ISMSNEWS Long live the Flexitarian! R
arely a week goes by that there isn’t another ‘break-though’ plant-based food product released onto the market. Incre- asingly the stories are about animal protein substitution products. One might think the substantive R&D effort that underpins all this new product development (NPD) is being driven by altruistic vegetarian consumers. An excellent article on this topic in Food Navi- gator the other week put a few things in perspective for me. It also made me ponder about how our industry might ride this mega-wave of consumer enthusiasm. First a few facts, figures, and quotes. These new products are after chunk of the $USD 1.3 trillion meat market. The consumers they are targeting are Flexitarians – traditional meat eaters making a conscious decision to eat less animal protein because of perceived health, environmental, and animal welfare benefits. The numbers are a bit rubbery, but estimates in the UK and EU suggest about 20% of the population are flexitarians. But here’s the kicker – “An EU study very recently showed nine out of ten purchases in the meat substitute category are made by flexitarians - not vegans or vegetarians. That’s where the big business is..”. The challenge for meat and dairy NPDs is perfecting the taste, texture and mouthfeel. R&D efforts are frantic in the quest to develop products that will capture the lucrative flexitarian dollar. With such a big prize on offer, surely our industry can get a piece of the action. Mushrooms have
played in this space before. ‘Meat for Vegetarians’ was an award-win- ning Australian mushroom advertising campaign in the 90’s that drove fresh mushroom consumption; and ‘The Blend’ has been very successful in the US market over the last decade at targeting consu- mers looking to reduce their meat intake. But if we want a decent chunk of this new and lucrative market, we need to harness modern science and technology coupled with high quality marketing. We need our scientists working with our producers and marketers, and with scientists from other disciplines to create high calibre teams capable of getting products to market quickly. We have a few things working in our favour. The downside for many of these new fermented ‘lab foods’ is that they miss the ‘pure and natural’ megatrend that mushrooms naturally embody. It’s very important for Millennials. And... mushrooms aren’t plants – They have a cavalcade of unique benefits that beat plants hands down. What’s all this got to with ISMS? Our 2021 e-Congress is fast approaching. The online format will enable many scientists who normally wouldn’t attend a live Con- gress to participate. We are hopeful that this improved access will enable some really exciting cutting-edge research from young scien- tists to find its way into the program. More on this in next edition.
Greg Seymour, ISMS President CULTIVATIONTIPS ADVISIE
Opportunities for new harvesting systems The age of the standard Dutch shelving system is not over yet. In any case, not for the first 13 to
Photo: Tilting beds. By Jos Hilkens
AdVisie ‘the mushroom growing consultants’, Herkenbosch
hilkens@mushroomconsulting.nl
16 days after filling when the mushrooms are growing. For harvesting, new systems such as the drawer system and tilting beds offer greater perspectives than shelving. There is a great demand for new systems because sourcing labour is more difficult and they drastically reduce the number of pickers needed. In both harvesting systems, all mushrooms are still harvested manually, but efficiency gains are mainly made by picking with both hands, automatically removing the mushrooms from the rooms and automatic stump cutting. Both systems still need improving in certain respects. Logically, after all you can hardly compare the first types of headfillers with those available in 2021. Some further steps are needed, particularly concerning automatic filling of punnets or trays. Once the fundamentals of the systems have been developed properly, it’s time for fine-tuning. For example, automatically cutting the optimal stem length of each mushroom instead of applying a standard length, measuring the picked cap diameters and then automatically adapting the picking strategy by instructing the pickers which mushroom should now be harve- sted, etc. The next step is to replace the pickers by a robot. This is an area where developments are progressing rapidly and more than ten companies worldwide are actively working on robot pickers. However, there is still a long way to go and for now, the majority of mushrooms will be picked by hand.
The production per m2 plays a major role for the results. For good production, the beds should have a good spread but not be over filled - even if a picking robot is used. A bed full of mushrooms and clusters is also difficult for a robot to cope with. But if a robot can pick 30 or 50% of the mushrooms, it is already an interesting prospect as small picking robots are quite afforda- ble now. When you start making up the financial balance of the new harvesting systems, the ROI is sufficiently short with the current, still not optimal, processing method of mushrooms. If a grower is planning to build a new facility, or expand/update the farm, there are multiple options. We are happy to discuss each system and make a financial calculation for individual situations, using figures from practice.
16 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
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