by Steve Gabriel

Fungi and Mushrooms
Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of a specific group of fungi, including a much larger group of organisms, many of which never produce a mushroom. This remarkable group includes yeasts, molds, and many other non-fruiting species.
The common aspect between these creatures is that they, like animals, are heterotrophs, meaning they digest foods in their environment for energy - sort of like we do - except that instead of eating and digesting food inside our gut with a complex set of organisms and enzymes, mushrooms secrete enzymes into their environment and digest food in this way. Think of it like having an inside-out stomach.
Like humans, mushrooms need oxygen and respire carbon dioxide into the air. They are also an excellent protein source and contain a structure known as a branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) composition, which is usually only found in animal-based protein sources. Their cell walls are made of chitin, a fibrous polysaccharide and dietary fiber that gives them rigidity and shape. Chitin is also found in other organisms, such as crustaceans, insect exoskeletons, and some fish and amphibians.
While the mushrooms are remarkable, they are not unlike the body of the fungal organism known as mycelium. This thread-like material is the vegetative structure that grows, blends, and builds in mass before eventually producing the fruit (i.e., mushroom), at least in some species. Many species of fungi form mycelium but don’t produce a mushroom. Of course, we tend to be interested in those that do.
Each mushroom species has evolved to interact with its environment, find food, and reproduce. Almost all species commonly grown on farms are considered saprophytes or decomposers. These organisms feast on dead and decaying organic materials as their food source, breaking down lignins, cellulose, trace minerals and nutrients. In pursuit of decomposition, the mycelium grows throughout its food source. If a mass of mycelium encounters another mass of its liking, it can merge, form a mega-mass, and continue to grow. Discovered in 1998, an Armillaria ostoyae fungus was the world's largest known organism and at the time, encompassed nearly four square miles.
Other types of fungi and fruiting mushrooms can be grouped by their ecological role in the world. Perhaps the group invoking the greatest sense of curiosity are mycorrhizal species, which partner with plants and either grow around or penetrate the cell walls of their root systems, effectively expanding the structure to capture water and nutrients. In exchange, the plants allocate a remarkable portion of the simple sugars they generate during photosynthesis back to the mushroom. It is estimated that 90% of plants have one or more fungal partners that act in symbiosis. Some of the most prized wild foraged edibles are mycorrhizal, such as Chanterelles, Boletes, Morels, and Truffles. Given the complex relationships between plants and fungi, it is nearly impossible to cultivate these species reliably, though humans are trying to figure it out.
Saprophytic mushrooms are the fallback for most growers since the requirements and parameters for growing these are the easiest to achieve. The most adaptable is the Pleurotus genus, or oyster mushrooms, which can consume almost any lignocellulose material in pursuit of their life cycle. Other common genera cultivated include Agaricus (Button, Crimini, Portabella), Lentunula (Shiitake), Hericium (Lions Mane), Pholiota (Chestnut, Nameko), Agrocybe (Pioppino), and others.
So, mushrooms are the fruit and the mycelium is the organism, just like an apple is to the tree. Inside an apple, of course, are seeds that can grow into new trees. Similarly, inside the mushroom are spores containing the genetic information to reproduce more mycelium.
Yet, the similarities between plants and mushrooms quickly diverge. Plant seeds have a protective coating, and carbohydrates are used to start growth — they “pack a lunch.” Invisible to the naked eye, spores are single cells filled with DNA. Mushrooms exude millions of spores into the environment on the chance they will find a suitable food source, mate, and conditions for them to germinate and thrive.
All this to say, as farmers, we typically don’t work with spores as the starting point. Most people skip the complicated world of asexual reproduction via spores and instead work to expand mycelium as the means of production. The easiest entry into growing mushrooms is multiplying mycelium, or cloning, from a sterile material (usually sawdust or grain) inoculated with mycelium taken from a “cutting” from a healthy fruiting body.
Why Farm Mushrooms?

Many good reasons exist to partner with fungi in a farming enterprise. There are also good reasons not to pursue a business with mushrooms. It’s easy to dream about starting a business, but building one is very different. More than anything else, you must be honest about the type of person you are and what you want to spend your time doing. Farming mushrooms is not for everyone. As with other farm enterprises, start small and tinker with production before promising chefs and farmers markets a product. Expect to have times you cruise along and times you will question your sanity for farming in the first place.
In the US, mushrooms are having a moment. The interest and excitement in mushrooms has exploded over the past decade. There are many reasons for this:

People are fascinated by mushrooms. The culinary and medicinal mushrooms commonly grown are a fraction of an expansive and remarkable fungal world, which includes many non-fruiting fungi, molds, and yeasts. The unseen nature of the mycelium of mushrooms, growing and then suddenly emerging as fruit bodies, is a sight to behold. When one interacts with mushrooms, there is something that taps into a primal nature. For some of us, mushrooms also tap into our youthful self of discovery - like the joys of playing hide and seek.
