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◆ Tap into Japan's rich heritage for unique growing insights
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Self-Reflections on what the European market can do better
An editorial on the struggles facing European exotic mushroom farmers
by: Johannes AuerMushrooms are getting more and more popular on the European market. For centuries, almost all of the cultivated mushrooms for the market in Europe were Agaricus bisporus. In the last few years, so-called “exotic mushrooms” have become more and more popular. While Agaricus, as a secondarian saprophyte, is cultivated in ways that more resemble traditional agricultural techniques, exotic mushrooms are very different. So both growers and substrate producers have to think differently to fulfill the goal of producing high-quality mushrooms while balancing their budgets. This article explains the challenges growers are facing today. Such as:- How can the gap between substrate production and mushroom growth be reduced?
- What are the tasks in mind for growers of Agaricus and the broad variety of exotic mushrooms?
- This article shows the challenges for mushroom growers in Europe and what we can learn from the Japanese way of cultivating mushrooms.?
~Johannes AuerIntroduction
Exotic mushrooms can seem to be easy to grow. Especially oyster varieties like Pleurotus ostreatus which can be grown almost on any nutrient source rich in nitrogen.Young people, often full of enthusiasm, jump into the market. We in the industry know the stories. Oyster mushrooms grown from coffee substrate is a good example. Combined with the label “organic” or “bio,” exotic mushrooms seem to be up-to-date and correspond with a young vegan lifestyle. But many of those “start-ups” smash on the cliffs of the market. Sooner or later, these “growers” will experience the problem of dependence on substrate suppliers. Yes, you can grow exotic mushrooms much easier than Agaricus bisporus, with less technique in the fruiting stage and a more or less guaranteed output. But the tricky thing is that growers that only use wood-based, so-called phase 3 substrate have almost no influence on the incubation or colonization of the substrate by the mycelium. This leads to a much higher dependence on the work of substrate suppliers than is the case for Agaricus farms, and much less control over the cultivation process.This article wants to point out the need for a different way of thinking about mushroom growing and what growers can do to gain more control over their working materials: the substrate and the compost.1. Market Situation in EuropeFirst of all, there is nothing like a single, unified European market. In the vegetable sector, Europe is made up of many countries that are very different from each other when it comes to this particular field. While consumers in some countries like Austria, France, Italy, and Switzerland are willing to pay a premium for domestic-grown food, consumers in other countries are not. When it comes to the field of organic vegetables, the situation is much more divided. For example, my home country, Austria, has one of the highest rates of consumption of organic vegetables, while in other European countries the consumption is low. In Austria, the combination of homegrown and organic is, in part, a guarantee of success. We can observe this when it turns to mushrooms. But producing exotic mushrooms is much more expensive than Agaricus bisporus, and it is not easy to enter the market because of the very high cost, which is a result of high substrate costs combined with transport and labour. Especially dealing with small blocks and almost no automation leads to poor economic results.Many of the growers start with high enthusiasm and often fall back down to Earth pretty quickly. A major cause is the dependency on substrate suppliers. When the substrate loses just a few percent of its output, the growers fall into a crisis. But the problem is that the growers of phase 3 exotic mushroom substrate have little to no influence on the output. *By the way, to call this substrate “phase 3” is, in my opinion, a misunderstanding; in fact, it is more comparable to phase 4 in Agaricus bisporus cultivation. The growers expect to get a safe product, which leads to a guaranteed result. I can only explain this behavior through a big misunderstanding of what mushroom growing is and what it is not.In order to understand the needs of our living partner, the mushrooms themselves, we have to look a little bit deeper into the subject we are dealing with, which is the source of nutrients.2. The challenge: growing exotic mushrooms successfullySo what is the challenge of growing exotic mushrooms? When we ask ourselves this question, we should really go back to the roots of our topic, which is the mushroom itself.And there is, from my point of view, a misconception.In Europe, we focus too much on the fruiting body and too little on the organism as a whole, which is our corresponding partner in growing: the mycelium.
