Jürgen Kynast (r) teaching students at the Mycelia Academy.


speaking we offer the tools and tips, and it’s up to the student to apply them properly in practice.” Magda knows from experience how difficult that is. “After all these years, we still face new challenges and difficulties. And especially in the infancy of Mycelia we made every mistake imagi- nable. Our students make, or will make, the same mistakes, and that’s something we want to help them avoid. Another likely reason for the limited range of training courses is that it requires plenty of experience, time and expertise to give good training. Having said that, there definitely exist courses in South Korea and Japan, but they are not open to everyone, tailored to the local producers with limited focus on certain production technologies and then you have the language barrier.”


Have the training and students changed over the years? “Most students used to come to us for training as a direct result of contacts with customers. That’s still partly the case, but now they often tend to find us in other ways; first of all via word of mouth, but more and more via our website www.mycelia-academy.org, social media and our presence at meetings and such. The Academy does everything the Mycelia School has done since 1991, but the training is more structured, more professional and given by a wider group of highly experienced trainers. The way online con- sultancy was organised was also less structured than today. Now it’s quick and easy to contact us for consulting using the website, making use of our free intake conversation first. And the diver- sity of students has increased dramatically com- pared to the past, ranging from very experienced spawn producers to idealistic young people, and from accountants who want ‘to discover themselves’ to hardcore professionals seeking to expand their current knowledge.”


Does that diversity make it difficult to give training? “No, not really. We take a flexible approach and pitch our training somewhere in the middle, providing the basic knowledge for everyone. The


Pascale Vergeyle explains the sterilization cycle in the Mycelia spawn facility.


novices can add to the knowledge we give them, which can be a lot to take in at first, later on. The pitfall for students with lots of experience is that they sometimes think they know ‘everything’. But theory and practice are two different discipli- nes. We unite those disciplines, thanks to the background of our trainers and the production location of course, but also because we usually visit growers during the courses on lignicolous mushrooms. In addition, the groups are relatively small, and there is a lot of interaction. Everyone can learn from the practical experiences of fellow students and even if you are already highly skilled, you may lack some of the necessary knowledge of microbiology we offer. On the other side of the spectrum you find the students inspired by what they read on the inter- net and who believe they can change and improve the world with mushrooms in short notice. But when they discover the subject matter is not that easy to master, or they’ve learned to do things the wrong way because of so much disinformation on social media, they sometimes even abandon their plans after the course completely. But in such case the course has still been a worthwhile investment!”


Will you also give online training? “Yes, it’s something we’re working on very hard. The idea is to make online training an affordable and easily accessible alternative to the live training sessions, to provide basic and absolutely vital knowledge on important subjects. There is high demand for information on these basic subjects, which don’t require a lot of existing knowledge, especially from countries where students can’t afford to raise the money to travel to Belgium for live training, or where it’s almost impossible to obtain a visa to visit us. But we haven’t set a date for the launch of our online modules, they have to be perfect first!”


Has your training and expertise contributed to raising the level of knowledge of the European exotic sector to that of Asian countries? “First of all, we don’t limit ourselves to Europe.


‘The diversity of students that


come to us has increased


dramatically’


 MUSHROOM BUSINESS 31


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