# Interesting Read



## Zorro2017 (Jan 9, 2017)

Disclaimer; I didn't write this article but found it interesting. Anyone wishing to refute the findings can do so with

http://mexiconewsdaily.com/mexicolife/the-most-important-mammal-in-the-world/


The most important mammal in the world
. . . is the bat, according to Rodrigo Medellín, The Bat Man of Mexico

Unfortunately, bats are also among the most unloved and misunderstood creatures in the world. Such was the case decades ago in Mexico, when researchers discovered that bat populations in caves south of the United States border were dropping drastically, in many cases by as much as 90%.

One of the causes was the widespread use of insecticides and another was “the war against bats” being waged by ranchers all over Mexico who would seal up caves or set fires inside them trying to kill bats, all of whom they believed to be vampires. Sadly, most of those bats were actually insect, nectar or fruit eaters, all of them vitally important to the environment.

“The way we reproduce agaves now — by replanting the little ‘clones’ that grow around the parent plant — has drastically reduced the genetic diversity of our plants. Medellín brought all this up to the tequila board many years ago and they considered him crazy.”

If left on its own an agave produces an amazingly fast-growing quiote or stalk near the end of its life and all of its energy (meaning all of its sugar) is used to produce the stalk, the flowers and the seeds.

“We tequila producers,” Rosales told me, “used to consider that quiote ‘El Chamuco’ (the devil) because it meant we would lose all the sugar from that agave, and we would rush to cut it off. So this new approach takes some time to get used to. De veras, we had no idea at what time of the year the plant flowers.

“The first time we had to keep a lookout, and when the flowers appeared we called Rodrigo Medellín: ‘Come quick!’ and he started measuring how much sugar was still in the plant and how much went into the flower, and what kind of insects were attracted.

“Then they stayed all night to catch the bats and see whether or not they were covered with pollen. And we saw that — even after 100 years of not drinking nectar from those flowers, the bats still remembered, and they pollinated them!

“Now we are starting to look at our fields with new eyes. We always have spots where it’s not practical to plant agaves for one reason or another, like rocky patches or at the very edge of our property. Now we are thinking: ‘Wait a minute, let’s plant agaves there and leave them for the bats.’”

Rosales calls TIP a pilot program organized among three friends: the owners of Tequila Tapatío, Casa Siete Leguas and Cascahuín. TIP has begun by releasing two bat-friendly tequilas in the U.S.: Siembra Valles Ancestral and Tequila Ocho, along with one mezcal: Don Mateo de la Sierra.

“But many other distilleries are lining up to get on the bandwagon,” added Rosales.

Later, I Skyped Rodrigo Medellín in his office at UNAM, Mexico’s national university, and asked him how the bat-friendly tequila project got started.

“*It goes back 23 years,” said the professor, “to when I first tried to explain to the tequila industry that they owe their very significant profits to this little creature that flies at night, and that by using nothing but clonal shoots to replant their fields they were losing a big chunk of their genetic diversity.

“I told them I thought it was very paradoxical to think that they plant millions of agaves but don’t allow a single one to bloom. I said, ‘You only have tequila today because the bats have pollinated it for millions of years! It’s time for you to start investing: not only because you owe it to the bats, but because of your own self-interest.’
*
“I told them that in 1994 for the first time and the Tequila Regulatory Council said, *‘Oh, what a nice project, thanks for coming to see us, but don’t call us, we’ll call you.’
*
“Well, they never did.* Then, 10 years later, in 2004, I went back again, with a paper that a friend of mine had just published showing that over 160 million agaves were clones of just two individuals. So, basically, the genetic diversity was zero.

“Then I told them: you are playing with fire here. All it takes is one of your plants to be diseased and then all of your plants — because they are exact copies of each other — are going to be diseased. You cannot afford to run that risk. You have to start investing in feeding the bats a little, so they can continue exchanging genetic material from one plant to another.

“And they said, ‘Thank you very much. We will think seriously about this. We’ll let you know.’

“But they never did. And then about five or six years later the disease I had hypothesized actually showed up and they said, ‘What? What was that story about the bats and the flowers and genetics? What was that again?’”

