Update from The Ayahuasca Farm
We like to think of ourselves as gentlemen farmers helping wise elders tell their stories. Or dude ranchers. We’re neither: I’m an American lawyer in Northern Michigan and my partner is a Shipibo lawyer in the Peruvian Amazon, but we’re on our way.
Like Dennis McKenna said in Noetic Psychedelic Fund’s recent panel, “ayahuasca reminds us that we apes only think we are in charge” but we are not: the plants have the power. And the green fuse of it all is photosynthesis.
Ask Wade Davis, who shared in the same panel that as a student in the Harvard Library when he realized the vitality of photosynthesis in a transcendental epiphany and had to get escorted out by security because his paraphrased eurekas had broken the library rules. Be quiet, they probably said.
At RAO DAO, we foster psychedelic photosynthesis following library rules. In other words, we aren’t broadcasting. For now, we prefer to remain a treasure to be found. Congratulations.
These Banisteriopsis caappi plants we grow, the eponymous ayahuasca vine of the brew, are helical with big heart-shaped leaves that even Jaguars eat for hallicinogenic effects — ayahuasca: the catnip that transcends species.
Growing transcendental catnip — that’s what we do at RAO RAO. I think you will like the way we do it too.
Incidentally Jaguars have been observed eating only the B. caapi, not the other plant we’re growing, P. viridis, in the coffee family.
P. viridis extract packs quite a stronger punch than a double espresso. Colloquially known as chacruna, P. viridis is a perennial green-leaved shrub. It likes independence to grow best. So we grow it away from other plants: we are giving chacruna space so it doesn’t get ornery. But near the B. caapi we planted fast-growing guava trees for the vines to grow up. I hope they will give our ayahuasca a guava terroir: guavahuasca.
Back in the office we formed our first juridical root, a Peruvian corporation IP2 RAO S.A.C. directed by Demer, a Shipipo-Konibo lawyer I made friends with in his city Yarinaocha in the Upper Ucayali during 2015. IP2 refers to the ipsquared.foundation, an initiative we co-founded developing indigenous IP in the Upper Amazon.
So we had big progress at the RAO DAO ayahuasca farm this past week:
- We purchased 280 B. caapi clones and they are going in the now-cleared ground on our 1-hectare farm site in Santa Clara.
- We secured our P. viridis supply from an awesome stock.
Check out the pics:
If you’re a conscious investor who believes what Muhammad Yunus said when he won the Nobel Prize in Economics — redefine capitalism as making money solving social problems to make it work for the 21st Century — then you do have the opportunity to chip in for what we are building and come along for the ride.
But investing here means doing more than a making unilateral donation: an investment in a DAO with Shipibo owners granting equity compensation to Shipibo workers creates a continued bilateral relationship, a conversation, between you and them. The RAO DAO is a vehicle for job creation and intercultural exchange in the Upper Amazon. That’s poverty alleviation — UN SDG #1.
RAO DAO’s mission is creating an innovative agricultural enterprise network for growing and marketing the cash crops of the psychedelic revolution (mainly ayahuasca) to alleviate poverty in indigenous communities in the Upper Amazon.
While calling sacred plants like ayahuasca “cash crops” may seem vulgar to you, I encourage you to see both sides simultaneously in an effort towards your personal perceptual liberation.
Commodity fetishishism has enchanted ayahuasca and other entheogenic ethnobotanicals to such a degree that the goods themselves are seen to have magical qualities. Scientific results of studies on psychedelics have shifted the paradigm for human mental health and general wellness to include a bit of ontological je ne sais quoi.
The zeitgeist includes a shift towards food as medicine. And what better medicines than what Richard Evans Schultes, a Harvard professor who spent 12 uninterrupted years in the Amazon and taught Wade Davis and Mark Plotkin, called the “Plants of the Gods”? Entheogens.
On the other hand, these are commodities. It’s unavoidable. Get with it. Be a market participant and join the fun.
That’s it for now, folks! Tune in for the next update from the farm.
