Paul Stamets' patent could destroy Monsanto's grip on the pesticide industry using mushrooms
Why poison your food if you don't have to?
In this post-industrial culture of getting as much as you can out of
as little space as possible, increasing profit, regardless of ecological
impact; we have birthed a slew of new ideas to accomplish effective
acceleration of growth while limiting the danger to our ecosystem. One
such idea is the use of mushrooms in place of pesticides.
In 2001, Paul Stamets issued a US Patent
for a new kind of pesticide, a mycopesticide (pesticide that contains
living fungi), that is, in the words of executives in the pesticide
industry, “the most disruptive technology we have ever witnessed.” By
utilizing mushrooms, instead of toxic chemicals, we can draw the
attention of insects away from the plants we are growing for food.
Before the mushroom begins sporulating, (producing spores) the insects
are attracted to it and eat it. They feed it to their queen; and the
queen dies. It dies because this particular type of mushroom actually
grows inside of the insect and bursts through it, killing it. After
this, the fungi will begin sporulating and the insects will be repelled
(they don't like spores). The different types of fungi specifically
target up to 200,000 species of insects.
