Ethnobotanist and herbalist Rocio Alarcon grew up in the Andean highlands of Ecuador in a family that respected and used plants, depending on them for their daily survival.
As a young adult she received an academic training and then went to the Amazon to conduct her real studies.
In this talk from the excellent YouTube channel Herb TV, she discusses the social dimensions of ayawaska use and other shamanic practices … Read more
Lots of people have the dream of farming as a living.
If you feel this in your heart, what’s stopping you?
If your image of farming is owning 20 acres in the country, maybe it’s that image that’s getting in your way.
You can grow, you can make money, and you can get started with a lot less than you think.
Farming is a business and if you go about … Read more
Monsanto has succeeded in subverting virtually every mainstream news outlet and academic plant science program in the US. Those it has not bought off, it has terrorized into silence.
Of the handful of legitimate scientists who have published research questioning the safety of GMOs, more than one has had their careers ruined by pressures imposed by the company and its agents.
Add to this a choir of high-profile “useful idiots” … Read more
Herbalism is not science “lite.”
It’s also not an alternative therapy.
It’s a sophisticated healing system unto itself that has played and continues to play an essential role in the care and survival of the human race.
This is a talk that David Hoffman gave to the American Herbalists Guild Symposium in Portland, Oregon on November 5th, 2005.
In it he addresses the subversion of herbalism by Big Business and … Read more
Fascinating talk by Wade Davis on the varieties of human experience, the value of the existence of these diverse worlds views and the serious and ongoing threat to indigenous people around the world.
At the 11:23 point Davis explains how it is that forest dwellers make profound botanical discoveries that elude the most advanced western science.
– Ken McCarthy
PlantWisdom.org
– Ken McCarthy
PlantWisdom.org
In the previous post, we introduced Richard Evans Schultes though a short video and excerpts of an interview conducted with him later in his life.
In this video, his student and protege Wade Davis goes much deeper into Schultes’ story.
Absolutely fascinating and excellent preparation for seeing the new movie “Abrazo de la Serpiente” (Embrace of the Serpent) – which I’ve now seen three times.
If this account of Schultes’s … Read more
Richard Evans Schultes (1915-2001) was probably the greatest explorer of the Amazon, and regarded among anthropologists and seekers alike as the “father of ethnobotany.”
Taking what was meant to be a short leave from Harvard in 1941, he surveyed the Amazon basin almost continuously for twelve years, during which time he lived among two dozen different Indian tribes, mapped rivers, secretly sought sources of rubber for the US government during … Read more
Do trees talk to each other?
Yes they do and their communication is mediated by fungi beneath the surface of the ground.
This communication enables trees and other plants to share resources, thereby helping the whole forest to flourish.
Here’s a quick overview of the key principles from Dr. Suzanne Simard.
She’s Professor of Forest Ecology in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia.… Read more
It took decades for corporate-owned science to discover that things like tobacco and processed meats are deadly.
But GMOs were given a clean bill of health with next-to-no testing and certainly no multi-year tests on humans.
Here’s what Big Pharma says about its own products:
“Biological products have definite risks as they are only partially understood at the time of their approval.”
What are GMOs … Read more
