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OfflineJeremy_Davis
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Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms * 3
    #9311142 - 11/25/08 02:25 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)
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Okay I've attached the following post as a PDF file for anyone interested in saving the information contained. I really hope it is helpful to you and brings you one step closer along your journey in life. I apologize for any spelling or grammatical errors in advance, and at the same time, I welcome revisions, edits, or other comments. Your input is valuable and the community can only benefit from our working together to help each other out.

I've been gone for a while, so in returning home here, I have a gift for you. We get the questions addressed in the following post quite a bit, so maybe this can be used as a reference when they pop up.

You are free to copy and distribute this information as you choose with the one qualifier that you leave the author credits to me in-tact. With that said, on to the good stuff -


I tend to hear the following questions lot in several different incarnations; what is the best mushroom to grow for profits? What are the laws pertaining to growing mushrooms for commercial resale? Can I make money growing mushrooms in my spare time? Having given some of these same questions a lot of thought, I wanted to share some of the insights I’ve had over the past few years. 

First off, like anything else, growing mushrooms takes knowledge, dedication, and a bit of skill. It is not something that is likely to be a get-rich-quick scheme as something that can make you some additional money until you’ve gotten it off the ground. But expect it to have its learning curve. I would say with the proper management and operating plan, you can make some money in mushrooms. The important thing is to limit the amount of capital you put into the project in the beginning. Sure you could go out and buy a turnkey mushroom farm system with all the latest in modern technology, but it puts a huge strain on the amount of capital you have to make just to re-pay the loans you took out to get those fancy toys. I think the best approach is to start small and let the business grow organically


Never grow anything you cannot sell.


What I believe the best way to do this, is to use only money you’ve saved yourself (unless you can get grants), as opposed to taking out any loans for the project. With some ingenuity and planning, much of the equipment and structures can be customized and designed to suit the needs and features of your farm. If you have an air conditioned space that you can seal off and use, then you may be able to enter the market much less expensively. If it is a spare bedroom in your house, realize that regulatory officials and customers alike may or may not understand the situation. Especially if you are not packaging using certified scales or approved packaging areas. Expect to spend several thousand dollars on equipment and structures, do some research and you can fabricate some things inexpensively.

The topics we’ll discuss in this article include; Location, construction of mushroom growing houses, species (What mushroom should I grow?), substrates, substrate processing, inoculation or “planting” of the mushrooms into the substrates, crop management, harvest, post harvest storage, packaging, marketing, and distribution options.  Finally, we’ll talk a little bit about having a working business plan.

So what are some of the considerations that you have to look at in order to grow mushrooms profitably? Mushrooms are usually grown indoors so I will be addressing that mostly, but I do believe in the right conditions and seasonally that mushrooms could be grown in screened enclosures outdoors. While sometimes people wonder about running a commercial operation out of their bedroom, and certainly that can be done, but bear in mind that certain areas have ordinances regarding commercial farming in residential neighborhoods. For several reasons it would be best to use a building that is not also used for living in. An outdoor shed, a canopy, portable structures can all be insulated and used with success.

Being in South Florida, I found one of the main keys to success is going to be focusing on the fresh local market. Oyster mushrooms are a great local crop as they are grown by the large mushroom farms, but they do not ship well, so the quality by the time they get to market from the big farms, leaves a lot to be desired. When grown and distributed locally, their quality cannot be matched by these larger far away farms. The small farmer can really capitalize on that market. Also since oyster mushrooms have a short shelf life, by selling them locally, you give the consumer the best and longest shelf life.

Some of the things you will need to focus on to become successful are going to be;

1. Developing a smooth flowing production, harvesting, packing and distribution system.
2. Creating relationships with local produce distributors, restaurants, and customers at farmer's markets in the 7 major cities within 2 hours drive of the farm.
3. Creating and building a system to handle all aspects of the farming project - planting, incubation, harvesting, storage, and distribution. It should also be able to be scaled up as needed.
4. Finding locally produced inputs for our fruiting substrates


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Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta

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OfflineJeremy_Davis
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Registered: 04/22/05
Posts: 652
Loc: Florida
Last seen: 11 years, 11 months
Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311155 - 11/25/08 02:27 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Location

There are several main considerations in the location of a mushroom growing house.  In addition to the inside areas, you also have to consider the outside areas of the growing house as well. The reason I say this is because you will need some outdoor areas available to process the raw substrates and render them suitable for mushroom cultivation, as well as storage for any equipment or supplies that are needed for successful production.  You will need a clean place that you can use for packaging mushrooms for sale (hint – this cannot be your kitchen). In addition to the above it is a good thing to consider the drainage of the site since you will be using considerable amounts of water. The angles the sun hits the location may also be important if you are trying to minimize heat gain or loss.

In addition to a location for your growing house, you may need a lab for your inoculations. This needs to be totally separate from your fruiting room, which we are calling the mushroom growing house. The lab is an area that is kept “sterile” or as much so as possible and is used for some of the sensitive parts of mushroom cultivation. Mushrooms are a biological organism that feed on similar nutrients to other species of microbial life. When one of these competing biological life forms shows up in a mushroom culture, it is called a contaminant. So what we as the cultivators are trying to do, is to offer the mushrooms a nutritious substrate to grow on, but to either make it selective for mushrooms to grow on, or to give the mushrooms a long enough window to grow throughout the substrate before the contaminant organisms can get a hold. One of the ways to do this is to use sterile technique in all aspects of mushroom cultivation. It is more of a mindset than a specific set of procedures and is beyond the scope of this document. However to be a successful mushroom farmer you must know and understand aseptic technique.

If you decide that you do need a lab than depending on the uses, it may not need to be too big in the outset. A walk-in closet lined in plastic sheeting can be kept very sterile in conjunction with the use of easily washable surfaces on all shelves or work spaces. The use of a home built HEPA flow hood (of which you can find instructions for many variation of with a quick Google search) can be used for general air filtration if it is kept running, and also as a “clean room” level work space within the airstream coming from the filter.  This size of a walk-in closet space (roughly 4.5W x 8L x 8H) could be used for much of the actual lab work that could make your farm self sustainable by producing its own spawn or even culture isolates. This space could also be used for limited amounts of incubation space.

There are several stages in the life cycle of mushrooms that translate into different needs for the environmental conditions produced in the growing cycle. There is an incubation stage in which the mushrooms colonize, or grow throughout the substrate, and a fruiting stage where the colonized substrate produces mushroom fruitbodies. While it is not necessary to use separate rooms for incubation and fruiting it certain has its advantages. By using dedicated rooms, the incubation room can be focused mainly on maintaining a consistent 75-80F temp, with less concern on humidity and air exchange. This allows for cycling of crops for continuous production. Is this necessary at the beginning? Absolutely not.

In fact there are many benefits to using the same room for fruiting and also for incubation. For the first time farmer it is the way to go. It is obviously less capital intensive since there is only one room to worry about outfitting and operating, so that is always good. Having to worry about constantly cycling continuous flushes before building a solid customer base is going to lead to a lot more rotting mushrooms on your hands in addition to the stress of the daily work involved in consistent production. At the beginning it is good to focus on growing artisan quality produce that stands out, and creating the contacts you can use to create a viable community enterprise.  Explaining to your customers that you only produce on certain schedules will let them know that this quality of produce is available, but until a solid client base is established, the availability will be cyclical. And together both your and their business can grow (just like your mushrooms!). Of course you mention to these customers that they are helping you to get to this point. This is a good time to take pre-orders if necessary and we will discuss this further in the marketing section.

So when picking your location, you have to consider the local municipality and any local ordinances first. Once you’ve gotten that all cleared and you know your area is okay with commercial farming, and then you need to consider how the areas will be used. Are you going to try to utilize or block the sun’s rays? Do you have ample drainage and enough room to process your substrates? If you don’t already have a building on site to use, then you will need to consider the size of your fruiting room in addition to how you will construct it. There are as many possible methods and materials for construction of growing houses as can be imagined, but I would suggest that you may find locally available technologies for energy efficient building construction to limit your needs for power inputs. If you make your building more energy efficient it will save you a lot in energy bills later on. So look into any green building technologies that you can incorporate into the structure, but remember the first thing is to go out and prove the market. Without a solid local outlet for your mushrooms, there is no need to produce hundreds of pounds of mushrooms each week.  So the objective is to grow enough to stimulate local demand. You can create working functional systems for doing this for less than you think, but know where to innovate and where to purchase stock.


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta

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OfflineJeremy_Davis
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311164 - 11/25/08 02:28 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Mushroom growing houses
In many ways the species of mushroom that you are going to grow will dictate the specific parameters of the growing rooms. You may need to maintain a specific temperature for a specific time and then change that to another temperature for a given length of time.  However specifics aside, the construction of a mushroom growing house has several main concerns;

- Fresh air exchange capabilities and rates
- Humidification
- Temperature control
- Ease of washing down all surfaces
- Equipment that is corrosion or water resistant
- Drainage

Whatever structure you are using for growing your mushrooms in you have the same concerns listed above.  Mushrooms need to have adequate oxygen to grow, they work opposite of plants who need CO2 to grow. To mushrooms, CO2 build up would be toxic at the levels it is beneficial to plants. There may be interesting ways to re-circulate air from mushroom growing houses into vegetable production greenhouses and back, constantly recharging the air supply. So you need to have ways in which to introduce fresh air and also to exhaust “stale” air from the growing room. The incoming air should also be filtered to limit the populations of local pollens and mold spores that are floating around in the air. In addition to the air exchange, temperature and humidity need to be controlled as well to ensure successful fruiting.  And finally it is important to be able to wash down all surfaces easily. In mushroom cultivation cleanliness is more important than in most other types of farming. So the easier you make it on yourself in the beginning the better. A well thought out plan will save you time and headaches down the road.

