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◆ Learn innovative methods to enhance mushroom quality and yield
◆ Tap into Japan's rich heritage for unique growing insights
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Are mushrooms missing out on the health food craze?
Japanese Exotic Mushroom Journal Investigates
This is a question I have often asked myself. Over the course of the three part series I wrote about beta-glucans, vitamin D, and ergothioneine in 2023, I was often balancing the nascent scientific research, the complexity of nutrition and human metabolism in general, and the more blasé concern about whether highlighting the nutritious compounds in mushrooms too heavily would just encourage consumers to try and find unregulated supplements that claim to contain those compounds (and in much heavier doses in many cases than research into dietary impact of mushrooms has tested for, especially with ergothioneine). Certainly, the myceliated grain craze, something which delivers almost none of the various nutraceutical compounds to consumers, speaks volumes to the American desire for an easy fix in the form of a pill.In 2022, dietary supplements were a 35-billion-dollar industry in the United States alone. Health foods of all sorts are booming. Quinoa alone is a 100-billion-dollar market now. Even chia seeds are now a one-billion-dollar market, just speaking of the U.S. alone. Most figures I’ve seen for all mushroom varieties (including Agaricus) have pegged the entire global mushroom market at around 50-billion-dollars. That makes our industry, which includes dozens of varieties, and cosmetic and pharmacological uses on top of food, half as big as quinoa by itself.If the answer is yes, and I think the average per person consumption figures show that the answer is indeed yes, then thinking about why this is the case naturally follows. In theory, exotic mushroom varieties and Agaricus varieties alike should be no-brainer winners in the agriculture industry. You can produce large volumes of food with minimal water input, no fertilizer or pesticide, small amounts of land, and production is stable year-round. Agaricus producers already produce with incredible consistency, and I can speak from experience that in Japan, exotic varieties are churned out with comparable bio-efficiency vis a vis the inputs and extremely stable yields per unit.The answer lies, I think, in a limited infrastructure and limited expertise for non-Agaricus mushroom farming, and also in the culinary habits of consumers, especially in the United States, which is the biggest example I consider in this discussion. I wish to break these two very broad issues up and get into the finer points of what I perceive to be the issue. By doing so, it becomes easier for me to discuss what kinds of solutions could be out there for these problems.Limited Infrastructure
I am using the term infrastructure extremely broadly here. The problem begins with the fact that there is limited investment in exotic varieties that use non-straw substrates, while for Agaricus varieties, the costs of setting up a new facility are enormous and the operating margins are very narrow. On both sides of the business, capital investments are in short supply. Button mushrooms have seen a large number of farms go out of business in the last 20 years, and thus in the United States, for example, total domestic production has actually fallen even as demand has increased (which has helped improve the price slightly).I want to focus on exotic mushrooms, however, and it is here that we see a particularly glaring problem of scale. Unlike Japan or China, which both had active government involvement in subsidizing and funding the development of exotic mushroom cultivation as a rural development engine that also helped to upcycle local agricultural waste streams, there is no such support available in the United States and very little in Europe. Many farms also find it very difficult to get the large-scale capital loans they require from banks. But without this capital, it is not possible to expand production and automate, and without automation and economies of scale, production is inconsistent and prices high.Without modern and specialized systems cultivating exotic mushrooms can be grossly labor inefficient and yields inconsistent. This leads to a repetitive cycle where big growers and banks then look at the sector and conclude it is a bad investment. There’s only so far a farm can go without an automated bag or bottle filling machine, without specialized autoclaves designed to then sterilize the substrate in bulk using trolleys with heat-resistant wheels. Or automated machinery that releases a set amount of spawn to each sterilized bag of substrate and then seals the bag automatically. This machinery is all highly specialized and the only solution at the moment is to import it, particularly Japan has become a major supplier in recent years and I work with these projects when not producing this journal.- But without modernization farms are literally using simplistic self-made, primitive fillers that only operate a manual level of between 100~150 bags filled per hour (at standard 2.5~2.7 kg fill weights). After this, farms are stuffing bags one at a time by hand into whatever odd autoclave system, which they’ve also hand-rigged together, is available. Then after this they have to remove the bags one at a time. Then comes the excruciating work of spawning each bag by hand, followed by sealing each bag by hand one at a time. Looking at it this way, it’s downright miraculous that so many hundreds of small exotic mushroom growers, farms, and substrate suppliers have managed to operate at all in Western markets.Limited infrastructure, though, also means limited spawn availability, difficulty finding substrate materials like sawdust and corncob, and the impossibility of buying specialized substrate designed and produced explicitly for exotic mushroom production and with the goal of minimizing pinning failures and maximizing yields. In Japan, many farms don’t even mix their own nutritional supplements. In fact, they don’t even know what’s in them, as that is a trade secret because they buy pre-mixed bags of nutritional supplements that contain various forms of wheat bran, rice bran, pH regulating calcium compounds and any other additives.There is a higher emphasis in Japan too on the value and importance of high-quality spawn, and while expensive, spawn makers also serve as research laboratories and produce detailed and specialized instructions for how to maximize yield for each spawn variety. The spawn makers also test every batch and issue recalls should any batch fail, and also refund in any case of spoilage or failure where the buyer can prove that they followed proper storage instructions and adhered to the growing guidelines. Growers here in