Where are herbaceous herbs?
- Cestone Aiora Urbieta is behind the Amalda biobotanical project. She studied naturopathy at the time, but she has worked on the return of medicinal plants ever since. “I’ve always been giving courses and making touches, etc. in natural cosmetics,” he recalls. In the course of this activity, Amalda began designing the project to cover the lack of production of medicinal plants cultivated in the ecological model and for commercial purposes. At the moment, due to the difficulties of access to land, a test is being carried out with several medicinal plants on a rented plot that combines this activity with the production of organic vegetables. Last year he received the Urkome prize for his project.
Urbieta has previously lived in France, where he had the opportunity to visit several ecological productions of medicinal plants. “We took ideas from what we learned, and a couple of years ago we began to shape them,” he explains. Since they began searching for land to start the project, they have come up with the usual problem. “We have enormous difficulties in accessing the land, because most farmers in this area live on subsidies and cannot sell land to receive such aid...” That is why, at the moment, you do not have the opportunity to start serious production, but you are working on a small rented plot.
In this area Urbieta is experimenting with the traditional aromatic and medicinal plants of the area and with which we have brought from outside but well adapted: verbena, iperico, milleaves, salvia, kalendula, melisa… “Many times we ask for distant things in the herbord, but normally, except in specific cases, we have plants that give solutions to what is there”, he explains.
Need for pedagogy
The value of medicinal plants and the recovery of lost knowledge in recent years is another key to the project: “Ecology and natural therapy are fashionable, but many times people go out unknowingly to pick up the area’s medicinal plants and cut badly,” said Urbieta. For example, it seems that chamomile is already in very few places in Gipuzkoa, among other factors, because it is bad. Therefore, in addition to the sale of medicinal and aromatic plants, the goal of ceston is to organize future visits to the production, in order to provide interested people with the basis for teaching and correct collection of these plants. “Otherwise, today we do everything like crazy…”, he adds.
Now that the whole project is defined and organized, what it lacks is to acquire the necessary ground to make the final leap. Hopefully, before late, we can get ecological medicinal plants nearby in our herbaceous plants.