To the Bat Man’s delight, some members of the tequila industry began to listen to him and offered to invest heavily in his plan. “Now all I needed was a leg-in to the market,” Medellín told me.

That’s when he met restaurateur and tequila promoter David Suro, who told Medellín, “I’ve been looking for something like this all my life and I finally found you; so we need to work together.”

As a result, the Tequila Interchange Project launched 300,000 bottles of bat-friendly tequila in November 2016, each of them displaying the little hologram issued by UNAM.

“And,” adds Medellín, “we now have bars in San Antonio, New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and many other places, even Arkansas, whose menus list bat-friendly tequilas and mezcales. If you order from this page, one dollar from each drink is going to the project.”

Even if you live far from an Arkansas bar, you can help the Tequila Interchange Project. Rodrigo Medellín suggests you:

1. Read up on bats, pollen and bat-friendly tequila and mezcal.

2. Talk to your liquor store owner and your bartender: tell them about this fantastic story.

3. Consider donating through the TIP website.

“Everything donated,” says Rodrigo Medellín, “goes straight to the field.” Just click on the orange donate button.

You will find the latest updates about TIP projects on their Facebook page and you can meet Medellín in the excellent BBC three-minute clip, Bat Friendly Tequila.

The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for 31 years, and is the author of “A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area” and co-author of “Outdoors in Western Mexico.” More of his writing can be found on his website.*


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

Interesting article. Here's wishing that the bats prosper. 

Short bat story: We have a very large terrazza with a brick boveda ceiling we had installed to replace the asbestos sheets that were there when we bought the old casa. Bats loved the bricks and started roosting there all night. Word must have got out, for soon there were *Lots* of bats. Lots of bat droppings covering the outdoor furniture. What to do? We finally took a standing lamp which faced upward with a energy saver bulb and plugged it in. No more bats. They must have found a happy roosting place elsewhere.


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## UrbanMan (Jun 18, 2015)

Zorro2017 said:


> Unfortunately, bats are also among the most unloved and misunderstood creatures in the world.


Are you going to show a little bat love, and grow some agave on your property?


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Amigo Zorro, I have no interest in tequila, but I am an avid student of Mexican archaeology. Your post reminded me that I have never visited the Guachimontones sites. So when I finally get to Guadalajara, hopefully this January, I will be sure to include a visit to these fascinating ruins in my travel plans. Cheers!


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

UrbanMan said:


> Are you going to show a little bat love, and grow some agave on your property?


I might do that, but my property consists of a cement slab between the casa and the garage, and I don't think agave plants would do well in garden pots.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Isla Verde said:


> Amigo Zorro, I have no interest in tequila, but I am an avid student of Mexican archaeology. Your post reminded me that I have never visited the Guachimontones sites. So when I finally get to Guadalajara, hopefully this January, I will be sure to include a visit to these fascinating ruins in my travel plans. Cheers!



Yes the site is interesting, round ruins with a nice lake,, go and visit you will enjoy it..


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## Zorro2017 (Jan 9, 2017)

I found it interesting for several reasons, one is that I never considered "genetic diversity" in plants and always thought an agave was an agave. Two is that through ignorance and fear the farmers were destroying the very animals that helped them make a living and three was the fact that this man told them this and they ignored him until the disease that he predicted happened and it was the bats in the end that solved this problem.

Who would have ever considered that "Bat friendly" would be a tequila sales logo?


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## UrbanMan (Jun 18, 2015)

Another word to describe this is Monoculture Farming. It is not necessarily that a disease randomly comes along and attacks a particular strain of, in this case, an agave plant. What some scientists believe is that season after season, for many years, of having exactly the same agave plants gives the diseases a fixed target. The diseases, which are always present, are adapting while the plants are not. Eventually, the disease will evolve to the point where it can successfully defeat the plants.

In a more wild environment, the the bats flying around would result in the plants evolving. Gives them a much better chance to be resistant.


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## Zorro2017 (Jan 9, 2017)

The soil in this area has been badly depleted by the repeated farming of sugar cane for hundreds of years. Crop rotation simply doesn't happen here. I planted a lot of herbs and none of them grew as the men building my house told me that they wouldn't. Corn and beans grow well but few if any people grow them. 