Fresh air exchange is actually a delicate process and needs to be attended to with care. Interesting results can be had by tweaking the fresh air to CO2 levels in your growing house, such as deeper colors and meatier textures. Alternatively, if you have an imbalance of those ratios, your mushrooms may have deformities or stunted growths among other maladies. Usually an active exhaust is set up either on a timer or a CO2 sensor to avoid CO2 build up. A system to allow for filtered air from outside and also re-circulated air from inside the growing house can maintain the proper oxygen intake for the room. There should also be fans inside the growing room to help circulate the air and avoid any stagnant pockets of air which could harbor and breed contaminants which might infect your crops. These internal fans and the exhaust fans should be wet rated for use in high humidity environments to avoid constant replacing.

Humidification in the growing house is also very important. I’ve noticed much larger flushes when the right amounts of water were applied, however if you use too much, the mushrooms will keep absorbing the excess water and become soggy and water-logged. It is best to have the humidification system set up either on a timer or attached to a hygrometer that can turn on and off the system as needed to adjust the growing room environment. There are many different ways that mushroom farmers humidify their rooms. Some use piezoelectric ultrasonic humidifiers that create a dense fog that can be dispersed by fan or piped through a ducted system to more evenly distribute the fog throughout the room. Others use misting or fog nozzles, either using pumps or direct feed from the spigot. These would be spaced evenly throughout the room to ensure uniform humidity in the growing room.

Keeping the growing room a consistent temperature helps the mushrooms grow according to production schedules better. Obviously one thing that can be done to increase the thermal resistance of the room is to insulate the structure. Insulated rooms can hold a more consistent temperature and are much less susceptible to the outside elements. So, proper insulation can save you some money on heating and cooling bills. To some degree the air circulation systems and the humidification systems will have a cooling effect on the room, but they also help the temperatures to be more uniform. In addition to the above systems, window A/C units can be modified to work in your growing rooms and ceramic heaters can be used as needed. Both of these should be connected to some kind of thermostat to make sure it does not swing the temperature too far one way or the other.

If you think about how to make things easier for you to clean by using white or bright surfaces to show dirt, or allowing room in between shelves to mop, it will be rewarded the first week of operation.  Since there is a lot of water in growing houses, there should be drainage, which may include a slight tilt to the floor, to allow for water to be removed from the growing house. This helps to avoid bacterial build-up in standing water. If the fans used in the growing room can be washed down from spore deposits as needed, you’ll appreciate the extra money spent on water-resistant fans. These can be found through marine supply places (see bilge blowers) or greenhouse supply places online. It’s necessary to have a shelf of cleaning supplies in the growing house, that way you are not constantly introducing foreign contaminants into the room tagging along on the bottles of the cleaning solutions.

As you can see there’s a lot to figure out how to put together well before the first mushroom is planted. All the systems in the growing house should function together seamlessly to create a nice environment for the little mushrooms to grow up in. Each system has to take into consideration the others before construction starts. Whatever timers, meters and controls are necessary should be integrated and their controls should either be housed in water sealed housings or positioned outside the growing rooms with only the probes inside.  Having digital thermometers that can tell you the maximum and minimum temperatures that the growing room reaches each day are essential and you should log the data every 12 hours. Once you’ve got all the systems in place and functional. I would suggest running everything in the room for a few days to a week before you go an fill it with spawned substrate. That gives you time to check the daily temperatures and tweak the system to work the way you intended.


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta

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OfflineJeremy_Davis
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Registered: 04/22/05
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311170 - 11/25/08 02:30 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Which Mushroom Should I Grow?

This can be a hotly contended issue and really there is no perfect fit for any one situation. I will discuss a few that I know to be commercially cultivated and then discuss the species I would suggest for the first time mushroom farmer.  There are about 30-50 currently cultivated mushrooms and about 15 or more of these are being commercially cultivated in either local or worldwide markets. Of these 15 some have a higher level of difficulty and specificity than others. The white button mushroom is grown on the largest commercial scale and would be impractical for the home cultivator to try to compete with the large volume producers. Mushrooms known as specialty, exotic, or gourmet comprise mushrooms other  than the white button mushroom. Portabella mushrooms and crimini mushrooms are a very close relative of the white button mushroom grown on the same farms by the same large companies. The species that people commonly ask about are morels, chanterelles, and truffles so we will discuss these three for a brief moment before moving onto some others.

Morels actually have an odd mystique and intriguing stories to go behind that. There was an old patent awarded for commercial morel production in the 1980 to Ron Ower just weeks after he was mysteriously murdered. But if you try to follow the instructions in the patent to the T, you will not produce mushrooms, because Ower either left out important information or steps, or he totally obscured the real methods he was using to grow morels indoors. The Neogen Corporation got ahold of the patents and at one point Campbell’s Soup was said to be using the Ower process to grow morels, but the taste was not the same as natural harvest morels, and eventually they had some strain degradation problems that resulted in closing down the project. Recently a new company has started growing morels in a highly secretive 15 step process Michigan’s Diversified Natural Products. However for the most part I would say indoor commercial cultivation of morels is not within the scope of even many seasoned growers.

Truffle farming originated in or around France, and is not done indoors at all. These high priced mushrooms command the attention and adoration of chefs, fetching thousands of dollars per pound at times. Truffles grow in association with certain trees, and that is the secret to how they are grown. Well, not so much a secret anymore. With some of the original truffle orchards producing crops of truffles some are beginning to take notice. In fact the state of North Carolina introduced truffle farming as an alternative to tobacco farming. Truffle spores are planted with seedlings of oak or hazelnut trees, and the two organisms form a symbiotic bond, each helping the other grow. These inoculated seedlings can be planted into orchards with specific spacing. The hard part about truffle farming besides the uncertainty (since it is a rather new “technology”) is the waiting. It takes about 7-10 years before the first truffles are harvested.

Chanterelles like morels and truffles are a mycorhyzzal mushroom, meaning they create a symbiotic growth with a host plant to fruit in nature. The dynamics of these interrelationships are beginning to be understood, but the technology for commercial cultivation of these mushrooms is a long way off. Interestingly a large problem with this is language barriers. I have personally seen books on cultivation of mushrooms I though highly improbable, with detailed growing parameters and substrate information.  Unfortunately I could not read it because it was in Chinese. So it has to be recognized that what one culture is dismissing, another embraces, and because we can’t all speak the same language, sometimes we waste time and energy reinventing the wheel. By the way this is a good time to allow the translation of this document into other languages, as long as the author credit remains intact.

So now we know some of the mushrooms we are not going to try to grow, which helps us narrow our focus to some of the more like prospects. Aside from the white button mushrooms (and family), the largest worldwide sellers are shiitake (L. edodes) and then oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus sp.). So, either one of these mushrooms would be likely to be available to some extent from competitor mushroom farms or growers. However, growing these species of mushrooms is still a very good choice for the small farmer for many reasons.  Some farmers may want to focus on highly exotic mushroom species to really make their produce stand out. This can be rewarding, but depends on many factors, from the genetics of the mushroom cultures being farmed, to tight environmental controls and is certainly more challenging. Some mushroom farmers also buy wild crafted mushrooms from pickers in season to increase profits for the farmer and selection for their customers.

Some of the lesser known but still commercially successful mushrooms that are farmed are known as; Maitake (Grifola frondosa), Enoki (Flammulina velutipes) , Pom Poms (Hericium sp.), Wood Ear (Auricularia sp.), Beech Mushrooms (Hypsizygus sp.), and Poplar Mushrooms (Agrocybe aegerita) among others. Many of these mushrooms are very tasty and sought after by those in the know. But there is a larger learning curve for the general population, so that may translate into fewer customers. It usually means quite a nice mark up on these mushrooms as well. Many of these mushrooms are more difficult to grow and highly prolific commercial cultures are traditionally harder to come by than more traditionally farmed mushroom species. Maintaining the environmental and nutritional needs of these mushrooms can also be a delicate art, especially maitake. I would say that for the first time mushroom farmer, it would be wise to stick with the more traditionally farmed mushrooms for the bulk of the revenue to be generated. If the space and time are available, it may be very rewarding to grow and sell some unusual and highly exotic species, and will certainly make you stand out among the others.

As a new mushroom grower you may find it helpful to realize that there is a wealth of published data on all aspects of cultivating shiitake and oyster mushrooms. There are detailed websites and published journal articles detailing minutia and specific concerns that can aid you in creating your operating procedures on your farm. These mushrooms are good choices for the first time farmer because of that. The equipment costs for growing shiitake mushrooms can be considerable higher in most circumstances. This is because the substrate preparation is more intensive when growing shiitakes. In addition to this the time from inoculation, or planting of the mushroom spawn into the substrate, to harvest is almost twice as quick with oyster mushrooms (and depending on the species can actually be as much as three times quicker(P. djamor), or can take just the same time (P. eryngii)). So this means that the shelf space in the fruiting room can be turned over more often. Also since oyster mushrooms can usually outperform shiitake mushrooms in harvested weight from the same substrate block, the weight of harvested mushrooms will be close to double the amount.