They are delicious and nutritious. Mushrooms offer an incredible suite of nutritional value. They are high in protein with zero saturated fats and contain Vitamins D, E, A, and a range of amino acids. Mushrooms are notable for offering a specific “umami” flavor, a taste category in foods (others being sweet, sour, salt, and bitter) that correspond to the flavor of glutamic acids. It's most commonly defined as “savory,” but the characteristics of Umami can also be described as “meaty,” “complex,” or simply “deliciousness.” Consuming properly cooked mushrooms is incredibly fulfilling.
They are incredibly medicinal. Both as a live food and in extracts, mushrooms host a wide array of potent compounds that offer sustaining and healing properties to our bodies. Generally, all species benefit overall immune system health, helping it balance in response to the myriad of daily stressors. Certain mushrooms offer additional anti-cancer, anti-viral, and antiseptic functions, and some help improve memory, brain function, mood, and sex drive.
They are versatile. Almost all recipes benefit from the presence of fresh mushrooms. They are a great addition to soups, stir fry, curries, sauces, pasta, and pizza and can easily fool a meat lover as a replacer of animal protein (mushrooms are frequently made into burgers, shredded “pork” and “crab” cakes). They are also remarkably easy to prepare; simply dry saute, add oil or butter and salt, and cook for 3 - 5 minutes on medium heat. This becomes the launch point for many possibilities.
Mushrooms can be processed into a wide range of products and services. The versatility of mushrooms is not just in the fresh product (i.e., the fruiting body). There are many value-added products, including whole and powdered dried, seasoning, jerky, snack chips, beverages, and extracts, just to name a few. Mycelium, the pre-fruit form of the fungus, has been successfully developed into compostable packaging, a leather-like product, and even insulation panels for buildings. Mushroom farms also profit by selling grow kits for customers to produce their own mushrooms and holding workshops, festivals, and other events that leverage people's interest in learning more.
The mass market provides ugly, slimy mushrooms. In the US, most people haven’t seen the wide range of colors, shapes, and sizes mushrooms offer and the high quality and freshness that small farms can achieve. When you peruse the shelves of a grocery store, most mushrooms on display are one species, Agaricus bisporus, which is the white button, brown crimini, and portobello. If lucky, you might see a few other species, often suffocating, wrapped in plastic and styrofoam, and usually a bit soggy and smelly. Most mushrooms are mass-produced and distributed, frequently taking weeks to arrive from the farm to the store. This low quality is often why many people think they don’t like mushrooms.
When a smaller local farm brings and displays fresh, high-quality mushrooms at a market, it’s common to hear, “I’ve never seen something like this” or “Is this food or art?” What a compliment! Even though the mass industry can offer a low price point, the competition is minimal for small farms when they provide such a remarkable, high-quality, fresh, and locally grown product.
Education is Key
Regardless of your goals in pursuing mushroom farming and the products you make, expect education to be a part of your business. This is an opportunity to keep your fascinated customers engaged with your farm and to help increase their knowledge about all they have to offer, from their health benefits to their sustainability and low-carbon footprint to their ecosystem benefit as a decomposer and soil builder.
Mushrooms as a Farming Practice
Solely producing mushrooms outdoors and relying on the variability of mother nature is limited in terms of the species and consistent yields needed for a business. So, many commercial farmers develop indoor production as their mainstay because the controlled environment allows for consistent yields. While this style can appear less like “real” farming. Let’s examine this concept for a minute.
Farming is simple; Merriam-Webster defines it as the practice of agriculture, which it further defines as “the science, art, or practice of cultivating the soil, producing crops, and raising livestock and in varying degrees the preparation and marketing of the resulting products.”
Indeed, mushroom farming produces crops, and a farmer prepares and markets fresh mushroom products. The aspect of cultivating soil as a requirement for farming could be argued. Other practices like hydroponics and aquaculture don't include this component, and they are both considered farming in most arenas and by the USDA and most certifying agencies (including NOFA). While mushroom farmers don’t cultivate soil per se, soil building is a byproduct of mushroom production.
The margins on a mushroom farm are good. Unlike someone trying to start a small dairy or sell meat or eggs, which have a deflated price because of industrial farming and subsidies, mushrooms have a sense of novelty and appeal to the public, presenting a real opportunity to the small farmer. This doesn’t mean starting and sustaining a mushroom business is easier than other types of farming. Like all farming, the risks are high, the hours long and inconsistent, and the markets fickle. It takes persistence, grit, and stubbornness to make it all work.
When most people think of farms, iconic images of green pastures and grazing animals, fields with vegetables, or an orchard come to mind. Mushroom farming is quite different. In most cases, mushroom farmers cultivate in the shade of trees and forest or inside a structure. At certain scales, indoor farms appear more like factories than farms. Smaller producers can nestle their mushroom operations into the landscape and connect the inputs and outputs back to the soil and the earth, even selling the byproducts as compost.