Mycelium, as a fungus, is not a plant; everyone knows this, but when it comes to actual practice on farms, many act like the two are the same. The difference between vegetable growers and mushroom growers lies in the fact that we are dealing with a microorganism that is part of a natural process called composting. We are not dealing with a plant organism, which is an autotroph, but with an organism that itself is dependent on other microorganisms. So our area of interest is the stage where our organism lives, and that is the compost itself (call it the substrate or the nutrient source). Mushroom growers have to rethink what they are doing and focus on quality substrate. That is the road to success.- 3. Finding the right focusIt is also well known that most cultivated mushrooms are saprophytes. While Agaricus bisporus is a secondary saprophyte, “exotic mushrooms” are primary saprophytes. What does that mean for our daily work as growers?First of all, our focus should be on the nutrient source, but this source is not only a source; it is also a living environment. So what are we dealing with? Allow me to to give an example from my experience as an Agaricus bisporus grower.When I started to grow organic brown Agaricus bisporus in a four-week cycle, almost everybody told me that this was not possible. My compost supplier and teacher, Jeffrey Heeren from Heereco Organic Mushrooms, said to me that it is possible; just do it. Trust your abilities and observe the compost. Don´t look too much at numbers when dealing with your compost. Rinke van der Meer at that time, also at Heereco, taught me the same.So what I learned is that as an Agaricus bisporus grower, you are part of the process of feeding a mushroom, and that means we are also composters. As a grower of this type of secondary saprophyte, you have to keep in mind that you, as a grower, finish the composting process, which has as its ultimate goal to make the compost so selective that Agaricus bisporus finds its ideal environment to produce fruiting bodies. Of course compost quality in Agaricus farming is also crucial, but anyone growing button mushrooms is less dependent on substrate providers, as they have more ability to influence the end result than an exotic mushroom grower because the composting process, which starts at the supplier in phase 1, is still ongoing when the compost arrives at the Agaricus bisporus farm. And that may be, by the way, the secret of successful growing: that a compost supplier produces his own compost. But what does that mean for exotic mushroom growers?Exotic mushroom farming is, except for straw-based substrates, very different from Agaricus bisporus farming. When incubated substrate blocks arrive on an exotic mushroom farm, the work of colonizing the substrate is almost done. The pinhead formation has sometimes already started. This lies in the nature of primary saprophytes. They are able to feed themselves without a composting process in its strict sense. As exotic mushroom growers, we give them pure feed. That is why, from my point of view, an exotic substrate producer can be compared with a food producer, and the mechanism of the substrate process is more or less comparable with animal feed production, not so much with composting processes.This does not mean that there are no differences in practice, like straw-based substrate (an issue not addressed in this essay), which is more linked to Agaricus bisporus production. Related processes such as sterilization and pasteurization and the cowork with other microorganisms also vary, but it does mean that a grower at an exotic mushroom farm gets a more or less finished product when it arrives and has little ability to influence the output simply because the work of colonization is already done. For exotic mushroom growers, this means that most of the work of growing exotic mushrooms is done within the substrate production and incubation phases at the substrate supplier.What we in the exotic sector have to learn is: we either need the skills to produce our own substrate or we need extremely reliable suppliers who understand the high-levels of responsibility they have over the outcome of the end-product.The high rates of mushroom consumption in Asian and Japanese cultures are deeply-rooted in their societies, as is the production and farming of exotic mushrooms that European growers regularly struggle with. If we want to establish this industry and this culture in Europe, we have to acknowledge that the processes are very different from what we know from our traditional agriculture, and that is why we have to think beyond borders.4. SummaryMark den Ouden once wrote that mushroom growing is an art. I would add: yes, it is, but we don´t know exactly why a mushroom is acting the way it does, and that is why mushroom growing is also a lifestyle.We have to be connected to the organism we are working with, and we have to be humble. And that is, in my opinion, a keystone of successful mushroom growing: to understand that there is no such thing as a perfect blueprint for growing mushrooms and even more for the production of substrate. But we can help ourselves by studying the right methods and work practices, and those are things that we can learn, especially from the Japanese mushroom growers and suppliers.I once heard the phrase, “The more you listen, the more you hear.“ This is exactly why I think Japanese mushroom growing has become so successful. We have to add another sphere to our daily work. We have to go beyond a culture of industrialism and inorganic, mechanistic thinking, and never forget that we are dealing with a living creature and not with dead material that we can manipulate however we want. That means, as my dear friend Brigitte Hendrix told me, smell it, see it, and feel it. Like a dairy farmer in the old days, you have to go every day to your mushrooms to stay connected with what you are doing.
So let´s get to work; there is a lot to explore, to do, to learn, and to look forward to. - Johannes Auer was born in Tyrol, Austria, and is project manager and grower at FZ Development Gmbh, Frutura Austria and has worked as a consultant for several other companies. Johannes has worked since in the mushroom business full time since 2019 and has a background in horticulture with an interest in microorganisms in soil. He has worked in and studied the mushroom sector in Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Israel and the Netherlands.
You can contact him at johannes@jauer.at
1-2-13 Honmachi, Komoro city, Nagano prefecture, Japan 384-0026