Saving hoodia gordonii
I had this page uploaded early in November 2003. I had lots of encouragement, positive comments, moral support and constructive criticism. There were numerous parties interested in farming hoodia in South America, China, India, South East Asia, Kuwait, Egypt, even in USA, where they want to build huge glass houses to grow it, but there were just a few expressions of interest in Australia. With most of them it didn’t take me all that long to realize that they were interested only in their own profits. I still believe somebody will see the incredible future for farming Hoodia in Australia. I have good quantities of seeds available for starting the project, but I hope there will be some serious expression of interest before the seeds are sold out.
Saving Hoodia gordonii
Imagine a desert plant that kills the appetite and attacks obesity. It has no known side effects, and contains a molecule that fools your brain into believing you have just eaten. I have the seeds and I want it farmed in Australia.
This part of my website is meant not so much for my seeds customers, as it is for those visitors that are interested in the health benefits of eating Hoodia gordonii , the preservation of this unique plant and saving it from extinction.
I am Vlado Viglasky, the managing director of a mail order business "Arizona Cactus Garden", located in a Melbourne suburb. (See footnotes on the bottom for the latest updates)
Every winter I send out a seeds offer, in 2003 it was on 22nd of August. The last two pages were under heading "The end of Arizona Cactus Garden", outlining the future aims of the business and I must say, I was very pleased with my customers’ responses, encouragement, suggestions, etc (see http://www.cactus-seeds.com/end_of_arizona_garden.html).
This is what I have written about Hoodia in it:
“There are fantastic opportunities waiting for farmers/gardeners in Australia…. Hoodia gordonii - native to the Kalahari Desert region of southern Africa and used by indigenous San bushmen to stave off hunger during long hunting expeditions is to be developed by Pfizer pharmaceutical company into a remedy to fight obesity. The six foot plants contain an active ingredient which research has shown could reduce appetite by up to 2,000 calories a day. Anybody growing them in Australia, slicing and drying them and offering them as a dried fruit will create a gold mine on their farm. And it doesn’t have to be just Hoodia gordonii - all species in the genus are used by the bushmen.”
I am glad I mentioned Hoodia gordonii in it, because three days later (on 25th of August) ABC TV Four Corners had a program about this desert plant. You can learn more about it on http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2003/20030825_bushmen/default.htm and for a transcript of the original BBC program go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/programmes/correspondent/transcripts/03_06_01.txt )
Watching the program prompted me to slightly alter my vision for the future of the non-profit organization that I intend to register.
Hoodia works on the hypothalamus - a part of your brain, which controls body weight and appetite. Senses including taste, smell, and gut distension, all tell the hypothalamus if we are hungry or full. Levels of glucose in your blood regulate the degrees of your appetite. The higher your bloods sugar the lower your appetite. Hoodia contains a molecule that is about 10,000 times as active as glucose. It goes to the hypothalamus and gives it a signal as if you were full, even if you have not eaten. In the first animal trials for Hoodia on rats (an animal that will eat literally anything) the rats stopped eating completely.
Though the appetite suppressing qualities of Hoodia gordonii were known to San tribesmen of Kalahari for thousands of years and to botanists since early 1900’s, CSIR started working on it in 1964. When South African scientists were routinely testing it, they discovered the plant contained a previously unknown molecule, which has since been named P 57. Phytofarm of UK got involved in 1977 and in July 2002 it sold the rights to license the drug for $21m to Pfizer. Pfizer paid US$2.8m for half a ton of Hoodia chips for research and isolating molecule P57 (the active ingredient) so that a patentable semi-synthetic variants can be developed. After one year Pfizer gave up - too tough a nut to crack - like with so many herbal medicines - synthetic imitations or the isolated active ingredients are never as safe and effective as what Mother Nature made for us. Thus for many years to come, the plant will be the most effective and safest product against obesity. Petrus Vaalbooi, an important San tribesman, stated in the BBC interview that it helps impotent men: "It's very good for men's problems. Once you've eaten this, you can really give your wife a good seeing to". Another San man said that hunters suppressed their hunger and maintained their energy levels on their two to three day hunting trips by eating a piece of Hoodia twice a day. The plant had the same effect on animals. Hoodia is best known for suppression of the second most satisfying human activity - eating, but in both sexes it also magnifies the desire for the most satisfying human activity and increases a feeling of wellbeing. What a combination - a diet and impotence pill, an aphrodisiac and a mood lifter. And a San woman was telling Tom Mangold (the BBC reporter) that the plant "it's also a very great cure towards ... dangerous illnesses" but wasn’t given a chance to elaborate, I wonder what illness she meant.
