By Roel Dreve CONSULTANTS 4
Con Hermans, trouble shooter and researcher
Last year we published the 100th edition of Mushroom Business. Several cultivation consultants have been of integral importance to the success of our publications and have been involved from day one. We talk to them about the - often underexposed - nature of their work, changes in the sector and their writing talents.
J
ust like the other consultants from Lim- burg, Hermans grew up surrounded by mushroom farms and a holiday job was his first introduction to mushroom growing.
“Everyone in our family was blessed with green fingers so attending agricultural college was the obvious choice. My particular interests there were plant physiology and climate control, and I also worked at various trial stations and research institutes. In retrospect, this formed a golden combination for my later work.” Forty years ago, he started working as a horticultural public rela- tions officer for the Dutch Ministry of Agricul- ture, Nature and Food Quality at Floriade (the international horticultural expo), which also fea-
tured a mushroom farm. “From there I was immediately prepared for consultancy work in Limburg, at that time the booming region for mushroom growing. The region was home to a cluster of all nature of sector-related companies and there were so many farms you could visit as many as eight in one day! Growers still pasteuri- sed the compost in the beds, some even without a boiler. I saw all the colours of the rainbow in the compost, from red, yellow to green, centi- metres thick layers of mites under the beds and often more ink cap mushrooms than button mushrooms. I was very lucky to be able to deve- lop in pace with the developments in the sector, so I saw the first climate computers, overpres- sure ventilation systems, header fillers, ruffling machines and inoculating machines and witnes- sed the size of standard growing rooms increase from 140m2 to 2000m2. But I also learned a lot from the dramatic cases: growers who built their own tunnels without any knowledge of the pro- cesses, bankruptcies caused by investments in new ‘inventive’ cultivation systems, and disas- trous production losses due to X-disease (die- back), green mould and degenerative varieties. And when things really took a downturn in the sector and many growers were forced to stop, I sometimes sat at the kitchen table with growers and the bank several times a week hearing the bad news.
Quick research Con Hermans at the microscope in his own lab. 42 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
Hermans was also a consultant at the trial sta- tion for years. “In that capacity I was also invol- ved in the work meetings with the researchers. This had mutual advantages, the researchers stayed close to grass roots practice and you got the research results firsthand. This also taught me the benefits of rapid research results for gro- wers. It’s better to have results that offer 80% certainty, which you can apply in practice imme-
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