Oyster mushrooms are a great mushroom for the beginning mushroom farmer because they allow entry into the market with the lowest capital outlay in equipment.  This is important because it allows you to grow high quality competitive produce with the minimal capital outlay up front. It can allow you to establish a working framework for the business you see a few years down the line. You get the hands on experience of being in the active market place as a high quality producer and begin to make the contacts you’ll need to bring the business to the next level. This allows the business to develop its place and its image in the local community and also to create a larger presence each year, by reinvesting the profits wisely and incrementally. Oyster mushrooms are also a good mushroom for small farmers because most of the country’s oyster mushrooms are grown in Pennsylvania and California by the large white button mushroom farms. Even though the big farms are growing them, oyster mushrooms do not transport as well as many other types of mushrooms. Their caps crack and the gills get squashed leading to further and quicker deterioration of their original quality. So by the time the oyster mushrooms make it all the way down here to South Florida, their quality is far less that what I could provide locally, harvested just last night. I would imagine that the situation is similar the farther you are from Pennsylvania and California.

Now when speaking of oyster mushrooms, there are actually more than 10 different commercially cultivated species of oyster mushroom. I won’t list them all here, but there are many different colors, from bright yellows or pinks to rich browns and grays or creamy whites. Each of these different colors may have wildly different cultivation parameters, and may be found in widely divergent locations in nature. There are tropical species of oysters all the way down to very cold fruiting strains of oyster mushrooms, and this can be utilized by the cultivator in different seasons. By using temperature appropriate strains of oyster mushrooms, the farmer can save substantially on heating and cooling costs (this can also be done with shiitake strains, but those are strains of the same species not two distinct organisms altogether).

A mushroom that has gotten some very enthusiastic reviews in rather small circles is the King Oyster or King Trumpet mushroom, Pleurotus eryngii. It is a very large and meaty oyster mushroom with unique flavor. This mushroom is usually a bit more difficult to grow than the other Pleurotus species mushrooms. Unfortunately for me, the strain I have will only fruit if the ambient temperature is under 65F, which in South Florida is only for about two and a half months at most. So I cannot grow this mushroom here without more involved environmental controls that I would like to invest in before I develop my initial market share.

So from all the different species of mushrooms out there, there really is no one perfect choice. In fact over time (and probably sooner rather than later) your customers are going to ask you for variety. So depending on your local market’s desires, your local temperatures (or ability to create your own environments), and your wallet size, you may decide differently than I. I base my opinions on the data I’ve come across and it certainly isn’t exhaustive, so take my suggestions for what they are, the observations of someone looking in from the outside for a few years. I believe it is best to start small, and I’ve tried to outline what I see as the best species for the first time grower and that to me is the oyster mushroom.


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta

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OfflineJeremy_Davis
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Registered: 04/22/05
Posts: 652
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Last seen: 11 years, 11 months
Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311178 - 11/25/08 02:31 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Substrates

Mushrooms can and will grow on a wide variety of materials, these materials are called substrates. If the substrate is nutritious to the mushroom, it will begin to metabolize the substrate and grow throughout the substrate as it does so. The mushroom is doing what is known as colonizing the substrate.  Once the growing mushroom mycelia has exhausted much of the nutrients available to it in the substrate, it begins to fear for its survival. It starts to think “Uh, oh, I’ve about eaten all the food I can find here. The only way I can keep living is to produce some spores so my genetics can carry on.” To do this the mycelia organism (which at this point looks like a bright white mold) must first grow a mushroom to produce the spores, which will then float along on a draft of air, hopefully to land in a moist and nutritious substrate somewhere so the spores can germinate and the species lives on.

Many mushrooms can be classified as primary or secondary decomposers. Some are tertiary, but for now let’s stick to the first two, primary and secondary decomposers. Primary decomposers, well just like it says, they are the first organism to begin to decompose this organic material. Most of the specialty and exotic mushrooms are grown on wood-based substrates and in fact they are primary decomposers, for example, shiitake, maitake and oyster mushrooms. Secondary decomposers only spring into action on already partially broken down material. Mushrooms that grow on compost and manure based substrates are the secondary decomposers, some examples of which are the white button, crimini and portabella mushrooms.

If you are going to be growing shiitake mushrooms, you will be using a substrate that is mostly hardwood sawdust mixed in with some small hardwood chips. This will need to be supplemented with bran and then buffered with gypsum which also is nutritional. Oak is the preferred wood, though many species of hardwoods will perform well. Wood must be free from competitor molds and holds moisture better after being completely dried out. I have seen shiitake grown on rice straw and have heard about coffee hulls being used successfully, but I do not believe that commercially these options would be viable without more testing. Shiitake can also be grown (as can oysters, maitake and many others) outdoors on logs. However because of the labor needed to inoculate and maintain the logs, I do not see that as a very viable method, as the costs of operating are too high. On the other hand, log grown shiitake is certainly a delicacy and the quality can be excellent.

Oyster mushrooms can grow aggressively on extremely varied substrates and for that reason is great choice for a farmer since it is not dependent on the availability of a single substrate. It can be adapted to many different local systems because the local wastes can be an input stream for the mushroom farm. Since the oyster mushroom is so aggressive, it can grow on many different agricultural wastes, tying mushroom farming into many other industries all over the world. The wastes from sugar, rice, coffee, wheat, (all grains), banana trees, and even office buildings (shredded office paper makes an interesting “recycle with mushrooms” project) can be used to grow oyster mushrooms. There is a lot of information on the internet available about the many different substrates that can be used for growing oyster mushrooms.

The industry standard though, the best producer for commercial cultivation uses would be wheat straw. Other cereal straws perform well, but wheat straw when compared to the many other substrates seems to be the best performer. The wheat straw must be chopped down to 1-3 inch pieces to render it most useful for mushroom cultivation. It is not necessary, but certainly boosts yields. The best way I’ve found to do this is to use an electric chipper/shredder, and feed the straw in one end and collect the chopped straw in a tarp or bin at the other end. Straw has a waxy waterproof coating on the outside that inhibits its ability to absorb water, and also makes it more difficult for the mushroom mycelia to take residence.  Chopping the wheat straw allows its water holding capacity to increase and exposes the tender insides of the straw to the mushroom mycelia, allowing the organism greater ease in metabolizing the substrate.

From my own experience, I’ve found that adding 10% banana leaves to the wheat straw (by volume) gives a significant boost in yields. Upon further investigating I learned that complex substrates can increase growth and yields, but at the same time can make the substrate more contaminant prone since it is a richer nutrition source. The trick is to try to use substrates and additives that pre-select for mushroom growth over that of other organisms. For example cellulose is a sugar source that is very hard for many organisms to break down, but it is a preferred carbon source for mushroom mycelia which easily metabolizes cellulose. A sugar like dextrose, or fructose is not as good a choice because while the mushroom mycelia will still grow well, competitor molds will also grow on those carbon/sugar sources with greater ease. A readily available source of cellulose is the daily newspaper. Newspapers are made of cellulose.  In the U.S., most newspaper inks are soy or other vegetable based inks, so they are safe to use in food production.

Both Wheat straw and hardwood substrates are rich in the two foods mushrooms digest best, cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin. Lignin seems to be digested more similarly to how humans digest fiber, which is really what the lignin is. To thrive mushroom mycelia requires these in addition to other minerals and nutrients. Nitrogen supplementation is known to boost yields, but is also known to heat the substrates dangerously during incubation. Complex substrates are helpful to the growth of the mushrooms, but more importantly, if the mushrooms are given a broad nutritional profile, then they also produce more nutrition-packed mushrooms. Wheat straw is also going to be readily available most of the year in many parts of the U.S. Feed stores usually stock bales of wheat straw as bedding. I’ve found that depending on the strain I am growing, a 50lb.bale of straw can be turned into 60 or more pounds of fresh oyster mushrooms.

In closing on the substrates section I want to again note that mushrooms can metabolize and grow on a huge variety of locally available substrates. In fact there are not many things that I haven’t heard of someone trying to grow mushrooms on, and a surprising amount of these wild attempts succeed at producing mushrooms.

Commercialization of these substrates is still a long way off, but many farmers are using what is locally available with great success. For the first time farmer, if you are serious about results, you will stay away from experimental substrates and growing techniques (except for smaller R & D crops, which are also important to run). If you want to grow shiitake, use sterilized hardwood sawdust with a nutritional supplement. If you want to grow oyster mushrooms, you can use pasteurized supplemented straw.


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta

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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311208 - 11/25/08 02:38 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Substrate Preparation

Once you’ve selected your substrate mixture, you need to then prepare it for use in mushroom cultivation. We’ve briefly touched on some of the steps necessary to render a substrate to selectively encourage mushroom growth, and now I’d like to get into a little more detail. The general make up of the substrate should allow for water retention and also air flow throughout the substrate. The substrate should be able to be densely packed, but not to become muddy. The substrate needs to allow for the mushroom mycelia to breathe, yet not making it bridge large gaps or air pockets as it colonizes the substrate. So to get this texture wood-based substrate growers use sawdust mixed in with small hardwood chips, and oyster mushroom growers using straw or straw-like substrates chop the straw down into 1-3 inch pieces. Here’s a picture of the chipper/shredder that we use to chop the substrates to 1-3 inch pieces, which is a good size for a straw-based mushroom substrate. You can see the chopped straw in the mesh laundry bag and on the floor in front of the chipper.



So besides chopping, what else needs to be done to prepare the straw or wood and make it selective for mushroom growth? Even clean looking straw and wood are covered with mold spores of competitor organisms, dust, germs, and other forms of life and non-life. Each of these acts as a vector of contamination and must be modulated by the mushroom farmer for successful fruitings. The methods that farmers use over the world are very different, yet many have great successes. There are both hot and cold treatments that can be used and a great deal of information is available online detailing many of the methods. We will also discuss some of these methods with which I am familiar. The purpose of these treatments, whatever the method the farmer ultimately chooses, is to kill off the resident competitor mold spores and organisms. With pasteurization there is a dual purpose which is to kill off harmful organisms and also to encourage the growth of microorganisms that are actually beneficial to the growing mushroom mycelia. With sterilization, all resident organisms in the substrate are killed.

