Progress at 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 a guy in an office Northern Michigan and my partner is guy in the Peruvian Amazon, but we’re on our way.

Like Dennis McKenna said said, ayahuasca reminds us that though we apes may think we are in charge we are not: the plants have the power and the green fuse of it all is photosynthesis.

Ask Wade Davis, who shared today 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.

Be quiet: we are doing that with the RAO DAO, quietly cultivating our sacred cash crops. These Banisteriopsis caappi plants, eponymously ayahuasca, are helical vines with big heart-shaped leaves that even Jaguars eat for hallicinogenic effects like a catnip that transcends species. We are heads-down, quietly working on growing the transcendental catnip where it’s legal and a keystone cultural species.

Incidentially, the Jaguars have been observed eating only the B. caapi, not the other plant we’re growing, P. viridis, in the coffee family. But P. viridis extract packs quite a bigger punch than coffee beans in a double espresso.

Colloquially known as chacruna, P. viridis is a perennial green-leaved shrub that likes independence to grow best, so we’re not planting guava trees near it like we are with the B. caapi. We are giving chacruna its space to thrive.

Near the B. caapi, we are planting fast-growing guava trees. Our hope is that the guava proximity will give the ayahuasca a guavahuasca terroir.

Outside the farm, 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 is for ipsquared.foundation, an initiative we founded for developing indigenous IP in the Upper Amazon.

I was there doing work for my 2L summer legal externship with NGO Alianza Arkana but also doing Work if you know what I mean — drinking ayahuasca occasionally (the Work) including a 10-day psychedelic diet of a tree with glowing leaves called noya rao — a treat to see at night with its literally glow-in-the-dark leaf litter lighting up the ground.

Skip the poem I wrote capturing its vibe:

Somewhere out there in the deep dark rainbow rainforest
A circle of shamans sit singing
Gathered around an inner fire

Moses would be proud
His burning bush fills books in bushels now
But this tree’s leaves set fire to the ground

Some say the tree was heaven-sent
Others it’s a figament
Whatever’s present we’d do better to repent
Taking knees in reverence

A misty path snakes away
The work, the shamans say, works better in the mist
there’s something in the water
Dr. Masuru Emoto nods his head and strokes his beard in thought
there’s something in the mind divine

We trespass in the closely guarded garden with respect
That serpent serves the most delicious apples
Teacher’s pet
But another tree the fruits of which the forked tongue hasn’t spoken yet
Gives gifts worth more than missing knowledge

This ain’t no small hedge burning brightly
There ain’t no booming outer voice from outer space
Or inner space depending on your nose
Just a clear message and a soft glow
Live together let go
Like bacterial symbiotes living in the ground
Light it up
As you break it down

So we had big progress at the RAO DAO x IP2 RAO S.A.C. ayahuasca farm this 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 also secured our P. viridis supply from an awesome stock. Check out the pics:

There are our ayahuasca plants and each little bag contains a separate one, for 280 total

This is the massive mother Chacruna plant our clones are coming from

Say hi to our little Chacruna plant, the first of many

So you want a piece of this? If you’re a conscious investor who believes what Muhammad Yunus said when he won the Nobel Prize in Economics: we must redefine capitalism as making money solving social problems, then RAO DAO offers two immediate alternative investment opportunities.

Investing means doing more than just making a unliteral donation. An investment in an indigenous community creates a bilateral relationship between you and the community. At RAO DAO and IP2 RAO S.A.C. we are investing in job creation and intercultural exchange with Shipibo-Conibo in the Upper Amazon. That’s poverty alleviation, and that’s UN SDG #1.

Here are the investment options for those who dare make direct impact:

1. Shares of IP2 RAO S.A.C. offered at a generous market capitalization in direct share purchase agreements. Traditional equity of a traditional corporation.
2. Futuristic equity of the digital RAO DAO governance tokens. Shares of the crypto-based decentralized digital parent organization.

The RAO DAO parent organization will buy controlling shares of IP2 RAO S.A.C.. It will also expand operations to additional farms. It’s mission and is creating an innovative indigenous-owned agricultural enterprise network for growing and marketing the cash crops of the psychedelic revolution.

While calling sacred plants cash crops may seem vulgar, I encourage you to see both sides simultaneously in an effort towards your personal perceptual liberation. The commodity fetish has enchanted ayahuasca and other entheogenic ethnobotanicals of indigenous origin to such a degree that the goods themselves are seen to have magical qualities.

In fact, they may very well may: scientific results of studies on psychedelics have shifted the paradigm for human mental health and general wellness to include a renewed sense of magic possibilities. The zeitgeist includes a massive shift towards food as medicine — and what better medicines than what Richard Evans Schultes called the “Plants of the Gods.” The entheogens: generating the divine within.

That’s it for this week. Reach out to me at jh@vine.vc if you want to chat.