On principle, sharing or donating profits from selling seeds with the community is great
But is there a way to demonstrate how the money is making it to the alleged recipients? How can anyone know it's more than just a marketing ploy that benefits the seed seller?
That Dope Magazine thing was embarassing for everyone involved:
The alleged charitable activity referred to in the article is a guesthouse in Malana... the guys were even using the Instagram account of the guesthouse to spam the RSC account with comments... this kind of small-minded stuff is a nightmare to be dragged into
At the minute, this alleged donating of profits looks mostly like marketing.
There seems to be a disconnect between their cheap behaviour on social media and the saintly behaviour supposedly going on offline
Main thing is there are fundamental problems with the using the advertised charity model when cannabis cultivation is still illegal in the place the seeds come from.
I know, because I've considered mentioning 'charitable' stuff on the site:
eg - I used money from the Chitral seeds to send shipments of books for a school a friend of mine runs in Chitral. Next time I or a friend is there I will give them some cash.
But I could just be making that up, right?
How can this be done transparently and honestly? What happens if photos showing the school with the books go online? It's just putting the people in the village at risk...
Anyway, it doesn't seem fair to say these guys are "using their ethnicity to their advantage" (that could sound a bit racist)
From my perspective, knowing these regions pretty well, it's clear that their knowledge is very limited and they talk a lot of crap a lot of the time, including about the culture. But maybe the problem is that may not be obvious to other people.
I have Indian friends from these regions who have very deep knowledge of the folk traditions and culture, but, as you'll see, in the case of these particular guys, that doesn't seem to be so
I've discussed questions of ethnobotany, landraces etc. with them in comments on IG
they're spreading a lot of misinformation, being generous, you could say their claims are fanciful - like, maybe they believe their own stories
personally, I'm more inclined to think there's an element of consciously flooding the information space with bullshit, because they realise they benefit from having a customer base that is confused or clueless, as in the Greenhouse model
currently, for example, they are using the idea that drought and flooding problems on the Ganges Plain present an existential threat to the ruderal/feral cannabis there. That's convenient because it means they can sell seeds of feral weedy cannabis that they picked up, maybe around their home towns or whatever, which grow 'wild' more or less everywhere around North India north of the Ganges
don't misunderstand me: there are likely very important useful genes in ruderal cannabis from north India
but the idea that it's critically endangered is, you know....
anyway:
a minor example, from my first interaction with them, about how they are unreliable sources of ethnobotanical information:
one of the first posts the main character made to the RSC IG account was to claim that the name Nanda Devi should only be used for cannabis from the Chamoli District of upper Garhwal
the context:
I gave the name 'Nanda Devi' to a charas landrace that is specific to a few villages in Kumaon on the eastern flank of the Nanda Devi Sanctuary for convenience. I did this because the villagers have no specific name for this strain. That's typical in the Himalaya. For them, the plant is just 'bhang' most often - ie cannabis, and that's as far as naming it goes. In so far as there are anything like strain names I have seen nothing more specific than names that serve simply to differentiate multipurpose strains from specialised strains. So, in Kumaon the multipurpose strain or type is called 'dati' by some vllagers. In Parvati there is the name 'bhagircha' for specialised charas plants (means 'rubbing plant' afaik).
So anyway, because worship of the Goddess (Nanda Devi, Durga etc.) is very big in Kumaon, I decided to choose this as a convenient name for the purpose of people identifying it. There is Nanda Devi temple in the main town, a very important temple for the whole region. There are countless shrines to the goddess throughout the Kumaon mountains.
Now, it was hard to follow what the seed guy was trying to say, but at first his idea seemed to be that because Nanda Devi mountain is technically in Chamoli District then the name 'Nanda Devi' could only be used for cannabis from there. Ironically, as the crow flies, the Kumaoni villages in question that the RSC Nanda Devi is from are closer to Nanda Devi mountain than Chamoli town is...
Anyway, he claimed that farmers in Chamoli refer to female cannabis plants as Nanda Devi. To be clear his initial claim was that farmers will use the name for the female plants, not that this was a name for a specific strain, just a poetic name for female plants
I have been to the Chamoli area many times over the last decade and never once encountered farmers who refer to female plants as Nanda Devi, so I challenged him on this.
In response, he then escalated his claim to be that because in Chamoli they worship Nanda Devi as a devata (local god(dess)) then the name Nanda Devi should be used only for strains from growing villages in Chamoli District such as Malari village. So now his claim became that strain names are derived from devatas (local gods)
note, he says he is from Joshimath, which is a town in Chamoli, so based on that you might think his claim is true
in fact, his claim that devata culture has any connection with cannabis seems to have zero basis
And just to add, to focus it back on the more boring topic of the shite these guys talk, I've also had them claiming that there is no problem of hybrid contamination of the landraces in Parvati... they want you to believe that the skunk aromas are just 'natural', you know
@fullpowerselections
@afghan_kush_black_honey
@irrazinig
@landracelagacy
@_rastafarout
@himalayan_connection
These people are really doing some nice collecting. It’s worth following them.
To those people that think these guys are a scam then you don’t know them. They aren’t in this to take advantage of anything. Most of the Indian guys are younger and they actually do gift the majority back to the local people. The pro alien
Is that they are always going to new areas. They just revisited wailing valley and took a lot of clothes and books back for the class of kids. I appreciate you taking your time to bash them without knowing them but that’s your prerogative. There is a medic veteran, like myself, who decided to collect seeds while there and he has written a book. I think his bigotry towards the local people is fueling his and his friends attacks against irrazinig and his friends. Himalayan is from Scandinavia and went to Thailand and all over. Afghan_kush lives in Afghanistan and collects melons and many other things for the community. _rastafarout isn’t with them and he is doing his own collecting in South Africa. Im stoked people are collecting and letting it be known exactly where.
It may have started as a bunch of interesting ideas but seems it just became another bussiness nowadays for a bunch of local smart asses. Once they started doing all those auctions, the good promises and ideas from the begginnings faded away and it just turned into a biz. It really reminds me to all the Strain Hunter thing a lot, they are definitely taking lots of ideas from that.
On the other hand, for those willing to pay it may be a good chance to acquire some local seeds and perhaps find something decent, you never know, right?
Just my 2cents though.
Gypsy you said Bhutan. Please keep me updated.
Also the auctions are what they donate to causes. They donated all of the proceeds from the last auction to the village.
Gypsy you said Bhutan. Please keep me updated.