These two processes can be of significant expense, and in many cases limit the total productivity of the farm. A farm’s ability to process substrate dictates the amount of fresh mushrooms it can produce. The more substrate that can be processed, the more mushrooms can be grown. In almost all cases it is more costly to sterilize a substrate than to pasteurize it. This is one of the reasons I suggest to beginning farmers that they try oyster mushrooms, because there is great documented success growing mushrooms on pasteurized substrates. So it works, and there is no question about it. As your skills and your market for fresh mushrooms grow, you may find you can learn to grow the other species and re-invest some of your profits into more expensive equipment as time goes on.

First I will talk a little about sterilizing substrates. When you are growing on sterilized substrates, greater care must be taken at many points of the mushroom growing process, so a good understanding of aseptic technique is essential. When you have a sterilized substrate, you have a pristine source of food for many of the organisms floating around both you and I right now. If these contaminant particles were to find their way into your sterilized substrate, they would take residence and start eating away at and colonizing the substrate instead of the desired mushroom mycelium. You are trying to culture a single organism in a food source in which many other organisms would also thrive. To do this takes great care, and in many cases may require a lab like the one we discussed briefly before, which can be made in a walk-in closet. This lab will give you the clean space you need to grow your mushrooms in what is known as pure culture. Alternatively, a very clean bathroom can be used if the farmer has a good grasp on aseptic technique.

Sterilization of substrates is done in several ways, but there are two methods which are the most common, and the ones we will discuss here. Sterilization can be done either under pressure or at atmospheric (or regular room) pressure. Pressurized sterilization is more effective and also more costly. For the small farmer looking for an affordable means of pressure sterilization, the All-American brand sterilizers, canners, and pressure cookers are a good choice. Several of these can be run in tandem 24-7 for years if the farmer could stay awake, they’re that sturdy.  A decent amount of substrate can be processed in two or three All-American 930 or 941 canner/sterilizers. I would run two sterilizers at a time for three cycles, which could process a lot of substrate. Larger mushrooms farms use huge autoclaves that a car could drive into. Interesting finds can be made by the small farmer at websites like ebay and LabX.com. Sterilization under pressure is usually done at 15 PSI or higher for one to two hours (121C).
Sterilization under atmospheric pressure is actually the most used method throughout the world, thought this is not the case in the United States. Low pressure sterilization would be considered more low-tech, but can be great choice for the small farmer. Low pressure sterilization of wood-based substrate mixtures allows the farmer a cornucopia of different species and strains that will grow and thrive. This means that you are not limited to only growing oyster mushrooms. A grower producing sterilized wood-substrate blocks can grow almost all of the commercially cultivated exotic or specialty mushrooms with some level of success. Low pressure sterilization is done with steam. Bagged substrate mixes are steamed for anywhere from 4-12 hours depending on the farm, with 10 hours being the time I’ve seen used most. This steaming can be done in any container that can be modified for the task of holding the straw and still allowing for circulation of the steam evenly throughout. I use 55 gallon drums for both steam sterilization, steam pasteurization, and hot water immersion pasteurization.

Substrates to be sterilized are usually filled into heat-resistant bags with filters for air exchange prior to being sterilized. That way when the substrate is sterile, it can remain so within the protection of the bag. When the farmer introduces the mushroom culture into this sterile bagged substrate (in the clean lab), the mushroom will be the only living organism in that bag, and will have no competition for the nutrients. Mushroom mycelium is very delicate and sensitive to the environment at these early stages. A clean environment is needed for the incubation period in which the mycelium colonizes the substrate, but once the blocks are fully colonized, they are much less susceptible to contamination.

Pasteurization of substrates aims to kill off competitor molds, yet to promote the growth of beneficial microorganisms, which in turn promote the growth and yields of mushroom fruitbodies for the farmer. So since this process encourages the growth of helper organisms many farmers find this process more forgiving and less contamination prone. It is also much more cost effective, since it uses less expensive equipment, and shorter times running the equipment translate into savings in time as well as resources. Effective pasteurization can be done with a variety of methods including; hot water immersion, steam baths, cold water immersion, lime, or bleach treatments.

When using pasteurized substrates, the substrates are much more forgiving to contamination, but care must still be taken or great losses can occur. Unlike sterilized substrates, pasteurized substrates can be pasteurized in bulk and then put into bags or other fruiting containers. They can also be pre-bagged and then pasteurized like sterilized substrates if the farmer so desires. For proper pasteurization to occur, the substrate must be brought up to a temperature range between 140 and 175 degrees Fahrenheit, and maintained there for 1-3 hours. There are different schools of thought on exactly what temperatures to pasteurize at and for how long, but within those ranges, most people are succeeding to one degree or another. I have personally seen better results if the temperature is maintained at 150F evenly for an hour and a half to two hours.
True pasteurization can be done by either steam or hot water immersion.  It can be a bit tricky to devise a proper pasteurization chamber, but the results are worth it. By using insulation, thermometers or temperature relays, you can turn everyday things into pasteurization machines. Many people use large insulated Coleman coolers and I have used 55 gallon drums with great success. Really any container can be used that can be insulated, stand high temperatures (of say up to 200F just for safety’s sake), and are also water tight or steam resistant. Whatever system you design, make sure that you consider all the different aspects with which you will be dealing; heavy, hot, wet substrate. And if using hot water immersion, then you are also dealing with a large volume of steaming hot water that must be drained from the pasteurizer and substrate.



These 55 gallon drums are what I use to pasteurize substrates. The drums can do either steam bath pasteurization, or hot water immersion. It is important to use only food grade drums when using them for purposes like this. These were used by a local beekeeper for storing honey. There are so many little innovations on these drums that I have to show you a few pictures to really get it all across properly. (NOTE: the pasteurizers were made watertight by using special connectors. A project like this would be considered only for people with in-depth knowledge of all that it entails to make a vessel such as this.)

Here you can see that there is a thermometer in the center of the drum. This is for measuring the temperature of the water or steam at the center of the drum. This allows the farmer to know at a glance if you’re in the pasteurizing range or not. Tied around the drums with the bungee cords are hot water heater blankets for insulation. Wrapping the drums in radiant heat barriers made from aluminum foil insulation would allow for even better insulating because of more even coverage of the drums surface. These drums are heated from below by  a propane burner. Once the water has been brought to temperature ( I like about 170F), I can then shut off the propane and the drum stays within the pasteurizing temperature range for over 5  hours, which is a great money and time saver in regard to purchasing and refilling propane tanks.



This is the view from the top. At the bottom, you can see the bricks and grate that are used to keep the substrate bags off the bottom of the drum. This keeps the substrate from being directly on the flame from the propane burner. The drums can hold about a bale of chopped straw at a time. This chopped straw is held in mesh laundry bags which make it easier to handle getting it in and out of the drums.
This picture shows the two pasteurizers together. You can see that their weight is distributed on cinder blocks, and not on the propane burner underneath the drums. Also if you look at the drum on the right, at the very bottom on it’s right hand side, you’ll see a little pipe coming out from the drum. There is a valve on the end of the pipe which is used to drain all the hot water from the drums after the hot water bath is completed. This is really great as well, because at the same time it does several things. It drains all the hot water from the drum with almost no effort. In our older drums, we had to actually push the drums over to empty all the water from them, and we usually waited until they were completely cooled before doing that. Also pushing over the drums was really hard on the drums integrity, and they would break from time to time. It also allows the substrate to drain inside the drums, which makes the mesh laundry bags a lot easier to pull out of the drums, and there’s no burning hot water going everywhere when the bags are pulled out. The mesh cage  in the picture can also be used to hold the straw instead of using the mesh laundry bags, but I’ve never used it.

It is very important to make sure that however you design your pasteurizer, that you have a way to measure the temperature. If you are outside the pasteurizing range of 145F to 175F your chances of success decrease significantly.  I advise you to search through the internet to find ideas for making a good pasteurizer. In addition to using propane to heat water to create steam, a higher-tech method would be to take a commercial clothing steamer and attach it to a pasteurization vessel to create a steam bath. By coupling that with a temperature relay inside the vessel, the steamer can be set to maintain a constant 150 temperature.

There are many other methods of rendering substrates acceptable for mushroom cultivation, and I will briefly touch on a few of them here. You can do some research and discover a wealth of information on the following methods along with everything else discussed in this article. The simplest method I’ve heard reported is a 24 hour cold water soak. I’m not sure how effective that would be, but it is a method has been reported as viable. Adding either bleach or lime to cold water soaks is known to work well. The application times and rates differ, but the information is all out there in the published literature and online.

So in this section, we’ve covered quite a bit. We’ve learned some of the reasons behind why the substrates must be prepared before use.  Many of the different methods of preparation and their applications were briefly covered, and in many instances I find the technologies of mushroom growing require detailed explanations to best be conceptualized. In many cases it is function rather than design that is important. Remember that the amount of substrate you can process determines the amount of fresh mushrooms that can be harvested. This of course is saying that it also determines to some extent, the amount of money that can come back onto the farm through sales. So now we have a substrate that is both nutritious to mushroom mycelia and selective towards it growth over competitors. How do we get the mushroom mycelia into the substrate?


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta

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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311219 - 11/25/08 02:39 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Inoculation

The “planting” of mushroom mycelium into the prepared substrate is called inoculation. The seeds of mushroom cultivation are what is called “spawn.” Unlike seeds which come directly from the plant, successful mushroom cultivation depends on man- or woman-made spawn. To make spawn, spores of the parent mushroom must be mated and bred into a commercially productive culture. This culture is very consistent in its performance at different growth parameters. Once this culture has been developed through a rigorous breeding program, a small piece of the culture is transferred to sterilized whole grains. I use hydrated and sterilized whole rye berries to make spawn. This transfer of mother culture to grain masters is also known as inoculation.

