Whole World Botanicals Social Mission

WWB sources many of its botanicals by giving interest-free loans to communities living in extreme poverty in order to help them move out of subsistence production into producing a cash crop on their own land. Five Quechua-speaking communities in the high Andes of Peru received loans from the Whole World Botanicals to buy seed, rent heavy machinery to break up the pasture soil, and to build solar dryers. This first economic development project supports them in the production of organically grown maca roots.

Freshly harvested maca roots: Maca roots have traditionally been cultivated in many different heirloom ecotypes, including purple, red, black, grey with white stripe, red with white stripe, cream, and yellow. Commercial maca buyers generally buy only the cream or the yellow types. WWB encourages the continued production of the heirloom varieties of maca by buying all colors. As a result, our organic maca is a little darker than most.

Whole World Botanicals' herbs are bioenergetically grown and harvested. Maca roots, for example, are sown, like all root plants, at the full moon. Leafy plants, with medicinal plant parts above the soil, are sown with the new moon. All plants have maximum medicinal properties when harvested at the full moon. These practices of native peoples all over the world are honored by WWB.

Bioenergetic farming methods used to grow WWB's maca roots: The Andean spiritual belief system includes the necessary cooperation between male and female principles for maximum harmony and productivity in all activities and ceremonies. Seen here are the two husbands digging the holes for planting maca and their wives dropping seeds into the holes. Photo taken on the full moon day of November, 2005 by WWB co-founder, Elena Rojas Martinez.

Every year the founders of Whole World Botanicals sit down with the maca growing communities to investigate if WWB's floor price is higher or lower than the market price for maca. WWB pays which ever price is higher.

Whole World Botanicals practices Fair Trade and has partnered for more than a decade with the Quechua-speaking communities who grow our organic maca roots in the high Peruvian Andes. This allows the peasant producers to purchase basic necessities such as clothing, transportation and school materials for their children and to live with dignity.

Elena Rojas Martinez, Peruvian Midwife and Co-founder of Whole World Botanicals, visiting the 10,000 acre rainforest proterorate entrusted to WWB.

Whole World Botanicals has a formal commitment to help preserve the Amazon Rainforest which is being destroyed at an alarming rate. In 2007 the Peruvian government granted WWB a Concesión para Conservación protectorate of more than 10,000 acres of virgin old-growth rainforest near the National Park Pacaya-Samiria. It is our responsibility to protect the trees in this territory from the human predators, logging companies, slash & burn colonists. WWB has made a commitment to work with the two native populations whose own traditional lands border this forest area to sustainably collect the renewable small medicinal plants, fruits and nuts in the protectorate.

Whole World Botanicals collaborates with its organic farming and wildcrafting partners in the rainforest and the Andes to support not only green farming but also green living. Maca growers live and farm their organic maca crops at 14,000 feet above sea level which is above the tree line. It is cold year round and temperatures drop to freezing or below at night. People living there suffer from the cold. They cook their food by burning animal dung which produces an acrid, smoky fire and blackens their lungs.

Two years ago, WWB initiated a pilot solar energy project with maca-growing communities to demonstrate solar cookers and provided a workshop on building a solar space to heat their homes. The excitement was tremendous and there is a long waiting list to obtain solar cookers and a home solar space. As a next step, WWB plans to set up its own 501C non-profit organization in order to be able to accept help from its customers and others in fully implementing our environmental and social justice mission.

Maca-growing farmers learn how to use a solar cooker in demonstration project funded and organized by Whole World Botanicals in June, 2007. Since these maca farming communities are located at 14,000 + ft. above sea level, the sun is very powerful and solar cooking is very efficient. The next step for WWB will to offer a workshop in which they can build out of recycled local materials their own solar cookers.