Japan, often don’t have an extremely deep understanding of mushroom biology, and many simply depend on the guidelines of spawn makers plus gut feeling they gain from experience after a long time farming.Most Western farmers of exotic varieties I meet are fungi fanatics, for whom fungi are both a business, a hobby and even a way of life. They are keenly aware of all these different aspects of mycology, whereas Japanese growers are generally nonchalant and disinterested in mushrooms_emdash_mushroom are their job, plain and simple, and many don’t even eat the mushrooms they grow except on very rare occasions. I’ve even met enoki farmers who admit to me that they don’t like enoki. I think this anecdote is very telling because it shows how in Japan, you don’t need to be an expert or even like mushrooms to run a financially sound business, while in many Western countries, it takes obsession to survive the grind and continue figuring out different ways to stay afloat, battered by problems that require an owner to constantly invent creative new solutions for.Among this lack of infrastructure is often a lack of clear information about cultivation techniques and best practices. Growers often lack a good framework to compare different cultivation systems, and a lot of the more fine-toothed advice can offer wildly divergent information. There’s a glut of unverified and inaccurate advice for exotic mushroom cultivation available for free on the internet, but a lack of vetted professional sources. That’s been the main impetus behind dividing part of my focus towards editing this journal and trying to create a broad platform for both industry discussions and cultivation parameters. Given the overwhelming slant of the mushroom business in Western markets towards Agaricus varieties, this journal became a way to create a general publication solely focused on under-represented “exotic” varieties while giving non-traditional perspectives on the business using Japan as an example due to it being our base of operations.
The Americanized Diet
I generally come to the conclusion that the biggest issues have to do with the Americanized diet. There is a natural challenge, that those in the mushroom business outside of East Asia deal with, which I describe as stubborn adherence to colloquial food patterns. A lot of Westerners are simply revulsed at mushrooms period, due to the image of mushrooms as associated with decomposition. But elsewhere, you see consumer markets where people are pretty much just interested in button mushrooms. Of those consumers, 70% only buy button mushrooms two or three times a year, each time to make the same well-known dishes that they were generally introduced to in their childhoods. Otherwise only a small slice of consumers buy mushrooms regularly at all.This creates imbalanced seasonal consumption, and there’s a surprising lack of interest in mushrooms in much of the market. In the United States, you see a great deal of ethnic division in mushroom consumption. To offer a personal example from Louisiana, my grandmother uses cans of Cream of Mushroom Soup as a base for at least a half-dozen different casseroles that she makes on a regular basis, but she has never in 60 years as a consumer bought fresh or frozen mushrooms. Originally, Italian immigrants who were used to mushrooms as a prized seasonal ingredient, were among the only people who bought mushrooms. Even to this day, you can see that pizza toppings remain one of the major markets for traditional button mushrooms. 
I think mushrooms of all varieties suffer from the lingering effects of this history, where they were almost more akin to an ethnic spice or herb, used as a topping or umami booster for special dishes. Exotic mushrooms suffer doubly from being, well, exotic. Consumers are already mentally tapped out, the number of people who do regular meal preparation is shrinking, and there is a great dependance on simple dishes intermixed with processed foods and eating out. For this kind of general consumer base, new and unfamiliar ingredients are a difficult sell.- The problem with mushrooms in general is that there are a number of baked in costs for building facilities, energy, and even labor that are all substantially above those of commercially mass-produced vegetables like potatoes, carrots, beets, onions or tomatoes. Yet the price point for white button mushrooms isn’t that much different from these commercially harvested vegetables grown outdoors, and the commercial pressure on even exotic varieties is constantly pushing downwards. I don’t mean to suggest that commercial vegetable farmers are churning big profits either (everyone in the actual production side of the industry has felt the boot of wholesale distributors and processors at their throat) but I do want to note that the mushroom industry is basically running high-tech vertical farms for the price point of potatoes.To a very real extent, the only reason exotics have been able to flourish in North America more so than Europe in recent years is the existence of the very factors I’ve listed above, plus a less invasive and stringent regulatory system. Exotic mushroom farms have been able to flourish to an extent precisely because the big players have not systematically amped up production and driven prices down, and because the focus has been on farmer’s markets, local restaurants, and other direct sales avenues. Therefore, I understand the degree of ambivalence that exists among established farms in this sector towards any large-scale expansion.However, that does not change the inexorable market pressures that we cannot change, only hope to harness and steer towards more equitable and positive distribution systems. To the point, educating consumers on mushrooms, whether exotic or traditional button mushroom, as a very easy ingredient to use, one that is also a super-food and delicious alike, is the path forward. Demand needs to expand on multiple levels and ultimately, we need to educate consumers on what a high-quality shiitake or what fresh, properly grown maitake look like and taste like, and impart a reason to pay a premium for gourmet production. The industry would benefit from tiers of quality that largely do not exist for button mushrooms. Smaller local and midsized regional growers preparing premium quality mushrooms, and the largest producers running at the biggest economies of scale pursuing the general market.There are a number of hurdles, including the ever-growing pickiness, of Americans at least, regarding textures, as the Americanized diet has over-familiarized people with crunchy or fluffy textures and many young consumers are increasingly intolerant of foods with mixed textures. But this is the future and the market is already beginning to realign as more large mushroom producers in Western countries evaluate diversifying their production.