It takes about two weeks for the mycelial culture to colonize the substrate of the whole grains. Once the substrate has been incubated for two weeks it is ready to be used to inoculate fruiting substrates like straw or wood. The whole grains become coated in the mushroom mycelium, and each grain acts as a jump-off point for the mycelium to move from the grain spawn to the fruiting substrate. The more places throughout the fruiting substrate that are exposed to kernels of grain spawn, the more even the growth is throughout the substrate. The grain spawn is carefully mixed into the fruiting substrate in any number of ways depending on a number of factors such as, species being cultivated, access to lab, method of substrate preparation and the list goes on. There is a great deal of information on all phases of mushroom cultivation, and since inoculation procedures are going to be specifically tailored to the farm, we will not discuss this at length in this article.

Briefly however I will say that for the most part inoculations are done in a lab or some kind of homemade clean room. This is done to limit the competitor organisms that can find their way into the bagged substrates. The bags are most vulnerable when open to the environment, and opening the bags to transfer grain spawn to fruiting substrate is necessary in most types of inoculation (other than liquid inoculation into mixed grain based fruiting substrates, but that is beyond the scope of this article). So most growers are doing their inoculations of all stages under strict controls, and this certainly leads to better overall results.

Understanding the above fully, I did experiments over several years with different methods of inoculation. I found that inoculating bulk pasteurized straw could be done with almost the same success rate outdoors under the shade of a tree as I was achieving in a clean lab with a 2 x 4 foot HEPA flow hood running 24 hours a day. So I learned that to grow oyster mushrooms using outdoor inoculation methods were the best way to go for myself, and many small first time farmers may find they agree with me.  I was told that if a farmer tries to use outdoor inoculation for too many years in the same location that the success rates drop off dramatically. Having done outdoor inoculations in the same place for only about two years or so, I did not see this happen, but would not rule out the possibility. My view is that if small and inexpensive growing rooms can be constructed, or if the farmer is only growing when seasons outdoor temperatures are right, then this is not a big problem. If the farm becomes successful and needs to expand, a lab can certainly be constructed on-site inexpensively when needed.

The source of the grain spawn is also important. A knowledgeable grower understands all phases of mushroom cultivation, even if not all are practiced on-farm. Many commercial farms purchase their spawn from professional spawn breeders, or if they are big enough can start a separate spawn making company to supply the growing facilities. The point is that most of these farms are specializing in spawn making or mushroom growing, but very few are doing both. This is because each of these operations require a high level of specialized equipment and skills as well as separate R & D facilities to focus on the different aspects of the two processes. Of course, a knowledgeable cultivator can really customize the entire growing operation by making the farm’s spawn on-site, this just takes a considerable amount of time and resources. Having both made spawn myself for the most part, and having purchased spawn on a few occasions, I see the merits in both.
One of the interesting things I realized by buying spawn is that the costs from different suppliers can be wildly different. However on the lower end to mid-range priced spawn (about $2+ a pound), when I factored in all the time, raw materials, and supplies I used to make the same amount on site, I found that the prices were in some cases better than I could do myself. So in realizing that, it also follows that professional companies focused solely on producing high quality spawn would have cultures that are consistently productive, and have been verified to be profitable in commercial applications, which is comforting. Depending on your skill level and also on your do-it-yourself-ness, you may decide to make your own spawn, but my recommendation would be to purchase it. Especially at the outset, because that means you are using high-quality spawn with known profiles.

After inoculation of the fruiting substrates, the area and all supplies and equipment should be cleaned thoroughly. This should be standard procedure everywhere on the farm, the completion of any on-farm task would include a good cleaning of the areas and items used. The inoculated substrates need to be brought into the incubating/fruiting room at this point, and mostly left alone for about two weeks. Once you’ve established the farm in the local community, and you are ready to expand, one thing that needs to be considered is building a separate room solely for incubating inoculated substrates. This would allow you the ability to move the substrates into the fruiting room only when they are ready to bear mushrooms. This saves valuable shelf space in the fruiting room, and assures that all available square footage is used for fruiting mushrooms. Now you have a constant supply of fresh mushrooms for the local market. Other ideas for expansion can be discussed at length, but after creating a separate incubation room, the farms capacity for fruiting will increase enough to accommodate additional fruiting rooms.


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta

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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311229 - 11/25/08 02:40 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Crop Management

Once you have inoculated substrate moved into your incubating/fruiting room, your job becomes one of proper crop management. At this time the functions we spoke about in the construction of growing rooms section are put to work and hopefully create a harmonious interface – giving the farmer good control over his environment. Even farmers growing in outdoor environments are going to need to manage their crop if profitable yields are the goal. In the beginning, the incubation stages, the farmer is mostly controlling temperature in the room. Different species of mushrooms incubate better at different temperatures, but whatever the optimal temperature range for the species being grown, the goal for incubation is to maintain even temperatures. For years and years growers incubated in complete darkness. Now this is known to be unnecessary, and it is common practice on farms to use a 12-12 light-dark cycle while incubating. Many of the species of oysters that I have grown seem to incubate best between 72F-80F. Incubation of these species was usually complete in no more than 14 days, sometimes looking fully colonized after 5 or 6 days.

Incubation is complete about 4-6 days after the grower notes full colonization of the substrate. Once the mycelium has colonized the substrate, it still takes those extra few days to mature before it is ready to begin fruiting mushrooms. In this period it is building strength and metabolizing the nutrients in the substrate. As the mycelium notes that the available nutrition will soon be exhausted, its genetic impulse to reproduce and survive kicks in. At this point it is ready for just the right conditions to present themselves, resulting in a fruiting of mushrooms. Oysters can be such an aggressive species that even if conditions are far from ideal, they will fruit upon maturity anyway. A commercial operation cannot depend on the yields or scheduling of the fruiting, so it aims to modulate these conditions if needed. After the incubation period ends, the grower’s responsibility increases from only controlling temperature to controlling a variety of factors.

In addition to temperature, the artful cultivator must properly manage the humidity, the lighting, the oxygen to carbon dioxide ratios, bug populations, and any number of variables that may pop up in the course of growing any crop. Every farmer of every crop has had some troubles at one point or another. It is good to recognize these troubles as places to better your knowledge and skills as a cultivator. The cultivator’s job is to anticipate these problems as early as possible (in fact the design stages are the best places to start). By avoiding as many problems as possible before they can begin, the cultivator tips the scales in favor of success. The interweaving of the variables and environmental elements at this point is very important, and involves system design as well as educated use of controllers and timers.

If you are purchasing your spawn, then the supplier will have provided you with the growing parameters of your mushrooms. So you will know what the conditions must be before even planting the mushrooms. A smart grower will speak long enough with a knowledgeable person at the spawn supplier to determine their best species for the capabilities of his set-up. The same can be done for the farmer who produces her own spawn. Commercially viable cultures can be purchased which the grower then can expand and use on farm as needed. Culture storage is a bit tricky, but the commercial labs use liquid nitrogen storage to ensure their strains stay vigorous. I’ve seen liquid nitrogen storage containers on eBay for as little as $200.00 if you are considering something serious.

Whatever the parameters for the species you are growing, the farmer must make sure that the growing area is able to match those parameters. These parameters will also change during the growing cycle in the room. This is especially true if the same room is being used for incubation and fruiting. Over the course of the growing cycle, the farmer must first get even and full colonization during incubation. The next step is to induce the mycelia to form mushrooms; this is known as inducing pinning. The baby mushrooms that first poke out of the substrate are called pins. Nurturing these pins to maturity is much easier with oyster mushrooms than with some other species, but still takes care and attention. Oyster mushrooms should be picked at just the right stage. If picked too early, the farmer may experience some loss in yields, as the mushrooms would surely have grown larger and put on more weight. If harvested too late the mushrooms texture and appearance suffers exponentially. The window for proper harvest is no more than 12 hours, and not all the mushrooms will mature within that same 12 hour period.

With the wealth of so much good information available both online and in printed format on the art and science of mushroom crop management, I do not feel it would be a good use of time to talk much more on the actual growing of mushrooms. Since this article is more focused on the commercial aspects of a small farm, I want to cover the subjects that have not been paid as much attention. Effective crop management is going to be what makes or breaks a farm. The better records are kept, the better the farm can adapt and succeed. So if you are serious about growing mushrooms, the more you learn about mushroom cultivation in general, the better. Mushroom growing is a relatively new science, with almost all innovations adapted by industry have been made after the 1960s. So there is new information being compiled each day, evolving the science of mushroom cultivation. In fact each farmer has the chance to offer the community at large some truly valuable information, especially you.

Growing mushrooms is a unique adventure and even though we were brief here, this section is the heart of mushroom growing. Learn all you can about proper crop management and use that knowledge to construct your farm and the systems within. From incubating the substrates all the way to the point of harvesting the final mushrooms, the grower must be ready to adapt to unexpected variables. Like anything else, anticipating these variables becomes easier the longer you have been doing it. At this point, you are at the fun part; harvesting the bounty of all your hard work.


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta

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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311235 - 11/25/08 02:41 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Harvesting

In large commercial white button mushroom farms, harvesting is the single largest expense. Harvesting alone accounts for 50% of the entire farms’ expenses. This is because at the scale they are growing, the mushrooms need to be harvested 24 hours a day 365 days a year. The window of time for proper harvest remains short, so these farms have pickers working round the clock. Even in smaller operations, if you set it up so that you have continuous supply of fresh mushrooms for the market, you will face a similar challenge. Staggering production for the small farmer certainly has the benefits of allowing for a day off here or there. It also creates a certain sense of scarcity since it is not always available.