Guardian reporter: "In order to see for ourselves, we drove into the desert, four hours north of Capetown in search of the cactus. At about 1800hrs I ate about half a banana size - and later so did my cameraman. Soon after, we began the four hour drive back to Capetown. The plant is said to have a feel-good almost aphrodisiac quality, and I have to say, we felt good. But more significantly, we did not even think about food. Our brains really were telling us we were full. It was a magnificent deception. Dinner time came and went. We reached our hotel at about midnight and went to bed without food. And the next day, neither of us wanted nor ate breakfast. I ate lunch but without appetite and very little pleasure. Partial then full appetite returned slowly after 24 hrs." Tom Mangold: "I took the Hoodia under moderately controlled conditions. This was no clinical trial, but I have to say it worked one hundred percent for me and I neither worried about nor consumed food for some twenty hours afterwards." Roger Chennells described to Tom Mangold his experience: "It's great. I really liked it. I didn't eat for about sixteen hours after quite a small piece. And I felt really good as well. I didn't feel nauseous. I could have it every day if I wanted to lose a lot of weight. It really worked. It's good. I've given it to a dog who lost a lot of weight, a very plump dog. And I haven't offered it to friends. I thought that'd be a bit of an insult to offer it to my plumper friends. But what's important about it, I think, is that you lose weight without losing any of your body functions. Actually, you acquire a very strong libido in fact, a very strong life force, eating the Hoodia. So it could become a way of life. You could find New York salads, salad bars serving Hoodia with their Caesar salads, sliced Hoodia over cucumber sandwiches, or a Hoodia slimmer shake. So there are numerous ways in which the use of the word Hoodia and the magic molecule could help people not be so hungry and not eat so much." Phytopharm have run the first ever scientifically controlled clinical trial in humans. And at the end of fifteen days the group on hoodia had reduced their food intake by a thousand calories a day. There are no argument and disputes about its effectiveness. Old San men say that before 1964 the plants were not hard to find, if you knew where to look for them. But since 1964 the word of the properties of this plant have been spreading and with time it is harder and harder to find the plant. ("Although there's a lot of Kalahari, it's a very 'picky' plant, only growing in a rather rare soil-type - hence in not too many places. Trouble is, once you suss it, which any reasonably intelligent poacher could do, the relevant soil type is pretty easy to spot. ....suggestion that poachers will cause its extinction isn't all that improbable." - Four Corners forum contributor ozdenali, post id: 161) Getting the seeds of Hoodia is harder and harder every year. I used to get the seeds from four suppliers, but last year there were only two and for the next season only one promised some quantities.
During the Four Corners program I thought about encouraging the San tribesmen to farm the Hoodia plants in their territories, but with so many poachers lurking around, somebody else would be harvesting the plants long before the Sans. During the weeks after the program I have done a lot of research and have spoken to many of my customers and people in places and positions that would be helpful in my project.
Australia and South Africa used to be joined in the Gondwana continent, therefore some areas of Western Australia would be (soil wise) identical to those areas of South Africa where Hoodia grows. Hopefully those areas will have the same climate as required by the plant. Disappearance of the plant from habitat is just a matter of time and is not caused by agricultural activities - it grows in places where no other commercial plants would grow and Australia has huge areas like that. If planted in the right area at the start of the growing season, the plant will grow well without any interference from humans, as it has done for millions of years. Australian Aboriginals have been pushed out of the most fertile lands of Australia and their reservations are in areas totally useless to farmers. Non-aboriginals actually need a permit to travel into the reservations. Aboriginals don’t have the cultural background to be enthusiastic gardeners or farmers, but one of my customers in Geraldton told me about a plant nursery owned by Aboriginals in their neighbourhood. I am confident there will be more of them in existence. The same customer told me about an educational program in some WA prisons, where the inmates are learning some gardening/farming skills (most of the inmates in WA prisons are Aboriginals). One of my customers is exceptionally gifted in germinating Hoodia seeds, but he has no time to look after the seedlings. Another customer is hopeless in germinating the seeds (out of ten seeds none germinated), but he is very gifted in growing the seedlings. He lives in area with perfect climate for the plant and the plants of Hoodia he bought from someone else are growing at a rate beyond my belief. Both of these gentlemen are very enthusiastic about my project. They are willing to help and for their services they will be charging fees that are far below the going rates - they can’t afford to do it for free!
