Pepper Spray Is Latest Weapon for Farmers

At last weekend’s Brooklyn Botanic Garden celebration of chilies Loki Osborn discussed his use of the peppers in a new way. According to Dr. Osborn, elephants, whose sense of smell outweighs that of humans by a hundred times, don’t like the smell of chili plants. Therefore, he is working with farmers in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Zambia who are having trouble with marauding elephants.

The problem is that “an elephant in one night can destroy a whole year’s worth of fields for a farmer,” according to Osborn. “You cannot believe the hatred that most farmers have. It’s basically like hating a drug dealer on your street.”

It is Osborn’s passion for chilies that led him to cultivating chili plants around the perimeters of farms to discourage intruding elephants. Besides just planting them, he has found that burning briquettes made of the chilies in the fields is also a good way to repel the marauders.

In addition to promoting his own variety of bottled hot sauce, which he calls Elephant Pepper; Osborn has been conducting research with African farmers for more than a decade. His goal is to help farmers maintain their crops without doing damage to the giant mammals.

Meanwhile Osborn got his idea about the new use for peppers from hikers in the United States who used pepper spray (with limited success) “to repel bears.” While peppers didn’t pan out for use in Africa in spray form, they do show great promise as a non-violent method of repelling hungry pachyderms.

Janie Lamson, considered the chili goddess by festival attendees, is an expert in all things related to peppers. In her role as “chili professor” she explained that “Bolivia is considered the birthplace of the chili pepper.”

“American food is generally bland, so people are being turned on to these new flavors,” said Lamson.