First shiitake flush.
800 kilos over 3 days of harvesting and the farm will be able to meet a contract they have coming up the next month. These cultural demands for stability and predictability aside, there is a more practical, and larger issue that impacts almost every aspect of Japanese shiitake farming with blocks.
The Second Flush I heard, once, that button mushroom farms need a good first and second flush to break even on their costs, and that then all the profit comes on the third and fourth flushes (and fifth, if the farm still does a fifth flush). Therefore, those third and fourth flushes produce much less yield, the room itself is producing less efficiently in terms of yield per square meter per day, but farms cannot let those flushes go precisely because those flushes provide whatever profit the farm produces. The same is true for shiitake. Japanese farms need to produce at least a second flush. No farm in Japan can break even on costs with one flush. Therefore, while we are talking about a room full of blocks that produce 500~600 grams on a flush (less than in the West, because Japan uses less supplementation, prunes, and farmers cannot sell misshapen or poor-quality shiitake), versus a room full of blocks only producing 200~250 grams per block, just like button mushroom farmers, Japanese farmers cannot give that flush up even though the room is producing less and less efficiently. For the same reason. The costs that go into making and harvesting a block mean that a first flush doesn’t produce any profit for a farm. Added to this is the fact that the first flush produces poorer quality shiitake. First flushes produce lots of smaller shii- take, more rejects, are harder and more labor-consuming to harvest, and in general every shiitake farmer in Japan will tell you, the taste and texture of first flush shiitake are sub- par. One veteran farmer in Miyagi Prefecture with nearly 40 years’ experience told me “The first flush you only get the taste of the nutritional supplements. The second flush the sawdust itself is more broken down and you get something that tastes more like a real shiitake.”
Partially openend shiitake (non-ideal).
The second flush on a shiitake block produces less, but it produces higher quality shiitake. The average size, by cap diameter and weight, is generally larger, and you have fewer but larger shiitake which conversely makes second flushes much faster and easier for workers to harvest. In Japan in particular, shiitake are sold in numerous diffe- rent grades based on cap diameter, weight, and how open the cap is. The second flush produces less, but it produces highly valued shiitake that sell, on average, for much higher rates. Therefore, everything about the Japanese system works not to just to get a stable yield on the first flush, but to ensure a consistent and stable, quality second and even third flush. A farm running three flushes on a 2.5-kilogram block works to average 900 grams of sellable shiitake per block. This is why the Japanese system uses less supplementation, has a higher C:N ratio as a result, and longer incubation times. Imagine, instead of the classic price-demand curve in economics, a quality-quantity curve. Japanese systems aim to hit that point where quality and quantity intersect and going any further on the volume reduces quality.
Can farms really not break even on the first flush? Since Japan changed labeling laws to require that mushrooms be labeled as a product of where they were inoculated, not fruited, the importation of Chinese-made substrate logs has largely disappeared and shiitake prices have stabilized somewhat. Even so, looking at an average of the different regional wholesale market prices (which again, are one, or even two steps removed from farms and so do not represent what farms are actually making), the median price is around 950 yen per kilogram of fresh shiitake as a yearly average. Even using a generous ‘real purchasing power’ estimate of the yen that is more like 100 yen: 1 US Dollar, that still represents a wholesale price of around 9.50 USD per kilo- gram. Farms likely average between 8~9 dollars per kilo- gram depending on region and their quality. Remember that
Ò MUSHROOM BUSINESS 49
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56
