based on and is deeply embedded in local experience and historic reality, and is therefore unique to that specific culture; it also plays an impor-

Sacred Seeds and Indigenous Knowledge

Movimento dos Trabaldores Rurais Sem Terra

However not only are the seeds themselves directly under attack by predatory agro-giants like Monsanto, but the associated cultural webs of transmission, practice, and authority have been weakened by a host of factors.

The United Nations Environmental Program is working to insure that Indigenous Knowledge is documented so that it can never be lost for-ever. But the preservation is not only for librar-ies and data repositories. Indigenous Knowl-edge must be made accessible to as many people as can use it and benefit from it. Just as in prehistoric and historic times, Indigenous Knowledge travels mostly slowly, but at times dramatically, as people exchange ideas and seeds of their successful practices. The plants may adapt to new environments and achieve

tant role in defining the identity of the com-munity.  It has developed over the centuries of experimentation on how to adapt to local conditions.  It therefore represents all the skills and innovations of a people and em-bodies the collective wisdom and resource-fulness of the community. http://www.unep.org/ik/

Using their Indigenous Knowledge has made it possible for indigenous communities to have co-evolved with their environment and lived sustainably for uncountable generations. This intricate and specific knowledge has been usually transmitted orally from generation to generation. This is a reliable method despite its seeming fragility to literacy-based colonial-izing and dominant overlord Western cultures and corporations.

Mujeres Zapatistas de Chiapas

Mujeres Zapatistas de Chiapas

the prime vegetative nirvana of reproducing and adapting to changes successfully. This is another way of describing evolution. A com-mon word for this today is biodiversity.

Biodiversity happens because of, in Darwin’s phrase, descent with modification. Humans have been change agents who speeded up descent with modification. Because of com-plex reasons having to do with the number of humans on earth and their hypertrophied technological systems, Earth is experiencing what has been called the Sixth Extinction--a period of massive die-offs of species related to complex effects of global climate change.

Seeds and the indigenous cultures that helped

create and nourish them demand preserva-tion. Programs and activities like Sacred Seed Sanctuaries around the world, and literally in our own backyard at Finca Luna Nueva are the kinds of partnerships that exemplify the best of a new trend that we might call re-indigenizing knowledge. As wise as the old traditions are, when the old ways are combined with the experience of people like the scientists and farmers at Finca Luna Nueva who have added the insights and successful practices of Rudolf Steiner’s Biodynamic gardening and Bill Mol-lison’s Permaculture practices upon the indig-enous knowledge and practice base, even more sustainable agriculture can prosper. Never has it been more necessary.

Hosagunda Forest, India One of hundreds of sacred seed sites in India

In Charles Darwin’s measured and stately Victorian prose, he describes the dynam-

ics of human interaction with nature and the results: Under domestication we see much variabil-ity. This seems to be mainly due to the repro-ductive system being eminently susceptible to changes in the conditions of life so that this system, when not rendered impotent, fails to reproduce offspring exactly like the parent-form. Variability is governed by many complex laws, -- by correlation of growth, by use and disuse, and by the direct action of the physical conditions of life. There is much difficulty in ascertaining how much modifica-tion our domestic productions have under-gone; but we may safely infer that the amount has been large, and that modifications can be

inherited for long periods. As long as the con-ditions of life remain the same, we have rea-son to believe that a modification, which has already been inherited for many generations, may continue to be inherited for an almost infinite number of generations. On the other hand we have evidence that variability, when it has once come into play, does not wholly cease; for new varieties are still occasionally produced by our most anciently domesticated productions. Man does not actually produce variability; he only unintentionally exposes organic be-ings to new conditions of life, and then nature acts on the organization, and causes variabil-ity. But man can and does select the varia-tions given to him by nature, and thus accu-mulate them in any desired manner. He thus adapts animals and plants for his own benefit or pleasure. He may do this methodically, or he may do it unconsciously by preserving the individuals most useful to him at the time, without any thought of altering the breed. It is certain that he can largely influence the character of a breed by selecting, in each successive generation, individual differences so slight as to be quite inappreciable by an uneducated eye. This process of selection has been the great agency in the production of the most distinct and useful domestic breeds. That many of the breeds produced by man have to a large extent the character of natural species, is shown by the inextricable doubts whether very many of them are varieties or aboriginal species. There is no obvious reason why the prin-ciples which have acted so efficiently under domestication should not have acted under nature.

Charles Darwin

Where Sacred Seeds Come From

Holy Mycorrhizae

Welcome to the RhizosphereIf seeds are sacred, then mycorrhizae are holy sacraments that bestow grace on the growing plant. Botanically, mycorrhizae are beneficial root fungi without which few plants and trees could grow. They are the saving grace of the growing plant.