Aboriginals and San are going through the same crises - they were hunters and gatherers, living and surviving for tens of thousands of years following the religions, laws and customs of their forefathers and eating only things that the land provided them with. When whites came to these lands, the natives were not even considered to be human beings. They had just two choices - become white (adopt white man’s gods, customs, laws, foods, drinks, clothes, housing, healing) or be exterminated. Those surviving to this day were described by Roger Chennells as: " totally vulnerable to all of the ills of society and generally suffering from severe problems of drug abuse, alcoholism and poor health, lack of a purpose of living in this strange environment, they're faced with a society that they don't aspire to be like, yet there is no other choice and their leaders are very often also a bit lost." In recent times I have heard of Aboriginal communities, where the elders are banning alcohol, drugs and not tolerating antisocial behaviour. They are teaching the youngsters in the traditional ways, customs, culture, etc. And recently I heard a comment: "...the more tribal the Aboriginals are, the less trouble you're likely to have." Those communities that are in areas where the Hoodia would grow well would be invited to be involved in my project, if they will be interested, they will be sold some of the plants at the cost price. With the help of a soil expert, the most suitable locations would be selected and small colonies of the plant planted at the start of a wet season. Then Mother Nature would be allowed to take its course until the plant is mature. I would prefer Aboriginal female elders to be in control of the projects - male instincts push men to be providers (of food or money) and towards physical domination, often with little regard if anybody gets hurt in the process. Female instincts push women towards nourishing and mothering behaviour - they want their charges to survive at whatever cost and no thought of profits from it. That makes me believe the project would have much better chance of great prosperity if females managed it.
Many succulents and cacti are already commercially farmed - Aloe vera, several genera and species of cacti producing "dragon fruit", "prickly pear", "peruvian apple", Agaves for Tequila, etc. Two of my customers for cactus seeds already offered to do small scale trials for farming Hoodia as an agricultural crop (they live in areas of Australia that has the right climate). One could plant about 5000 plants per hectare. After 5 years you could easily harvest an average of 5 kg from each plant every year, or 25,000 kg per hectare. Once dried, you could get 1250 kg of hoodia powder out of it. In 2003 bulk quantities of hoodia powder under 25 kg were selling for US$ 399.00/kg = AU$532.00. In lots of over 25 kg the price is US$250.00/kg = AU$333.33. 1250 kg of hoodia powder would earn you AU$416,666.66/ha. Even if a farmer would be selling fresh hoodia for $20/kg, those 5000 plants would earn $500,000/hectare. The market is there and will continue to grow at a rate that investors don’t even dare to dream about - obesity is rising at ever increasing rate and the World Food Research Institute doesn't expect the trend will change before 2019. All existing methods of slimming have only 5% short term and 1% long term success rates. 75% of American women are dissatisfied with their looks, 50% are on a diet at any one time. The diet industry (diet foods, diet programs, diet drugs, etc.) takes in over $40 billion each year in USA alone, and is still growing. There are some 90 million fat adults in USA. Two new studies found that the price of being fat in America is about $10,000/person. Obesity kills about 220,000 a year in the United States and Canada, and about 320,000 in Western Europe. Obesity accounts for 6 percent of the nation's health care costs, or nearly $100 billion in direct and indirect costs. And it is not restricted to developed countries only - obesity and all the associated health problems are increasing at an alarming rate in the poor countries as well. World Health Report 2002 states: "more than 1 billion adults in richer countries are overweight or obese" which includes some 300 million clinically obese people. Every one of them is a potential customer, not to mention the market for obese cats and dogs. There are around one billion Muslims around the world. Every one of them wouldn’t mind a piece of it every day during Ramadan. All the armies of the world would like to have a small bottle of dried, encapsulated Hoodia