Mushrooms should be harvested at the proper stage of maturity. This ensures longer shelf life, better appearance, and a nice firm texture both raw and cooked. Each different species has its own ideal stage for harvest and you can learn what that looks like with a little research. In most cases it is important to harvest while the mushroom cap is still “turned down” or convex. Once it flattens out or turns up it has past this prime stage. Picking at the proper time ensures that the grower maximizes the yield and quality at the same time. This is the chance for the small farmer to really make a splash in the local market. The quality of oyster mushrooms decreases quickly when shipped, so selling top quality local oyster mushrooms will be a real advantage. Proper harvest ensures that the end users will have the mushrooms for the longest time possible before going bad. While the perish ability of oyster mushrooms is usually listed as 3-5 days, the mushrooms I grow and sell locally still look great after 10 days, and are still usable after more than 15.

When harvesting mushrooms, some people may want to use a mask, since the spores from mushroom farms are known to cause allergies and respiratory problems in some people. Harvesting mushrooms can be done with a knife, or by twisting the base of the mushrooms by hand. I prefer to do it by hand. It may be helpful to harvest with clean latex or vinyl gloves to limit contamination. By grasping the base of the mushroom, or the cluster of mushrooms, and twisting gently the mushrooms should just come off into your hand. It is important to have harvesting containers to put the mushrooms into after pulling them from the substrate. If you are grading the mushrooms, you may want to do a container each for an A Grade, a B Grade, and a C grade. The A and B can be sold fresh, and the C Grades can be dried and made into neutraceutical capsules and sold by the bottle.

When harvesting oyster mushrooms, you should not lay clusters on top of other clusters, because they are easily damaged later when you go to pull them apart. I like to use stackable slim harvest containers that I can lay a single layer of clusters in. When that container is full, I just stack an empty one on top and fill that one. When I have them full, I move the stack of filled containers right into the upright fridge to pre-cool. With a small fruiting room, a farmer can expect to spend about an hour each day just harvesting mushrooms. Many days you may find yourself doing two harvests.

Another extremely important thing to realize is that it’s not all over even once you’ve harvested all the mushrooms from the substrate. When the mushrooms have all been harvested, the substrate block rests for about 10 days and then a second fruiting occurs, each fruiting is known as a flush. This flush lasts for another 3-4 days and the block goes dormant once again. This cycle can repeat for quite some time, but the bulk of the mushrooms that the substrate will produce come in the first and second flushes. I’ve had oyster mushroom bags produce for seven flushes, but the last flushes were just one or two small clusters on a big substrate bag. One thing I learned while attending a mushroom industry conference at Penn State, is that most growers are now going two flushes and then starting fresh with new substrate. Apparently in addition to giving the bulk of the yields in two flushes, the blocks are more contamination resistant after only two flushes, so there are fewer problems with contaminants and pests.

Efficient harvesting has to do is a holistic process. The mushrooms must be pulled from the substrates, graded, and then stored in stackable containers in an upright fridge. At times this must be done more than once a day, and it is nice to have a routine schedule to ensure even cropping and more uniform sized mushrooms. I find harvesting to be a nice quiet and introspective time. Once two flushes have gone by, I would suggest that the small farmer follow the logic of the larger growers and remove the substrate from the growing room. At this point it is best if the substrate can be re-pasteurized or steamed for a bit before being composted or buried. In addition anaerobic digestion may be an option for disposal of substrate blocks. The benefit would be free natural gas that can be used on farm for energy, and a rich organic effluent that can be used as natural fertilizer. Once harvest has been completed the focus switches to cultivating connections and outlets for the mushrooms.


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta

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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311239 - 11/25/08 02:42 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Post harvest Storage

How fresh produce is stored may or may not fall under regulations by your local or state governments. In any case it is prudent for the farmer to understand the need to separate farming activities from daily home life. One of the ways to do this is to have the mushroom storage and packaging areas totally disconnected from the living areas. Even weighing and packing outside in the shade under a tree would be preferable to doing in a stuffy indoor area with poor ventilation, pets and kids running around, and all the clutter of daily life. The family food refrigerator should not be used to store fresh mushrooms for re-sale. A separate refrigerator should be purchased for storing fresh mushrooms, and it should be a dedicated fridge, and not a fridge/freezer combo, since you will need all the room you can get for storing your fresh mushrooms. Many times second-hand or scratch and dent sales can be great places to pick up refrigerators inexpensively.

Immediately after harvesting, the mushrooms should be moved into the refrigerator immediately for a pre-cooling period. Interestingly, if this is not done, the mushrooms continue to grow after harvest and this can have an effect on both appearance and shelf-life later on. The cold temperatures halt the growth of the mushrooms, and then remove the natural heat from the fruitbodies. It preserves the mushrooms by keeping them at their peak freshness by refrigerating after harvest and on through the chain of custody to the end user. The refrigerator like all other equipment used in the mushroom business should be cleaned regularly. If you begin the habit of cleaning as you work, you will find that there is not much left to do at the end of the day.


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Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311245 - 11/25/08 02:43 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Packaging

Once the mushrooms are cooled, then they are ready to be packaged for the market. This packaging is a very important part of the equation, since in many cases the packaging is the first thing the customer sees and recognizes, associating it with your farm. Both the cases and the individual packaging are great places to decorate with farm pictures and information. Packaging can be done by volume or by weight. If going by weight, you may need to have your scales certified by the local Department of Agriculture office. This is done to ensure that the customer is getting an accurate representation of the weight they are purchasing, but I you will have to do some research to learn how this is done in your area.

There are many different types of packaging that you might use. I suggest using packaging that protects the mushrooms from unnecessary handling. I do not suggest selling oyster mushrooms in big bulk boxes, because their quality suffers greatly when people sort through the clusters in the boxes in the market. I believe packing them in 2 and 4 ounce packages for retailers is the best option. If selling to restaurants, then the packaging could hold more since the people handling the produce will be knowledgeable about proper handling.  A good choice is plastic type of container known as clamshell packaging. It is breathable and durable in addition to being clear and allowing good viewing of the mushrooms. If you have concerns about using plastic packaging, you can look into the new PLA plastic packaging. It is a new plastic-type of material made from corn and is totally compostable and biodegradable. Paper bags are also good for packaging and can be done in a variety of ways.

Whatever packaging you choose it should be breathable so that the mushrooms do not stagnate in the stale air, ruining their shelf life. It should allow the customer to see the product, so clear plastic packaging or paper/cardboard packaging with a “window” that allows the customer to see in are good as well. Packaging should also be used to help create  awareness and increase brand recognition for your farm and mushrooms. All packaging should have the contact information for your farm including the name of the farm, the phone number, website and e-mail addresses. It should also be stackable and able to fit into boxes and cases for easier transportation. Packaging is a place to really feature your farm and be creative. Tasteful and artsy packaging earns a premium in the marketplace, so don’t be afraid to put some time and energy into the packaging.


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Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311254 - 11/25/08 02:44 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Marketing

Entire books have been written discussing marketing for the small farmer, so this section of the article is going to be longer than any of the others. Two excellent books that I can recommend for the small farmer looking to really understand how to market the produce he grows, are Sell What You Sow by Eric Gibson, and Backyard Market Gardner by Andy Lee. I found these books to be a very valuable resource for me because they opened my eyes to everything that goes into creating a working business. To market your company and products effectively, the farmer needs to evaluate the entire operation and look at both the strengths and the weaknesses of the operation. Focus on accentuating the strengths and creating the marketing plan to play to those strengths, while leaving time to address the weaknesses. In this section I’m going to be discussing the findings of my own research as an example for you on how to do your own local research.

Location of the farm, Products, Target markets, Outlets, Marketing Materials

Previously when we went over location, we were primarily discussing placement of the facilities for maintaining strict environmental controls without over extending your budget on energy inputs. Now I’d like to speak about location of the farm in relation more to marketing than growing. When considering location of the farm for marketing considerations it helps to identify the major metropolitan areas within about one hour drive from the farm. Then look at markets within two hours drive.  By doing this the farmer can do some research and truly discover the demographics of the local cities. After identifying the major cities within those distances, I went online and pulled the census data for those cities. I was able to determine the demographics of the cities in regards to family size, ethnicity, gender, and even income. This is very powerful information as it can help to identify target markets within these major cities that are looking for locally-grown, high quality produce.

Using this information I was able to take market research I had compiled from varied internet resources, and identify which segments of the populations to focus on. With the census data, I am able to more accurately determine the exact size of the specific target markets within each city. This tells me which cities to focus heavier on, and in some cases, which neighborhoods or communities within the city would have a heavier density in regards to my specific target population. This type of data can really help the small farmer to identify the best places to focus on for distribution points for the mushroom products. Once the target market has been identified and their highest population density within the city is also determined, this area can then become the major focus of the initial marketing campaign.

