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| www.PlanetaVerdeMarAzul.org www.Green Planet Blue Sea.com The Official Website for Maya Neem Farms, Yucatan, Mexico A Model Neem Plantation, in Progress, for Profitable, Integrated, Sustainable and Ecologically Balanced Rural Development Systems, Renewable Land, Sea and Water Use, and Resource Conservation |
Chiles on a Neem Plantation? You bet! Remember the title above:"...Integrated, Sustainable, and Ecologically Balanced Rural Development Systems....". Oh, and don´t forget Profitable but we´ll get to that shortly so hang in with us or, if you must, skip down the page and read about profitability first before you read about the "hows" and the "why´s" this aspect is so crucial to our overall operation and goals. If you have read much at all about the Neem (Click here) so far , you will already know that it has broad and dramatic applications for medicinal use for both humans and animals. From mosquito and tick repellent to internal parasites (including drug resistant malaria!) to the Dengue Fever virus, to ring worm, gingivitis, and cancerous tumors, Diabetes, high blood pressure, and even great hope for people who test positive for HIV. But Chiles? One of the major and upcoming uses for Neem (at least finally in the West) is as a very effective, easily accessible, low-cost, non-polluting,non-petroleum-based, organic pesticide and fertilizer. Put that together with the fact that the demand nationally and internationally for export, for especially Habanero Chilies, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habanero_chili) for starters then see our links page on chiles) is constant and rising annually, and you have a match literally made in heaven. More on the Neem Pesticides elsewhere (Click here) but let´s concentrate here on the chiles for a bit. By the way, Make sure to see Dave Dewitt´s great 3-part article, published recently on www.Firey-Foods.com, entitled: "Chile: The Soul of the Mexicans" There are of course a multitude of great chile varieties in Mexico but perhaps the most famous (for some, "infamous!) is probably the Chile Habanero. Until 2007, one variety of Chili Habanero (The Red Savina) was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the hottest chili on the planet! It has since been replaced by a group of chilies (Click here) from Assam province of NE India, near the Myanmar border, but that´s another story which we will cover elsewhere. Make no mistake. If you have ever...or never... tried a Habanero or even one of the dozens of chile salsas made from it you will know it is an experience that will last a lifetime. Even aficionados of chiles and salsas are greatly respectful of...if excited by... the fiery yet tasty power of the chile Habanero in all of it´s forms. There is certainly more to the Habanero than it´s firepower however, and that is what makes the Yucatán´s Habanero so famous really, it´s uniquely ...Habanero...taste. And, believe it or not, once you get past the fire, they really do have distinct flavors and people who have grown up eating them can readily tell the difference. I have personally, and over time, acquired a great affinity for the Habanero as well as a number of other chiles but also have friends locally who, having grown up with these chilies on the daily table, eat them like most Americans, Canadians, and Europeans eat radishes or olives. As I say, I have acquired a great liking as well as a great respect for these culinary power houses and still marvel watching my friends eating them like it is a "normal", or common, everyday, human breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime experience! While Mexico´s Habanero is the most famous in the world, the Yucatán´s Habanero is the most famous Habanero in Mexico both for domestic consumption but also for a thriving and growing export market. In fact, between 48% and 50% of all Habaneros consumed in or exported from Mexico come from the fields of the Yucatán. Why? Some say it´s the mineral rich, self-replenishing, rocky soil. Some say it´s because 3-4 months per year the Yucatán itself can be "hot as a Habanero" but that theory is probably misnomer because even the hottest Habaneros suffer when the temps and humidity shoot up in April through June and/or July. The flowers from which the chiles sprout have a hard time setting (staying on the plant) and overall production can drop during the hottest months here by as much as 40% driving prices as high, or higher than your thermometer reading. This is another area where the Neem can help synergisticaly, by the way, but we will get to that in a moment. Whatever the reason, especially for the Yucatán Habanero´s global popularity and demand, it is a given and in terms of our operations a profit strategy well worth pursuing. Before we get off into bombarding you with facts, figures, and statistics, let us answer the question most of our friends and clients are sure to be asking right now if they are not themselves into eating hot chile in any form. The question in some form or another usually starts out with, "Why on earth would people grow, eat, or pay so much for something that is so hot in flavor as to be (for many if not most of us "Westerners") inedible?" Good question and a few examples will answer it nicely and, in most cases, we think you will be as surprised as we were when we learned just a bit more about the utility and profitability of the Chile Habanero as well as other even hotter wonders of the world of chile. The active ingredient, the "Hot", the "Heat", the "Picante", the "Picicisimo!"