Anya's Garden Perfumes + The Natural Perfumery Institute

The price of patchouli essential oil has skyrocketed in the past year. An crucial and historic scent in perfume and body care products, various issues have conspired to create a shortage and suppliers and formulators are scrambling to control cost increases in their products. I know I'm an eternal optimist. I also have a strong background in ethnobotany, economic botany and agriculture. I specialized in tropical and subtropical agriculture in my studies, keep this in mind when you check out the You Tube link, below. In 2005, a team from Haiti met with the President of Rwanda to propose a Patchouli project. There is a series of five videos on You Tube recording the process of establishing a patchouli essential oil industry in Rwanda by the movers and shakers of this project. The videos are educational and uplifting. I am very aware of he political and military turmoils of Rwanda, having several close friends who traveled there in the aftermath and are helping with the rebuilding. Re...

STOP THE FDA GLOBALIZATION ACT OF 2008 If it weren't for our sense of smell, would would not be able to discern the food we put in our mouths. Our sense of smell makes it possible for us to taste our food. Our tastebuds help us sense salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami. When purchasing tomatoes or melons at the store, we use our nose to detect which ones are the ripest with the probable best taste. No scent? No taste. When agribusiness giants gobble up family farms, or development paves over yet another field of beans with concrete, we, the people, become more separated from the crops that smell and taste good. Every small scale farm that goes under puts another nail in the coffin of free enterprise providing fresh, tasty, nutritious food on our table or fragrant, beautiful ingredients for our natural perfumes. Taking your children out to a local farm to pick a pumpkin becomes more of an impossibility when urban sprawl means a 40-mile drive each way. I call it the Cheez-Wiz factor...