Bagging Shiitake substrate at Shandong Imperial Garden, China, 2018.
The traditional way of growing
Shiitake, on logs in forests. Photo taken near Kinokkusu spawn company in Sendai, Japan, 2010.
quality of such shiitake is very high (shiitake cultivated on artificial blocks are no match for log-grown shiitake tex- ture, aroma or taste-wise), for a mass-market consumable in a country with fierce labor shortages it was not viable in the long-term. Hence in current day Japan, 94% of shiitake are produced using filter bags, and fresh shiitake have come to take a large majority of the market share (in line with Japanese consumers’ strong preference for fresh produce in general).
From forest to farm For commercial farms the transition over from logs to artificial substrate blocks was as novel an innovation as, well, learning to grow button mushrooms using spawn on shelving systems. In this case, the Japanese government was very proactive in funding research into mycology and also providing grants and zero-interest loans to fund the transition to a more mechanized and productive shiitake industry. Still, I am always impressed at how the shiitake farmers in this period took such far-reaching and funda- mental changes in stride and quickly developed farm-level
applications of this growing system. Because to me, if you just look at filter bag growing systems, it seems like some kind of science experiment. Agriculture is full of ideas and systems that worked well in a lab or run in tightly controlled, small-scale settings by exclusive teams of college-educated professionals with an array of specialized equipment, but which did not work on big farms, mostly run by immigrant workers with low average-educational attainment. Big farms that even more importantly, have limited resources with which they have to produce enormous volumes at tight price points (that they generally have no power to negotiate). But in Japan, shiitake farmers managed to make the transition. That is partly a testament to the relative simplicity of actually implementing the bag cultivation system, but it also represents decades of cumulative work from farmers, researchers and even spawn companies to improve and refine the system over time. This is the reason why I always think that Western farmers are in such a great position; they can benefit from systems that have already been tested and refined. In Japan’s case,
Ò MUSHROOM BUSINESS 49
All pictures: Roel Dreve
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