CHALLENGES OF EXOTIC MUSHROOM CULTIVATION (7) By Jake Waalk, Salai International Japan
Growing systems for specialty mushrooms
The specialty mushroom sector has a dizzying array of systems and standards regarding cultivation. Jake Waalk, in a two part article in this series, will try to demystify and explain how to approach the specialty business. In this first one, he explains the history of the (Shiitake) bag system, from forest to farm.
I
think that it is very important to realize that the processes involved in the mushroom industry are not monolithic. Even the most commonly cultivated mushroom in the world, Agaricus bisporus, is cultivated using varying
systems and standards. At the largest scales of production, the Dutch system is now prevalent, but many large farms in the US use different systems, the Polish have their own shelving system and different growing praxis, and in India much of the fresh button mushroom sector uses bags. The specialty mushroom sector (‘exotics’), is no different. Rather, in this sector there is an even more dizzying array of options on the market, with different bag designs, inoculation systems, incubation methods, bag shapes, even entirely diffe- rent systems that use bottles. So it’s understandable, that it gets a little confusing to look at from the outside with no frame of reference. Especially for people busy trying to keep up with what they are already doing. What I want to do, as has been my ongoing goal with writing for this industry-leading publication, is to demystify and explain how to approach the specialty mushroom business with a two part-article that first tries to explain the history of the bag system approach and then tries to outline the core principles of how and why the Japanese sys- tem works the way that it does.
Trade-Offs Where difference exists in industrial level production of any agricultural good, it is there for a reason. Some farms may irri- gate wheat at a rate of 10,000 m3 per hectare/crop cycle, and some may use 12,000 m3 and a different kind of irrigation system, but none of them are irrigating with saltwater. It helps to approach the specialty sector with that kind of humility, and to assume that any practice and system has been extremely well-tested and refined by numerous different businesses and research institutions. Now, sometimes a practice or method may be outdated, the producers that use it simply loathe to change, but even then, a practice can only continue to survive as long as it is producing results on the threshold of economic viability. At the moment, when it comes to filter bag systems of growing specialty mushrooms, the two predominant systems right now
are Chinese and Japanese. I work with Japanese systems, and I am more familiar with the inner workings and specific reasons behind their design. I can say though, that both systems are extraordinary, and they both developed in close connection with one another, as they have a long-intertwined history, by turns cooperative and competitive, as is the nature of business. Both have managed to, at this point, reduce cultivation costs of most varieties of specialty mushroom to only a little higher than Agaricus varieties. In the case of bottle systems (for which there is much more uniform standardization globally), certain varieties such as enoki can be produced for less per-unit cost than Agaricus.
Shiitake on logs The Japanese system of using filter-patch bags to grow mushrooms began with the shiitake industry in Tokushima Prefecture in the early 1980s. As with many innovations, it began with labor shortages. Tokushima, on the smallest of Japan’s four major islands, Shikoku, has been experiencing rapid depopulation since the Post-War period started. Shiitake, which up to the beginning of the 1990s even represented a majority of all Japanese mushroom consumption, were until the 1980s only cultivated using tree logs. In some contexts, groo- ming huge swaths of mountain forest, prepping tens of thousands of logs, each weighing between 15~25 kg, by drilling holes, insert spawn plugs and then wax sealing them, before finally depositing those logs in said forests. Harvesting such farms on an industrial scale meant driving between mountain grove to grove on narrow roads in small trucks, and harvesting mushrooms in the wild and preparing them for shipping. It also meant that fresh shiitake were an exotic and rare item, only seasonally available, the vast majority of the country had to rely on dried shiitake for daily life. Now, at that time, most shiitake were grown in long rows of vinyl fruiting houses on otherwise flat land adjacent to agricultural communities in the country- side. Even so, log-grown shiitake required far more labor for less yield than modern bag systems. With the log-system, one can easily see how costs would have added up, and more importantly, the sheer amount of labor, much of it tough physical labor, that it required. Even if the
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