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POLAND Pieczarkalia 2014


Team Champion (l to r): Krystian Lomiak, Błażej Musiał, Michał Ressel, Jakub Tomczak, Andrzej Piotrowski, Filip Piotrowski, Dawid Przewodowski, Adam Rama [behind Michał Kustusch], Michał Kustusch, Daria Jędrzejewska, Piotr Kayzer, Michał Szczepaniak, Łukasz Schimmelpfennig, Odyseusz Kaliszewski.


The venue of the 14th edition remained the ice- skating stadium in Siedlce, where exhibitors and visitors gathered from 25 -27 June. During the official opening, speeches were held by representatives of local authorities; among others by governor of the Mazovian District Adam Struzik, who stressed the integrating function of Pieczarkalia being a platform of sharing experiences between the Polish and foreign mushroom industries. Stanislaw Gizinski, the prefect of Losice and Miroslaw Bieniek, the mayor of Siedlce said their warm welcome to all and a letter was read from the Polish Minister of Agricul- ture Marek Sawicki, who congratulated the polish producers on their consistent approach to quality standards and excellent market position. The official opening could not miss a few words said by the head of the Polish Mushroom Grower’s Association – dr Krystian Szudyga. He compared the 14. edition of Pieczarkalia to a teenager phase, with all the chances but not without disturbances. Dr Szudyga had some advice for the still developing mushroom business


Hoping for better weather conditions, the or- ganizers of Pieczarkalia moved this most im- portant event of the Polish mushroom industry from early autumn to the beginning of summer. By Katarzyna Bieniecka-Drzymała


in Poland. “Production here will soon reach 300.000 ton. It is important to care for selling possibilities and support, not only for consumption but we also have to think about processing plants, which could take over excess production, when demand is smaller or problems with distribution occur.” The exhibitors (almost 60 companies this year) used these two days to show their newest products, as well as meet in a nice atmosphere with their clients and contacts.


Challenges for Poland On day one, two lectures were scheduled. The first one was done by PhD Nikodem Sakson who talked about new ideas and technologies versus the deve- lopment of the Polish industry, which encounters four unsolved problems at the moment: stagnation and variability of the crops due to non-stable compost quality, diseases and pests causing losses, lack of progress in limiting labour costs in manual picking, and odours still threatening compost production. Sakson showed interest in the direction of the Dutch production, the Netherlands being the main com- petitor for Poland on the fresh market. He wondered whether at least a partial transfer of production from The Netherlands to Poland will occur and whether other competitors will appear and use the same development mechanism and even cheaper labour. He foresaw that the current line of Polish develop- ment will be maintained. A slump on the Russian market was in Sakson’s opinion only temporary but as we know this prediction was wrong; Polish export to Russia went down by 12% in the last four months, which negatively influenced the price of mushrooms in Poland.


Developments in cultivation Consultant and editor of Mushroom Business John Peeters addressed various recent developments in the sector. According to Peeters, the main develop- ments in compost are found in mechanisation and automating filling and sampling, for example. NIR analysis is also a relatively recent development. The price of compost will probably rise as Dutch and Bel- gian composting companies are forced to travel in- creasingly longer distances to collect horse manure. Straw will also become more expensive. The greatest challenge facing casing soil is that


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