in the survival packs of their soldiers. And so would all the sailors, bush walkers, etc. Size of the market for this diet/impotence pill, aphrodisiac and a mood lifter is beyond the comprehension of most people. Remember - Hoodia’s molecule P57 is about 10,000 times as active as glucose, which means that you need very little of it kill any appetite. There are many ways it could be made available to consumers. Tom Mangold mentioned some, other possibilities are - dried, powdered, tableted, capsules, drinks, in chewing gum, mixed with multivitamins, fresh slices in sandwiches, etc. But, as a nutritional therapist, I must stress - Hoodia alone is not the answer to the obesity problem, consumers need to be educated. In a few words - while your body can use the stored fat for your energy needs, every day you need about one gram of protein for each kg of your body just to replace the muscle cells that die every day, otherwise your lean muscle tissues will used for replacing the dead cells. Then you need certain quantities of minerals and vitamins. Going under 600 calories a day can ruin your kidneys. If your body is burning your stored fat too fast, all the fat soluble toxins would overload your liver - that is one reason you are told to drink a lot of water when on diet. Do you know other reasons? All that will have to be discussed at a greater length in another place.
And what is needed to grow Hoodia? What is now considered useless wasteland can become productive for a crop that requires minimum land cultivation, fertilizing, watering, protection from herbivorous animals (the plant is very spiny like a cactus and plant eating animals won’t touch it), easy weed and insect control. Fertilization would speed up the growth rate, but the fertilizer would have to be designed and mixed by experts - you couldn’t use any fertilizer from the nearest nursery, otherwise the plant won’t have the nutritional qualities. The plant is not a threat to environment - risk assessment has already been done, but if they were wrong and it started spreading like prickly pears in 1920’s - just bring there bus loads of fat people and let them graze. The infestation will be cleared in no time. But that wouldn’t be necessary - it will be a long time before enough of the plant will be produced to meet the demand. For a start - there is very limited quantity of seeds available.
My prime objective in this project is to save the species from extinction - people in the industry are quite unanimous in their belief that within a few years this plant will not be found in South African habitat. I am in such a unique position to save this plant - I’ve been selling seeds of cacti for 13 years and I have good, honest suppliers, who have good and honest seeds collectors in the areas where these plants grow. My seeds suppliers will be able to get me together with seeds collectors, who can take me to numerous places where they know the plants used to grow or are still growing. (There is only a handful of people in the world who would have the same credentials as me and that the seeds collectors could trust.) There I will be able to have a close look at the surrounds of the plant and take soil samples. The soil samples will be analyzed in Australia and departments of agriculture or geology will be able to indicate locations in Australia where the soil would be the same or very similar. I have hundreds of customers world wide who are experts in growing plants of this type and if I will have some problems, they will be happy to help. Czech cactophiles are among the foremost authorities on the subject of succulents and cacti. I speak the language and they will be happy to help as well.
My secondary objective will be to save the genetic purity of the plant. Once agribusiness will get involved, they will genetically modify it to stop the spines growth, which would be a nuisance to the handlers. They will introduce genes to make the plant tolerate much harsher climate. Then they will try to improve the taste of it (Big Mac or Hawaiian pizza flavour?). They will feed it with growth hormones and fertilizers to speed up the time between planting and harvesting and to make the most money out of it in as little time as possible to maximize returns for their shareholders. Even the slightest modification to the plant can (and most likely will) reduce the healing properties and effectiveness of the plant. Preservation of the genetic purity will be the last thing on their mind. If small colonies of the plant will be scattered through the Aboriginal reservations, genetically pure plants will survive.