...in any chile is the and active ingredient called Capsaicin. The amount of this ingredient in any given chili or species of chiles determines how mild or ferocious it will be. In recent years, they even invented a means by which to quantify or measure the heat factor in chiles and put the results up against a standardized scale called the "Scoville Scale" which is kind of like the Richter Scale (for earthquake magnitude) for chiles......... So besides eating this chemical in the form of a chile or salsas made from Chiles, Capsaicin has numerous other ...VERY PROFITABLE...uses. For the military, police, and self-defense markets, it is used to make a stop-anyone-in-his-tracks (including bears!) pepper spray. For industrial applications, such as under water towers, trans-oceanic cable housings, and ship hulls, to name just a few, it is mixed into coatings and paints to keep barnacles from building up. Letting them build up and then having to pay people to clean them off as well as dry-docking ships (IE: Taking them out of service for some or several months) cost billions of dollars annually to several major trans-global industries and drove prices up on the materials or products they were hauling, in the case of ships, for example. A fantastic website to learn a lifetime´s information on all things chile-related, is Fiery-foods.com. Here below is a quote from them repeating much of what we have just reported but adding numbers to the almost incredible extent to which the hottest Chiles are utilized in industrial applications: "Fiery-foods.com reader Richard Frost mentioned another use for the highly concentrated heat, stating that the largest consumers (70%-80%) of chili oil in the world were manufacturers of underground and underwater material coatings, being used extensively in the outer layer of underground cables and in boat paint." Medical applications will include muscle pain ointments of all kinds and they often really work to reduce, if not cure, the pain or it´s reason for alerting you something is wrong in the first place. The reason it "works" is called the "Gate Control Theory of Pain ", so while we are suspicious of the long term efficacy of such products we do understand that they can be temporarily or occasionally helpful, based upon real (vs "snake oil") science but the point here, in any case, is that chiles and their active ingredient Capsaicin have many more uses than for eating. If you have a tube of Ben-Gay or similar product in the house, check out the label for contents next time you pass your medicine cabinet. In most cases you will see the active ingredient listed as "Capsaicin"...AKA: The active ingredient derived from chiles........ Yucatán Habanero Chiles and the Global Food Industry Let´s return briefly to food applications and uses for the Habaneros in a growing export market. We´ve already seen a huge demand and industrial applications market. Again you may be as surprised to find out that in 2008, a single Japanese company based in Guadelajara began contracting with growers in the Yucatán for up to 300 tons of Chili Habanero peppers per month. (That´s correct:"Per month"). These whole chiles will in turn be dried and ground into 30 tons of Habanero Chile powder and exported back to Japan to be used in Asia´s ever popular and burgeoning "Junk Food" industry. But don´t they have hot chilies in Asia? Yes, in fact they have the hottest chiles on the planet in massive numbers and probably costing far less both in terms of labor and transportation costs but it is the Yucatecan Habanero in impressive quantities that was chosen by this company. By the way, in terms of hot Chiles, we were discussing this topic with a very knowledgeable friend who has traveled extensively in Asia, and especially China, where chiles are integral to the culture and their culinary practices, especially in Sechuan Province. She said that despite ample prior experience and quite a taste for all manner of chiles, that she was introduced to a chile in a small town in Sechuan Province that made her mouth completely numb for almost an entire week, and that was just the smallest droplet she could pick off of her plate! I know: What´s the point? Different cultures, different palates and experience. The Asian´s consumption of very hot chiles is generally not (as it is for many westerners) a contest to see who can eat the most or hottest chiles. It´s simply a matter of eating what they enjoy and do not suffer from because they have been eating these chiles all their lives. Back to the Japanese: The only possible explanation for this choice of our local Habanero, (since we have not had the opportunity to ask officials of the Japanese export company based in Guadalajara) is the Yucatán Habanero´s unique flavor combined with its undeniable heat. Whatever the reason, 300 tons per month is ...a lot... of chiles considering that there are 40-50 or more chilies in a kilo and 1000 kilos in a metric ton. 12 months per year x 300 tons and that is just one of many exporters. Growing Chile Habaneros in the Yucatan: Costs and Returns Depending upon a lot of seasonal variables, growing techniques, as well as who you talk to, it costs between $80,000.00 and $100,000.00 pesos per hectare (2.457 acres) to grow and harvest Chile Habanero Peppers using traditional Petrochemical pesticides/Fertilizers.(See below!) This includes approximately 33,000 plants per drip-irrigated hectare (HA) which will produce between 15 -20 tons of Chiles. Your net (after costs) profit on those chiles, again depending upon a number of variables, including current market conditions, will,at this writing, range between $180,000.00 on medium to fairly "poor harvest, to $260,000.00 pesos per HA on a "good" (not necessarily a "great" crop) Click Here to continue....... |
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