Mushroom farming offers the ability to scale up and down during a given season or over years or decades. Changes to production systems can be made in a few weeks, and utilizing different fast and slow-growing species can increase and decrease the intensity of harvest. For instance, a farm might want to grow a bunch of reishi in winter when markets are slower, focusing on harvesting and drying this slower-growing species for medicinal extracts or other products. Then, the farm could transition to fast-growing species like Lion's Mane, Shiitake, or Oyster to ramp up fresh production in concert with the peak growing and market season. A farmer could also do the opposite, offer fresh mushrooms when most other farms aren’t producing in the winter, or take a month or more off to focus on something else or take a vacation (wouldn’t that be nice?)
If you are already farming, mushrooms can be a great addition to your systems. You can choose a scale, timing, and circumstance for growing that works for you. Even if mushrooms are the sole focus of an enterprise, it is pertinent to connect the outputs of waste (composted blocks) to some other form of soil-based cultivation, turning it into a valuable farm input. The word “practice” in the definition above is good, emphasizing that, as with all farming, the main activity is to carry out a process routinely, with repeated success.
Here is how growing mushrooms is like other types of farming:
The practice centers around growing a living crop with all the learning, risks, and rewards that come along with it.
It is required to work with the variability of the seasons, weather, and climate, even when growing indoors.
Growers are always troubleshooting and solving problems, monitoring and observing living systems, and making adjustments.
Existing or innovative technology is leveraged to improve efficiency and effectiveness, including engaging with “building science,” examining the qualities of temperature, humidity, CO2, and their interactions (similar to greenhouse growers).
Human labor is a necessary and costly component of an operation.
The farmer does a little of everything: plumbing, electrical, heat and cooling systems, repairs, etc.
Mushroom farming produces soil as a valuable byproduct.
Here are some ways mushroom farming is unique:
Mushroom farming requires constant work - harvesting is usually several times a day.
Unlike other crops or livestock, where the grower can monitor progress along the way, mushrooms emerge quickly, so harvest timing is unpredictable.
Mushroom farming requires an extreme focus on cleanliness and sterility at different steps of the process.
From Spore to Store: Sectors of the Mushroom Industry
The mushroom industry has evolved (and needs more evolution) to segregate and specialize aspects of the entire production cycle. Many new farms struggle if they try to take on all of these elements at once. The good news is that you don’t have to but it’s essential to know the general areas of the mushroom farming sector:
1) Genetic Preservation/Breeding - Selection of new species and strains and the preservation of genetics for longer-term storage through the replication of master cultures, cryogenic freezing of cultures, etc.
2) Spawn Production - High sterilization for quality G2 spawn cultures used in various hobby and commercial facilities.
3) Block Production - Inoculating substrates and facilitating the initial growth of mycelium. These are sold to retail consumers in bulk as “ready to fruit” blocks or individually as grow kits or tabletop farms.
4) Fruiting & Sales - Maintaining optimal temperature, humidity, light, and oxygen conditions for fruiting mushrooms to thrive and developing local markets for sales.
5) Mushroom Products: Fresh mycelium or mushrooms or dried/ powdered mushrooms are used as the basis for a wide range of food and medicinal products.
Typically, a business combines several of these sectors in varying combinations. For example, many companies focus on consumer audiences (1, 2, 3) and offer cultivation supplies, including spawn, grow kits, and cultures. Others focus entirely on the grower audience (2, 3) and sell spawn and ready-to-fruit blocks. Some farms purchase ready-to-fruit blocks, concentrating their efforts on the fruit and sales alone (4). Still, other companies stay outside mushroom production and purchase mushrooms and make a wide range of edible, medicinal, and material products (5).
While many new growers looking to build their skills might think it's best to start at the top and work down, that isn’t true. Genetics and spawn-making are the hardest to master, requiring more precision and skills to avoid problems. Any problem in this stage can trickle down and amplify as mycelium is expanded. Most small farms start by buying ready-to-fruit blocks to get a handle on their requirements and start to build their markets. Over time, they might expand to add in-house block production and other elements.
Mushroom farming is like a highway with multiple lanes, vehicles moving at a wide range of speeds, and many ramps and exits to choose from. Ultimately, it is up to you to determine the best fit for your farm to match your goals, the context you are growing in, and the market demand.
Steve Gabriel has been growing and foraging mushrooms in various situations for the past 20 years. He is not sure if he is in charge or the mushrooms. Through Wellspring Forest Farm, Steve offers tours, workshops, and an annual online course, "Growing Mushrooms for Fun and Profit,” which runs in November and December 2024. He can be reached at stevegabrielfarmer@gmail.com.
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