A note about the lack of knowledge about mushrooms
To this, there is a deep lack of knowledge about mushrooms and an intense preoccupation with getting the lowest possible price point. To my view, this is leading to over-intensive production that also threatens the very things that make the mushroom industry so interesting and full of potential, especially sustainability and locality. The idea that every shiitake farmer or substrate producer in the world now has to compete with mass-produced imported blocks regardless of the quality of the substrate or the resulting fruiting bodies is absurd to me. But equally absurd is the lack of knowledge, as many fail to realize that even at the cheap prices for imported substrate that, given a proper scale, equipment and technique, it is still equally affordable to make your own substrate in the long-run.Substrate makes the mushroom, and in Japan policy makers have already begun cracking down on this, first by requiring all packs of fresh shiitake be labeled as products of wherever the block was produced, meaning that growers could no longer sell imported blocks as domestically grown shiitake, and were required to label them as a product of the country in which they were actually manufactured. This move overnight largely eliminated the use of imported blocks in Japan, and there have been more moves to try and more tightly regulate the market so that fresh or dried wood ear mushrooms are not mislabeled as domestic products to receive higher prices. Tighter labeling restrictions and an emphasis on consumer transparency in supply lines is likely to lead to similar policy changes in North America and Europe over the next decade.I wrote this editorial to outline my belief about where the market is heading, what large-scale production will look once it hits the exotic market, and to touch on the kinds of work, both in creating brands and in expanding consumer knowledge about mushroom quality, safety, and taste. These latter burdens overwhelmingly fall on smaller regional farms, but the work is also essential to their long-term survival in a fast-evolving and expanding market. - Now, in truth, exotic mushrooms are quite easy to use. They are not that much different from culinary vegetables, nor button mushrooms. Oyster varieties, including eryngii (king oyster) and lion’s mane have very mild flavor and aroma profiles that blend well with a variety of foods. Maitake has a rich, meaty smell and mild texture that makes it in many ways similar to a portabella mushroom and an excellent meat replacement or filler.The issue lies in the idea that something has to be a mushroom dish, or that mushrooms end up being no more than a few grams of additives that heighten the umami flavor (all the green bean casseroles of the United States add up to very little for the mushroom industry). There’s no in between. That was why I focused my home-cooking series Cooking with Kinoko on the idea that you can dump a base unit of 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of mushrooms in almost anything.Most consumer markets are based on a small segment of heavy users that consume the most. This is true of gambling, cigarettes, quinoa, and mushrooms alike. But mushroom suffer from a lack of heavy penetration in the fast food, catering, and restaurant sector, especially once we remove pizza from the equation. The Blend project has aimed to counter this, but even for the predominant Agaricus sector this represents an underutilized market. For exotics this is doubly so, and compounded by the near total absence of exotic mushrooms in the processed foods sector and limited options in the produce aisles of major supermarket chains like Target, Kroger’s, and Wal-Mart where most Americans do their shopping.Even with The Blend, what I’ve heard from many in the mushroom business on the Agaricus side, was that The Blend ended up being too targeted at large commercial sales and failed to trickle down into consumer habits or grow the fresh market. The problem The Blend faced was that the pitch from the start was that mushrooms are a healthy, tasty, and affordable component to use as a meat replacement, and a lot of farmers found this led to big commercial sales with less emphasis on quality (because the mushrooms are being heavily processed anyway) and with extremely narrow margins. Ultimately, the campaign became a nice way to sell some excess stock but did not do enough to bring up profitability and visibility for the industry.The North American market is simply so challenging because for the most part the same bad dietary habits that most nutritionists and public health experts remark on have only been growing more pronounced over time. The entrenchment of this diet, along with ever-increasing budget stresses and long working hours, has in fact led to the loss of a lot of cultural knowledge as culinary skills have not been passed on to younger generations. Many under-40 consumers were raised on fast food, frozen meals, and boxed casseroles or canned pasta sauces.Penetrating those markets is a chief concern for exotic mushroom farms and traditional button mushroom farms alike. But in return for getting stable, predictable orders, less stringent restrictions on quality and consistency, plus simpler packaging and shipping logistics, growers accept extremely low margins that are generally nonnegotiable even when some factor like a sudden increase in fuel or energy costs pushes this price point below the farm’s break-even point. The trend towards increasing consolidation has placed much of this processed food market in the hands of a handful of companies, which further increases the imbalanced power relationship between them and individual suppliers. This makes one of the biggest potential markets for mushroom farmers across the board a kind of devil’s bargain.
1-2-13 Honmachi, Komoro city, Nagano prefecture, Japan 384-0026