It is obvious that seeds need a medium to grow in. Discounting hydroponics, that medium is dirt. Dirt however, is hardly one thing. Soil is complex beyond imagination. For starters, a single gram has more than 10,000 distinct microbes. Soil is not just a tossed salad of organic and inorganic substances and small microbes. Soils contain tens of thousands of species of root fungi--mycorrhizae-- and these are the catalysts for the transport of nutrients to the rootlets of the plant. The intense energy exchange where the roots meet the soil is like a complex chemical Internet system. Nutrients are absorbed and vital information about the local subsurface and topside environment is exchanged. Messages are passed from plant to plant. Nature is talking to itself. This is the rhizosphere.

The rhizosphere is the earth’s biological Internet. Just as in the above-ground world that we in-habit which is crisscrossed with a net of invisible electronic signals carrying information traffic, the mostly invisible world underground seethes with fractal patterns of connectivity. Mycorrhi-zae growing on or in plant roots are the gateways allowing biochemical nutrition and informa-tion in and out of the plant.

Plant roots with mycorrhizae

Zaki Anwar Siddiqui, Sayeed Akhtar, and Kazuyoshi Futai, 2008

Fundamental knowledge about the biodiversity of soil microbial communities and their functional impact, especially for the ectomycorrhizal fungi, is essentially non-existent. However, maintaining this below-ground biodiversity is essential for the main-tenance of a healthy forest and for successful refor-estation programs. Ectomycorrhizal fungi are, eco-nomically, one of the most important groups of soil fungi. These organisms form a symbiotic relationship with a plant, forming a sheath around the root tip. The fungus then forms a hartig net. The fungus then gains C and other essential organic substances from the tree and in return support the tree in taking up water, mineral salts and metabolites. The fungus also repels parasites, nematodes, and soil pathogens. In-deed, most forest trees are highly dependent on their fungal partners and in areas of poor soil quality could possibly not exist in their absence. Thus, in optimal forest husbandry, a lack of management of mycor-rhizal fungi could result in damage to trees and forest crops. The importance of ectomycorrhiza in forest plantations has received much attention when it was observed that trees often fail to establish at new sites if the ectomycorrhizal symbiont is absent. Even the addition of fertilizer had no effect on the establish-ment of seedlings on such sites. Addition of forest soil produced normal and healthy seedlings, how-ever, because the forest soil contained propagules of mycorrhizal fungi. High ectomycorrhizal diversity is important in the healthy functioning of woodlands. Different fungi appear to occupy different niches. Some may be more proficient at supporting the tree in taking up particular nutrients, others may be specialized at protecting against pathogens, and oth-ers may assist in enzyme production. Intensive study

is needed to determine the ectomycorrhizal diversity which will optimize forest husbandry. Numerous studies have documented the fundamen-tal importance of mycorrhizal symbiosis and other microbial systems in reclamation and restoration of contaminated and disturbed ecosystems. Microsym-bionts provide benefits not only to individual plants, but most essential ecosystem processes depend upon different mycorrhizal fungi and associated microor-ganisms. Mycorrhizal fungi can play a critical role in ecosys-tem dynamics and productivity. Of the various types of mycorrhizae, four main types, i.e., arbuscular mycor-rhizae (AM), ectomycorrhizae (ECM), ectendo-mycor-rhizae, and ericoid mycorrhizae (ERM) are important for returning disturbed sites to productive agricultural and forested lands. The ECM, which are generally as-sociated with forest plants, and formed by basidiomy-cetes, ascomycetes, and several species of zygomycetes comprising some 5,000–6,000 species. The ECM fungi have the ability to provide buffering capacity to plant species against various environmental stresses. The majority of vascular plants form arbuscular mycorrhi-zae. Mycorrhizal fungi are now known to provide a wide range of significant benefits to their plant hosts. In addition to enhancing mineral nutrition, they induce greater resistance to soil pathogens, enhance tolerance to drought stress, and reduce sensitivity to toxic sub-stances occurring in the soil. Introduction of mycor-rhizal fungi do not appear to offer much advantage to enhanced nutrition or disease resistance in native species. Optimization of the ability of native fungi to colonize hosts in their natural habitat or to mini-mize loss of these fungi with disturbance is required. Highly dependent crop hosts should be selected over mycorrhizal- independent hosts in crop rotations or in multiple cropping systems. Traditional methods of breeding and producing crop plants in soils with high nutrient contents may select against the most efficient fungal communities or even against the mycorrhizalassociation. Many efforts have been made in recent years to accrue benefits from mycorrhizae for agricul-ture, horticulture, forestry, and site remediation.The results have been consistently positive, with some difficulties due to complications from diverse variables under field conditions. Mycorrhizal interactions be-tween plants, fungi, and the environment are complex and often inseparable. Mycorrrhizae are an essential below-ground component in the establishment and sustainability of plant communities...

MYCORRHIZAE: SUS-

TAINABLE AGRICUL-

TURE AND FORESTRY

A Scientific Reading

Plant roots with mycorrhizae

Dignidad Rebelde