As introduced on our website, my journey into natural foods and medicinal plants began during my student years when I was sent by my  university to the Amazon region for about a year to conduct research on natural rubber. This experience led me to move to South America  upon graduation, where I have since spent 30 years working closely with natural foods and medicinal plants. At that time, foreign settlers were given preferential treatment for development, allowing them to purchase land at unbelievably low prices from  the Brazilian and Peruvian governments. Negotiations were often extremely rough, with land being sold along the Amazon River basin at a rate of a certain price per kilometer.  Many acquired tens or even hundreds of kilometers of land along the river, with no restrictions on depth—meaning that any  land they cleared automatically became their property.

Through this slash-and-burn agriculture, vast areas of primeval forest were cleared, and large-scale monoculture plantations of pepper  (used in soldiers’ food, canned goods, etc.)—were extensively established. Initially, the fertile and healthy land yielded an abundant harvest.  For about ten years, this prosperity continued smoothly. However, over time, unknown diseases and pests began to afflict the pepper plants,  ultimately leading to the near-total collapse of these plantations.

Additionally, the Ford Foundation (associated with the Ford Motor Company) invested vast financial and mechanical resources into  natural rubber production—an essential material for tire manufacturing—by establishing large-scale monoculture rubber plantations  in the Amazon jungle. However, just like the pepper plantations, this endeavor ultimately failed, leading to Ford’s withdrawal after only eight years.  The monoculture plantations of pepper and rubber, which displaced the native animals and plants of the primeval forest, seemed to be  a temporary success but ultimately failed to sustain themselves.

What caused this failure? I learned firsthand that this was the result of going against the laws of nature—favoring human convenience while  excluding other living beings. This planet does not belong to humans alone; we are merely one part of a vast network of life. Many of our customers who use our Strong Manuka Honey have shared their experiences, reporting successful eradication of  Helicobacter pylori and even cases where antibiotic treatments failed due to antibiotic-resistant strains, yet our honey proved  effective. We have also received numerous reports of positive effects on other difficult-to-treat conditions. On the other hand, some customers  have reported that while their H. pylori test results showed a significant reduction in bacterial count after consuming our honey, the bacteria were not completely eradicated.

I am not simply taking the side of natural products, but artificial antimicrobial agents, such as antibiotics, exhibit indiscriminate toxicity against  bacteria. Even Helicobacter pylori and other bacteria deemed undesirable by humans are still living organisms that exist on this planet.  Pharmaceutical companies’ artificially created antimicrobial drugs inevitably lead to the emergence of resistant bacteria.  This situation seems to have a parallel with the monoculture plantations in the Amazon mentioned earlier.

Indeed, I am deeply convinced that human life cannot be sustained without coexisting with nature. Feeding cows with other cows, forcing growth  in confined spaces by widening their mouths, cutting their beaks with hot irons to make them eat more, or obtaining chicken meat with feed  containing large amounts of chemicals in a short period — these practices seem fundamentally wrong, and they have led to issues such as  BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy), acute pneumonia from animal-borne viruses, and animal-derived influenza.

The history of honeybees is said to be extremely ancient, dating back 150 million years. They are believed to have emerged at the same time  as flowering plants (angiosperms) when the long era of fern-dominated vegetation came to an end. Over this vast period, honeybees  have overcome countless challenges and have survived to the present day. What is truly astonishing is that a honeybee preserved in amber, estimated to be over 40 million years old, was analyzed, and its DNA sequence  was found to be almost identical to that of modern honeybees. Such a phenomenon is not observed in other plants and animals, which have undergone continuous evolution.
In other words, honeybees from at least 40 million years ago were almost identical to those that exist today. One prevailing theory suggests that  this is because the inside of the hive is protected from external threats, allowing honeybees to maintain their protein structure (DNA) without  the need for adaptation to changing environmental conditions. In other words, it is believed that honeybees did not need to evolve because  they were isolated from the external environment by propolis.