They use a green chemical fertilizer that in turn washes into the streams and rivers. If a disease ever hit the sugar cane this entire area would be devastated as that is all they grow beside coffee. The cane is never killed as they cut the stalk near the ground and the shoot just grows again. But there is plenty of cross pollination as the article was talking about as the cane is flowering now.


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## ojosazules11 (Nov 3, 2013)

Zorro2017 said:


> The soil in this area has been badly depleted by the repeated farming of sugar cane for hundreds of years. Crop rotation simply doesn't happen here. I planted a lot of herbs and none of them grew as the men building my house told me that they wouldn't. Corn and beans grow well but few if any people grow them.
> 
> They use a green chemical fertilizer that in turn washes into the streams and rivers. If a disease ever hit the sugar cane this entire area would be devastated as that is all they grow beside coffee. The cane is never killed as they cut the stalk near the ground and the shoot just grows again. But there is plenty of cross pollination as the article was talking about as the cane is flowering now.


The long held tradition by indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica of planting corn and beans together has a scientific explanation as to why this is healthier for the soil and the plants. I’m sure you know that nitrogen is a major component in fertilizer. Planting the beans with the corn prevents the soil from becoming depleted of nitrogen, because the bean roots have nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Here’s an article explaining this: Corn And Beans Grow Well Together... Why? | A Moment of Science - Indiana Public Media 
One of my undergraduate degrees was in International Development where we learned things like this, as well as “appropriate technology” techniques like terracing land on hillsides with natural stone retaining walls to prevent soil erosion in the rainy season, and natural fertilizer from composting to increase crop yields. All of this is accessible and affordable to farmers in Mexico and Central America. In areas where it’s been implemented crop yields have increased 3 fold or more. 

In terms of plant genetic diversity, the alarm has been raised regarding many types of plants, although I had not heard of the extreme lack of genetic diversity in the agave plants. Crazy! The importance of Mexico in terms of genetic diversity of corn is one of the reasons Mexico banned GMO corn. Monsanto is not giving up, though. 

As part of the effort to protect plant genetic diversity, there are various seed banks around the world. The global seed bank in northern Norway holds seeds from around the world, safeguarding them in the permafrost. 
https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/food-fisheries-and-agriculture/svalbard-global-seed-vault/id462220/


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## ojosazules11 (Nov 3, 2013)

Here’s a link to a video about the global seed bank, which is essentially like an insurance policy to protect plant genetic diversity and to protect against future food insecurity if there is collapse of certain crops - whether due to monoculture or other factors. 

https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/food-fisheries-and-agriculture/svalbard-global-seed-vault/film-and-photo/film/Insurance-for-the-Worlds-Crop-Diversity-in-the-Frozen-Ground-of-the-Arctic-Circle-/id766351/


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

Thanks - as the thread title says - a very interesting read.


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## Zorro2017 (Jan 9, 2017)

ojosazules11 said:


> The importance of Mexico in terms of genetic diversity of corn is one of the reasons Mexico banned GMO corn. Monsanto is not giving up, though.



Geneticists have bred GMO pigs that glow in the dark by inserting into their DNA a gene for bioluminescence from a jellyfish. 

How else are farmers to find their pigs at night Ojosazules?

https://www.livescience.com/40895-gmo-facts.html


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## ojosazules11 (Nov 3, 2013)

Zorro2017 said:


> Geneticists have bred GMO pigs that glow in the dark by inserting into their DNA a gene for bioluminescence from a jellyfish.
> 
> How else are farmers to find their pigs at night Ojosazules?


Like they've done for millenia - with the flashlight on their cellphones ¿no?


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## baldilocks (Mar 7, 2010)

Zorro2017 said:


> Geneticists have bred GMO pigs that glow in the dark by inserting into their DNA a gene for bioluminescence from a jellyfish.
> 
> How else are farmers to find their pigs at night Ojosazules?
> 
> https://www.livescience.com/40895-gmo-facts.html


Follow their noses, of course. Silly question.


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