Of course with gas prices as they are today, the closer the location of the farm both to your target market, and to your own home are very important. Since the focus of this document is truly on the small farmer, it is recognized that not always will the grower be farming at his or her residence. While that is most cost effective, and I believe the best ways to succeed in this type of venture, some people will have no option other than to rent facilities or space for the day-to-day activities of mushroom farming. If your property allows for the use and construction of the necessary structures, I believe it would be best to use that property if local laws allow for such.
If you find that the only option is to rent the necessary space, do not spend any money to begin setting up the project without a clear contract delineating usage rights and guaranteeing you a specific period of time to work the area. I learned this lesson the hard way and set up a facility on someone else’s’ property. Since I did not take the time to sit down and map out my needs and expectations and get guarantees in writing, when he decided to just shut everything down just as I completed construction (at a cost of over $2000), I had no recourse. I had to take everything down and now had basically wasted almost a year in preparations. In addition, I moved into an apartment with no room for growing since I believed that I had a great area for my projects. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way, so I am sharing this since I hope to save you from the same problems.
So the physical location of your farm may be dependent on many external factors including local laws, available space at your residence, rent prices, etc. It may or may not be something totally within your control. With this type of a situation, just identify your needs and resources and find something that best fits both. But if you are involving any second party, please do yourself the favor of creating a contract, corporation, and or operating plan that delineates the rights and responsibilities of each party. It may be a subject that does not seem as important as the other facets of the project like growing and marketing, but obtaining these legal protections may be a great relief should a challenge of some type arise.

With that all said, I’d like to get back to talking more about the location of the farm in relation to the specific target markets and also all the products and services that can be offered to increase the farm’s bottom line. So with all my census information, I’ve identified the densest area of target market population within the nearest major cities. Within this target area, many different points of distribution need to be identified for the different products offered. These distribution points may be different for the different products offered by the farm. Even though the idea is for the farm to grow and produce fresh oyster mushrooms, many complimentary products can be offered to increase revenue, offer a wider product line increasing consumer choice, and even to reduce possible wastes. If a waste product can be utilized to create cash flow where once there was none (or even expense), this diversification can really help the farm’s bottom line. So what are some of these complimentary products and how do they fit in with the farm’s line of products and services? Also we will identify the possible distribution points for these products.


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Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311257 - 11/25/08 02:45 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Products and Services

As a small farmer, I believe that one must look for complimentary ideas or products – ways to use your available resources to add variety to the company’s product offering. These products should have similar target markets, so that ideally customers of one product would be interested in buying other products you also are offering for sale. Below I’ll go over a few of the ideas we looked at in the first year’s planning for the project. If any of these ideas help you out, you are free to use them.

Initially we will focus on growing pink, yellow, and blue-grey oyster mushrooms in the tri-county area of Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. Points of distribution for our fresh mushroom sales will include local restaurants, specialty grocers, and farmer-to-consumer sales at Farmer’s Markets.

We will also be making mushroom growing kits for sale to garden centers and at farmer's markets. 

We will sell whole or powdered neutraceutical mushrooms to those interested in the medicinal benefits of mushrooms. In addition, any oyster mushrooms that cannot be sold at top-quality while fresh can be de-hydrated, powdered, encapsulated, and bottled with customized labeling. This creates a customized neutraceutical supplement with documented health benefits. This is a wonderful use of mushrooms that may have rotted if not sold fresh. Waste due to rotting is always a major problem for produce growers. Drying and selling these mushrooms as neutraceutical supplements is a great way to mitigate those loss issues. There is a wealth of credible peer-reviewed science backing the health stimulating properties of oyster and many other mushrooms. The packaging and labeling of these products offer additional opportunity for creativity and increasing brand recognition within the community. Points of distribution for these products would include; Naturopathic doctors, holistic medicine practitioners, and herbalists and even health food stores.

The creation of our larger facility in future years of business will allow for diversification of both the species of mushrooms we can grow, and the product lines we can offer.

We will also be composting our spent mushroom substrate and selling it as a premium soil conditioner or top soil. We will also investigate the profitability of making our own biodiesel to run our deliver trucks and farm equipment. Glycerin, the by-product of making biodiesel can be utilized to make designer handmade soaps. If this is feasible we will make the soaps, if not, the glycerin will be added to our composts to increase nutrient density of the soil. Points of distribution would include local garden centers and direct sales at farmer’s markets.


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Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311266 - 11/25/08 02:47 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Target Marketing

We talked a little before about targeting your market by using census data. When you combine the census data with NASS agricultural reports, a picture begins to develop. This picture shows the key needs of the community that our products fulfill, and also helps to identify who in the community has the resources available to actualize those needs. I was able to take grower surveys I found online and other studies done by different Agricultural Extension offices, and was able to compile to following data. Hopefully you will find this compilation of data useful, and it will save you the time I had to spend piecing it all together.

According to the 2006 census data There are about 7-8 million people in the tri-county area of Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade. Oyster mushrooms last growing season accounted for almost $10million in sales, grown by 67 growers nationwide, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Services 2005-2006 Mushroom Report. Currently oyster mushroom production accounts for just over 1% of the total mushroom sales with an increase in consumer interest indicating a higher market percentage in the future. According to Lucier, G., et. al. (2003), in the United States, fresh market mushroom per capita consumption has risen each decade beginning from 1965 (0.16 pounds eaten per person) to 2003 (2.67 pounds eaten per person). Per capita consumption use is noted to be highest among men and women from the ages of 20 to 39. The US Census (2005 American Community Survey data set) reports the national population of this high consumption group to be: 20 to 24 years (19 million individuals); 25 to 34 years (39 million individuals); and 35 to 44 years (43 million individuals).
Using the above data, I was able to extrapolate my local market for fresh oyster mushrooms. Since the data is coming from reputable resources, I feel pretty comfortable with my projections. Always make sure if you are going to use data, that it is relevant and would be acceptable upon peer-review. With 8 million people in my local area, and assuming the 2003 data for annual mushroom consumption per person of 2.67 pounds per person, per year(which is conservative, since the consumption numbers have since increased) I came up with a total market volume of fresh mushroom sales over a year to be almost 214 million pounds. Of these sales, oyster mushrooms account for 1% of the total volume. This means that my local market for fresh mushrooms is currently about 213,600 pounds, all of which are currently imported into the local economy because there are no local producers.
If I could capture only 1% of that market, it would mean that I could sell 2136 pounds of mushrooms each year. Assuming an average price of $6.00 per pound I would bring in $12,816 over the year. If I could supply 2% of the local demand, I could generate over $25,000 annually.

Each year I would focus on increasing the amount of the local demand for fresh oyster mushrooms that my operation can reasonably and profitably supply. As a small farmer I can create a comfortable second income or even a primary income over time without ever coming close to my supply reaching local demand. Accessing this demand will be a function of providing a combination of superior quality, increased shelf-life, personal customer service, and flexibility to adapt to market trends and changes. The better those can be coordinated, the larger share of the market demand would move from competitors products to those we are growing locally


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Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311268 - 11/25/08 02:47 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Demographics

I was also able to determine which segments of the population that a small/specialty mushroom grower would do best to focus attention on. Within the total population the farmer needs to look at, certain age groups, families with higher disposable income, gender and ethnic populations and see where the highest consumption groups intersect. The specialty mushroom market is targeted at age specific groups between 20-39 being the highest consumers for both genders, and 40-51 being the second highest per capita consumption groups. When looking at economic factors, there is a positive correlation between income and mushroom consumption. High income households, represented by households with income greater than 350 percent of the poverty level, account for the highest per capita consumption of mushrooms (US Census database). When looking at race, Asians have the highest per capita consumption, followed by non-Hispanic whites.

Per capita consumption use is noted to be highest among men and women from the ages of 20 to 39. The US Census (2005 American Community Survey data set) reports the national population of this high consumption group to be: 20 to 24 years (19 million individuals); 25 to 34 years (39 million individuals); and 35 to 44 years (43 million individuals).

Now that we know some of the demographic information that helps us to identify segments of the population on which marketing efforts should focus, it would be advisable to identify the needs of this segment of the population. The needs of the different markets we plan to supply are all unique, yet integrate holistically when viewed as a complete system.

The individuals who purchase our products are searching for high-quality, nutrient dense whole foods, that also have documented health benefits, as well as good taste. They are interested in knowing about the methods used to grow the produce they eat, and where the food comes from. They are willing to pay a premium price for foods that match the lifestyle they choose, especially if the foods meet the above listed characteristics. Personal customer service and great attitude are also important wants that this market is looking for.
Four and Five star restaurants are also looking for high quality produce, with a long shelf life, good taste, and image of being exotic or gourmet. They are looking for the right amounts at a good price, delivered on time and on schedule. They may be interested in marketing some of their dishes as being made from locally grown produce.

Customized packaging and delivery accommodations are needs that a restaurant places a premium on. Consistency of supply may be paramount if they want to make sure a menu item is always available when ordered.
Specialty grocers are looking for the freshest local produce, as many consumers judge a store on its produce department. Their needs for volume will be higher than the other markets, but prices will also have to be lower for these accounts. Their needs include a steady supply, nice packaging, and high quality.

For naturopathic doctors, holistic medicine practitioners, and herbalists, their needs include having a detailed knowledge about the uses of a product, how it is prepared and used, as well as where it comes from. We will have detailed abstracts of scientific papers available on our website. We will offer personalized tours of our facility to practitioners when we can accommodate them. They need to be sure that their product has sufficient amounts of the bioactive components to achieve the therapeutic effects they are looking for.


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Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311275 - 11/25/08 02:49 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Market Trends

With the USDA reporting a market of almost $900 million annually, mushrooms are the fourth-largest vegetable crop, after potatoes, tomatoes, and lettuce. Specialty mushrooms are becoming more and more popular as the media reports on the health benefits of exotic mushrooms. Also the intrigue of something different than the common and bland white button mushroom is creating a strong niche market for exotic species not commonly available through local grocers, farmer's markets, or restaurants. There has been long-term growth in the mushroom market, with it growing five-fold from 1965 to the present.

According to the Mushroom Council, U.S. consumption of mushrooms in 1993 was around 500 million pounds. In 2007 it has risen to almost double that, at about 900 million pounds. Specialty mushroom consumption was about 13 million pounds, and of that, almost 5 million pounds of that were oyster mushrooms. These were grown by only 67 growers across the country. Of those 67 growers, about 6 farms produced almost half of those 5 million pounds.

