Farm manager Mr Liu talking to Bert Rademakers in front of the phase II tunnels at Jinming Foodstuff , during the international farm walk day in the vicinity of Zhangzhou.
Bert Rademakers, director of CNC Exotic Mushrooms, gave an interesting overview of mushroom trends in Europe, where ‘other mushrooms’ besides white button are considered exotic. The oppo- site still counts in China.
nations. He mentioned casing soil in illustration, ‘a seriously restrictive factor in China’. “Making and using casing soil is also an art. Not just chucking together some random lime and peat!” The quality of management and climate control, storage and cooled transport also leaves much to be desired. And prices are still subject to wild fluctuation, consumer demand and supplies are not well harmonised. Consumers, especially in the north, are still unfamiliar with the actual product. There are too few technical, competent cultivation specialists. “A more general problem is that people over-rely on the authorities and join projects without due consideration, just buying land. Agaricus requires a high technical level to be a success. Management levels must be adequate to cope with the challenges right from the start.” There is also plenty of progress to be made in the field of research according to Huang: “We want to apply stricter selection criteria regarding the background and motivation of researchers; no more ‘research for the sake of research’. There are lots of positive developments in the mushroom sector, but we have to continue learning from others, adopt the good ideas and carry on developing.”
At the end of the afternoon, a discussion on the Chinese mushroom sector was chaired by Mr Liu with a panel of Chinese and foreign experts including Mart Christiaens and Monir Elzalaki (Sylvan). Many of the challenges named by Professor Huang were confirmed by the panel.
Farm walks
On 17 November, a farm walk day was arranged for the foreign guests. The first visit was to Fujian Jiatian Agricultural Development, a huge erengyii farm (see MB 62), the next port of call was Fujian
Jinming Foodstuff, a farm built in 2012. Mr Liu, the farm manager, gave us a guided tour. The farm has five phase I bunkers , three phase II tunnels and 29 growing rooms. There are some production problems. The compost was not bad, but the casing soil quality was clearly inferior. The mushrooms achieve a price of 11 renmimbi/ kg, without stalks. After visiting the Tulou rammed-earth buildings, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in the middle of tea and tobacco plantations, we paid a flying visit to the gigantic enoki farm Fujian Wanchen Biotechnology (see MB 64), when night had already fallen. The plant has doubled in size since I visited two years ago.. As mentioned earlier, the lecture programme offered so much more that we have space to report on. From the Netherlands, Bart de Leeuw from Havens/MCSubstradd, one of the global market leaders in supplement production, and Bert Rademakers from CNC Exotic Mushrooms, the major substrate supplier for ‘exotic’ mush- rooms in Europe, held interesting presentations. About the advantages of NIR analysis and the trends and developments in the European ‘exotic’ mushroom industry, respectively. Alongside the official conference and trade fair programme, the event in Hangzhou offered plenty of networking opportunities during the many agreeable meetings and dinners in the VIP rooms (organised among others by Yuguan, GTM, Kingfit) or at the bar in the luxury Wanda hotel. Although the bar staff weren’t always all that keen on the late night ‘brainstorm sessions’… Looking back, the ninth edition was an outstand- ing success. Roll on the jubilee edition in 2016!
More pictures on the middle pages. MUSHROOM BUSINESS 17
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