The next objective will be to pay back Australia for what she did for me. First of all a huge THANK YOU for the good life I had here so far and all the opportunities in my life. The good life here is the result of so much hard work done by the early British settlers and convicts. But all that was accompanied by suffering and loses of the earlier inhabitants, the Aboriginals. Suffering and loses unimaginable to most of us. These days the conditions of a few of them are as good as the conditions of most other Australians. Not many Aboriginals have the same opportunities in life as non-Aboriginals. The early settlers believed that British way of life and doing things was the only right way and that Aboriginals were "The white man’s burden". If the natives didn’t embrace the white man’s way of life, they were "savages". Thank God attitudes have changed and many Australians now feel that some Aboriginals could be quite happy living their traditional ways and if they accept some positive aspects of white man’s culture, they could have the best of both worlds. My project would give the Aboriginals an alternative to most of the programs offered to them these days. In the right locations Hoodia will do well with minimum input by them and can provide them with a purpose in life and a good income. I know you can’t turn a hunter/gatherer of yesterday into an agribusiness tycoon by tomorrow, but you don’t have to be genius to see the potential. If Aboriginal individuals or groups will be interested, the foundation will be there to help.
South Africa's San peoples have signed a deal ensuring they will profit from a diet drug developed from a plant they have used for generations. Under the terms of the agreement, the San people will receive regular fees as the drug developed from Hoodia plants passes various stages on the way to market. They will also get a proportion of the royalties if and when it becomes commercially available, which was expected to be in as little as five years. The San people hailed the agreement as a "joyous moment". But now that Pfizer has pulled out of the research, the San’s dreams of becoming millionaires out of the royalties have been dashed if not forever, then at least greatly delayed - if Pfizer spent about 30 million dollars and gave up on it just after one year, I wonder if there ever will be any other company that will try to make a patentable drug out of it. And that is good news for my project
Though my project will not be under any obligations to pay royalties to the San people, I am not forgetting them. When the foundation will have enough funds for it, it would send to the San people a delegation of Aboriginal elders from the communities that were successful in restoration of the traditional ways, and/or in blending the best of their traditional ways and the most useful practices that the western civilization can offer, such as farming crops like hoodia, or establishing a succulents nurseries, or animal husbandry - I feel that game farming (kangaroos & crocodiles in here and antelopes & crocodiles, or any other animals, flesh of which is now sold in Africa as "bush meat") could be a practical alternative for the San people and Aboriginals. I expect the San people would be more willing to take advise from Aboriginal elders who were successful in solving the problems of their communities caused by clashes with western cultures, rather than from some government commissioners.
In the early stages of Hoodia farming I hope I will be able to keep it as long as possible from the hands of agribusiness companies, where the farm is owned by stock holders and the farm is ran by a manager, who is told what to do by the directors of the company. I want to give as much as possible of the farming into the hands of small farmers - they will do all the hard work and they deserve a fair income for their labour and all the risks they take. When I hear how much the supermarkets pay the farmers for milk, pears, potatoes, chicken, etc. I am really surprised they can tolerate it and that they continue farming. One good thing about Hoodia - it will be a very long time before the production will be so high that the farmer will have to accept prices offered by supermarkets. There aren’t many places in the world where Hoodia will grow as well as in Australia’s north west and if the farmers won’t get for their produce what they feel is fair, they will be able to sell it overseas.
As for the name of the non profit foundation, I decided on Brotherhood Of Kindred Souls - BOKS and I already reserved an internet domain - www.boks.ws (ws stands for website). I chose to include "soul’ in it because a soul has no skin colour, no body shape, size, or weight, no sex, no age, it cannot be judged by the clothes it wears, what car it drives, what neighbourhood it lives in, what is its level of education, by the size of its bank account, by its eloquence, social class, occupation, religion, race, nationality, language, only by deeds and attitudes. Another reason to include "soul" in the name was to remind those hardnosed scientists, who will not acknowledge the existence of anything that cannot be measured, weighed, tested, manipulated in laboratories, etc. - there are things that everybody knows about, but nobody can prove their existence. (Recently, scientists worked out that only 10% of the universe’s gravity can be attributed to the visible matter. They have no idea what the remaining 90% of universe’s gravity comes from. They call it “The invisible matter”.)
Brotherhood is defined as an association of men (and women) with common interests and aims. One of the definitions of "kindred" is "similar in nature, character’, something like soul-mates. In other words, it could have been called Association of like-minded individuals interested in performing and/or supporting good deeds. Membership in the Brotherhood will be open to anybody that will do or support good deeds. Some people can help with their time, or their skills and hopefully there will be some who can afford to donate money to the foundation, especially during the first few years. As I mentioned in "The end of Arizona Cactus Garden", I will donate the whole inventory of Arizona Cactus Garden to the foundation, but it will not earn enough money to finance the Hoodia project.