Surprisingly, even with this rapid growth in the consumption of both mushrooms in general, and specialty mushrooms in specific, the amount of farmers producing mushrooms is actually decreasing. Many of the larger farms are now buying the smaller farms, and consolidating into larger corporations. Most of the farms are located in either Pennsylvania or California. There are only a few mushroom growers in Florida, but our demand far outweighs our supply. There are no major farms growing oyster mushrooms, or other specialty mushrooms, with the exception of a few shiitake mushroom growers. This makes a perfect opportunity for growing these specialty mushrooms in South Florida since competition comes mostly from farms shipping mushrooms from other states.

The markets for locally produced, organic, and specialty foods has been steadily increasing. With recent interest in the benefits of a healthy diet, consumers are looking to find foods that meet the needs we listed above. This interest goes from the savvy consumers to the media to the mainstream public, and then the food service industry can capitalize on the newly created markets. The consumer benefits when there is availability of fresh, locally grown produce available in restaurants and grocery stores. The businesses also benefit from increased sales and consumer relations. Theoretically healthy customers live longer and can buy more products over their lifetimes.
Gourmet foods are also more popular today than ever before. With the availability of exotic varities of so many different ingredients, cooking has become a competition sport on cable TV. There is an entire network devoted to nothing but food. There is intense interest in exotic flavor and color combinations. The oyster mushroom is uniquely placed in the market, because it enjoys a sense of obscurity and rarity when compared to button mushrooms, portobellas, creminis, and shiitakes. The fact that there are yellow, pink, blue, and a score of other color varieties of oyster mushrooms that can be grown only increases the novelty. While the grey oyster is usually found in the supermarkets in South Florida, the quality is very poor from shipping, handling, and shelf life.

Consumers interested in medicinal properties of herbs and natural remedies have propelled a 27 billion dollar a year market. This market is awash in products that are of questionable validity. Consumer reports of mislabeling and misleading claims have made the public aware of the need to see valid research on the claims being made. The fact is, that there is a wealth of information detailing the cornucopia of benefits that different mushrooms can provide. Oyster mushrooms are being investigated for their use in the fight against HIV. They have also been shown to have a cholesterol lowering effect on the body, which will be of great interest to many.


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Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311281 - 11/25/08 02:50 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Narrowing the focus – Target Market


Looking over all the data in regards to the market demographics, needs, and specifics, I came up with the following description of the types of person on which to focus our marketing efforts. Caucasian and Asian professional women ages 25-55 who eat organic, whole foods and prefer homeopathic, natural health treatments and are dealing with health issues such as cancer, chronic fatigue, and immune-deficiencies, are to be aggressively targeted. Places to locate this target audience are as follows: affluent sub-divisions, Predominantly Asian churches and social clubs, Cooking Clubs, Women health clinics, specialty food stores, and at local farmers’ markets.

Also, we will attempt to focus on the market for high-end restaurants, since they are looking for high quality foods and are willing to pay a premium for superior quality and freshness. South Florida has no shortage of four and five star restaurants and hotels, so if this market is properly engaged, it can prove to be a large outlet for our fresh mushrooms.

Specialty grocers like Whole Foods, Wild Oats, and local organic/specialty grocers will be targeted as well, since there is a push to stock more locally grown foods.

Naturopathic doctors, holistic medicine practitioners, and herbalists will also be aggressively targeted as an outlet for medicinal mushrooms. We will be one of the few suppliers that offer these in their whole dried form, so consumers can ascertain the quality of the mushrooms. We will also offer capsules containing proprietary blends of our mushrooms customized to the purchasers’ requirements. With the custom formulated products, customized packaging and labels will be offered as well. We will get laboratory analysis of our mushrooms and make the results of the tests available on our website along with articles on medicinal properties of mushrooms and culinary recipes. These will focus on the medicinal components of the mushrooms as opposed to nutritional aspects. (nutritional aspects will be on a separate page of the website.)


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311286 - 11/25/08 02:51 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Promotional Strategy

As a new business entity in an established market, you will need a defined strategy to promote your farm and products within the community. In the first year, I believe that it may be As much as 25-30% of the crop can be given away as samples in the first two to three harvests. Samples will be given to restaurants so that they can test market them as an evening special for their menu. These samples can also be given to local grocers as a demo product for their produce section. These samples are not included in the sales forecasts, as they are not directly generating any revenue through sales. Point-of-sale information will be provided to the grocers along with a display rack to hold the info sheets. Information will tell about our farm and the things we are doing to help benefit the community, give recipes, provide links to information on medicinal benefits of oyster mushrooms, and also contain our contact information.

Make 25 sales calls every day to solicit new business. Professional speaker Mike Ferry did this five days a week for two years, even on days when he was giving seminars. He credits this habit with helping build his business to over $10 million in annual sales. If you make 1300 sales calls a year, you're going to get some decent business no matter how bad your sales skills are.

South Florida is home to many food conferences and events, such as the South Beach Food and Wine Festival, The Delray Beach Garlic Fest, Annual Weston Wine and Food Festival, Coral Gables Wine and Food Festival all happen during our tourist season, and can be targeted to help create brand recognition. There are probably similar events in your area that can be targeted to really increase your farm’s visibility in your area. For food events that happen out of season, these can be excellent opportunities to generate revenue during an otherwise slow period for Florida businesses. Examples of these types of events include; WineQuest and the ACF National Convention (which is extremely important to target due to the size and influence of the attendees).

When marketing, especially direct at farmer's markets, you can promote the fact that the mushrooms are not grown on manure, but are actually recycling local agricultural wastes. We will also educate consumers about the alternative and cost effective methods of electricity efficiency and solar electrical generation that are utilized to maximize the farm's sustainability.

Local speaking engagements will be a good source of interest in our company, and may also generate revenue.

Creating a brand name and recognition of that brand are seen as very important tools for maintaining profitability. Ideas for helping to create brand name recognition for your farm include a contest between local chefs to design the best dish using your mushrooms. The recipes created will become your property and will be used to promote the farm’s mushrooms online and at direct-marketing points such as restaurants and farmer's markets. To increase visibility, it would be great to have the local food critics from the newspapers as the judges. This would at least ascertain that the newspapers would know about and even have an interest in the contest. Prize can be whatever you’d like, but to make it competitive, maybe it could be100 lbs. of oyster mushrooms, delivered in 5 or 10 lb. boxes once weekly during the busy season. This would have the effect of creating one new customer, since the winner already knows how to use the product very well, and now can offer it to the restaurant’s customers risk-free. If that relationship is managed properly, it could turn the restaurant/chef into a long term customer.


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Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311292 - 11/25/08 02:52 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Distribution Options –

I won’t get into this subject too deeply, but I do want to at least touch on the fact that a small farmer must have a system in place to take and process orders in a reliable fashion. This assures you that the hard work growing and marketing are not wasted by turning customers away because of distribution problems. Things to consider include; delivery routes, processing times, methods of packaging and delivery to the different points of distribution. You will also need to have refrigeration available to store your fresh mushrooms after harvest until you can deliver them to your customers. You will also need to have the ability to bring mushrooms to market under refrigeration. I’ve known farmers who use camping coolers filled with ice to bring mushrooms from farm to market, so there are options aside from the traditional solutions.

The mushrooms must be delivered on time and according to schedule in the amounts promised. If you’ve told a chef that you will be bringing 15 pounds by on Monday at 2:30PM (between the dinner and lunch rush), make sure you do just that. Restaurants need to have their items in stock or it represents lost revenue for them and more importantly for you. The mushrooms have to be delivered at a time when the kitchen staff will have time to accept the delivery. Learn their schedules and find the best way to fit them into your routes.

You will find that each customer’s needs are specific and it is up to you to ensure that you can meet their needs, or honestly explain why you cannot. Many times artisan food production does not and cannot follow the continuous schedule of restaurants, and that is fine. As long as the buyer is aware of the production schedules and availability, many times they understand the periodic nature of smaller-scale producers. If not, no problem, maybe the chef can recommend an associate at another restaurant who would be better suited to working with your farm. Instead of trying to keep up with an impossible schedule, and ending up with dis-satisfied buyers, it is better to be open and honest about the farms capacities. That way you can gain the word-of-mouth advertising that can only be gained by good customer services, and not bought.


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
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Re: Some Answers to Your Questions Regarding Making Money Growing Mushrooms [Re: Jeremy_Davis]
    #9311294 - 11/25/08 02:53 PM (15 years, 3 months ago)

Conclusion

Of course we’ve gone over many topics, but it important to understand that this material is simply an overview of some very involved and complex systems. There is much that I have not covered nor have I even mentioned some aspects of small farming. Even though this material is not exhaustive I really hope it helps you on your journey in life. I put this together for you and I welcome any requests for revisions to certain parts of this text, or even additional sections which I have not yet covered. If you would like to submit anything to be included with this article, please do! This can be a community project,  and any revisions, updates, or additional sections that are submitted from others will really help this text to be even more help to others in the future. Anyone responsible for any editing will be credit appropriately.

With all that said I really appreciate the time you took reading this so far, and I would love to hear your questions or comments. Please feel more than free to contact me at

Jeremy at webguild dot com.

Just please put something about Mushrooms in the subject line if you e-mail me. That way I will know it is not junk – you know how it goes these days with spam! Thanks again for your time and I wish you all the best in successes in your projects and your life.

Light and Love,
Your Brother
JD


--------------------
Jeremy Davis
Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization, Inc.
Check out the ECHO mushroom blog page to see our lab, growing facility, and more-www.echotech.org/greta

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