My business activities earn me enough money to cover my day-to-day expenses. Not much money will be needed to start the project - several hundred dollars for purchase of the few thousand seeds that have been promised to me. A little more will be needed to have the seeds germinated and then the seedlings grown to a size suitable for planting them out in open. All of those expenses I could manage. Much more money will be necessary for my research - trip to South Africa to where Hoodias grow and to get some soil samples, to have the samples analyzed, and then search for suitable sites in Australia for growing the Hoodias. (February/March are the times for seeds harvesting and my major supplier is planning a trip to SA at that time. I would dearly love to be able to go there at the same time for obvious reasons) I expect I will have a supply of some Hoodia seeds every year. I will have to invest a lot of my time into the project and no prospect of earning money out of it in the first five years.
And here is where the kindred souls come in - donations. The Brotherhood will be a non profit organization and all contributors will be provided with a receipt for the donations. The contributions will be tax deductible, but that’s not all the rewards - when the foundation will start harvesting the produce, donors to the foundation will be the first to be offered Hoodia. Once the organization will start making profits, some of the funds will be ploughed back into planting more hoodias and the rest will be spent on some of the projects mentioned in "The end of Arizona Cactus Garden". My mouth waters at the thought of how much good the foundation will be able to do with all that money.
Brotherhood Of Kindred Souls will consider all the donations to be a long term loan, they will be repaid with Hoodia at wholesale prices, but I will have to get an advice about that from an accountant. For health food shops, alternative medicine practitioners, individuals, this would be an excellent way to secure supply of the Hoodia, as soon as it will be available. I feel this will be the first source of any quantities of Hoodia - I haven’t heard of anybody planning to grow it commercially - there are no seeds available for it. (My seeds supplier will keep aside for me whatever quantities possible only under condition that there will be some colonies planted out in open purely for seeds production, and also insists that Aboriginals will be involved in the process.) The contributions can be made in form of Postal money orders payable to Brotherhood Of Kindred Souls or cheques also payable to BOKS, or direct transfer into BOKS’ bank account. At least once a year all contributors will be told about the progress of the project.
(Here I got stuck. On 28th of Oct 2003 I went to Consumer Affairs to register Brotherhood Of Kindred Souls as a non profit organization, but was told the most appropriate form of registration of this activity would be "Incorporated Association". But the association would have to show assets worth $500,000 or an annual turnover of some $200,000. What a bummer. Is anybody out there who can suggest some way of raising funds for this project without surrendering the control of direction of the project to some agribusiness company? One of my thoughts was to register it overseas. Another option is to accept all donations as deposits for the future purchases of Hoodia. I know it would be a very long wait, but you could be assured that you will be the first in line to get something that really works. Would anybody care to comment on that? Does anybody know how/where to apply for a grant or a sponsorship? Health insurance companies should be very interested; health foods, minerals and vitamins manufacturers should be interested, even pet foods manufacturers. If properly handled, this could do more for Australia than sheep. I feel Commonwealth Government should be most interested - just have a look at the body shape of many politicians and you’ll know why they are called fat cats - but joking aside, the health cost of obesity here is estimated to be over 1billion dollars. Hoodia would reduce them dramatically. Then there would be the benefits of growing it in areas where nothing else grows and exporting Hoodia to most of the world.)
If you know anybody who can help, let me know, or forward them this information. This project deserves it. It can save one of the most useful plants to humanity, help the San tribesmen of Kalahari, Australian Aboriginals, Australian farmers, and overweight individuals everywhere.
2008 update:
Arizona Cactus Garden has the biggest catalogue of cactus seeds in the world – in season 2008 – 2009 it has over 6500 different species of cacti and almost 1,800 succulents..
My plans for saving Hoodia and also some of the plans with the Brotherhood of Kindred Souls are shifting sideways because of changing conditions in my private life and business developments. But if the conditions will become favourable, I’ll be happy to go ahead with those plans.