Proposal for a Mushroom Marketplace in Asheville
January 1st, 2008
by Alan Muskat
I have been teaching about mushrooms for over ten years. I have a book on the subject to be published next year. I've also been picking and selling wild mushrooms for about that long. Since I’m primarily an author and educator, I’ve been wanting to pass on this business on for some time. Also, wild mushroom hunting doesn’t really work on a small scale anyway. What does work is a mushroom marketplace, and that’s the idea I’d like to share. This is the way it's done all over Europe and it’s what I envision here in Asheville.
A mushroom market is a central storefront/clearinghouse, staffed by experts, that anyone can walk into and buy or sell wild mushrooms. Initially, it could be at a tailgate farmer’s market, but ideally it would be a place that’s open daily, with refrigeration on hand, like the WNC farmer’s market. Ultimately, however, the market should ideally be more central, like at the Grove Arcade. Although the fresh mushroom season only runs more or less from June through October (with the exception of morels, which fruit in late April), wild mushrooms are easily dried or frozen, and the supply can be supplemented by cultivated production available year-round. Such a market could also include a variety of local wild, semi-wild, and heirloom foods available over a wider season (see list here; I’ve foraged all these things here for years). For an overview of the idea, see flyer.
In the past, I’ve easily gathered and sold several hundred pounds of mushrooms a year, mostly on my own, at an average price of $16/#. I typically pay the picker half that amount. With some public education, I could see easily several thousandpounds a year go through the marketplace; possibly ten thousand. Most everyone who’s been here long knows the value of ginseng and a few other wildcrafted plants like galax. Granted, aside from morels, mushrooms are not much appreciated or even noticed. But consider that eighty percent of the volume of wild mushrooms available here come from just six varieties: lobster mushrooms, chicken of the woods, hen of the woods (maiitake), chanterelles, leatherbacks (Lactarius corrugis/volemus) and honey mushrooms. The first three are easy to recognize (see illustrations).
They’re also quite easy to find. Chicken and hen of the woods commonly fruit right in people's yards and weigh 5-30 pounds each. Oyster mushrooms are also found in that quantity anywhere that tulip poplars have been cut down. If you can offer $5 a pound, a person in very little time could easily make $25 or more. Granted, the fact that most mushrooms are not harvested in the deep woods means that one can not assume they are organic simply by virtue of being wild. Since mushrooms soak up toxins, contamination is a concern. But proper identification is not a concern because several of these top mushrooms have no dangerous look-alikes, and more importantly, all mushrooms are inspected and verified by experts at the market anyway.
Having a mushroom marketplace is safer for everyone since it introduces a degree of education and regulation around mushrooming. That’s why it’s done that way in Europe. In France, every pharmacist is trained in basic mushroom identification!
Finding these experts would not be difficult. The Asheville Mushroom Club, with over 100 members, is one of the oldest and largest mycological organizations in the country. The club could also help with the huge amount of public education that would be required to launch this market.
Why start this market in the first place? Since mushrooms are just the fruit of fungi, mushroom harvesting when done conscientiously is like picking berries. If the habitat is not unduly disturbed, they will keep growing back from the same fungus. This makes wild mushroom hunting, unlike ginseng hunting, a sustainable industry, one that in Pacific Northwest is already enormous. A search on “non timber forest products” (NTFP) will pull up many studies showing the economic potential of expanding commercial wild mushroom production in these and other areas. Since many choice edibles like lobster mushrooms, chanterelles, and boletes (porcini-type mushrooms) cannot be cultivated and only grow in the woods, such an industry argues for conservation and the air quality that these ecosystems need. This could be a way to keep our forests uncut and create more lasting employment at the same time.
We may not have anything like the volume of wild mushrooms coming out of the NW, but I could see ten thousand pounds a year being used right here in WNC. This would contribute to a local economy that depends less on outside jobs and materials. I’ve seen the price of wild mushrooms shipped in from the NW vary far above and below $16/#, but the quality of fresh local mushrooms is consistently far better. Also, WNC has the greatest diversity of mushrooms in the country, including many choice edibles that are simply unavailable commercially. These include a wide variety of boletes, puffballs, parasols, the beefsteak and cauliflower mushrooms, and many more.
The demand is certainly there. Last season I was contacted by The Compass Group in Charlotte, one of the largest food service companies in the world, asking about setting up a standing order for as much wild mushrooms as I could give them. You probably know that there is already a lot of initiative in North Carolina for growing gourmet mushrooms. In 2001 it was estimated that in ten years the industry could be generating as much as $80 million per year (from "Edible and Medicinal Mushroom Farming in North Carolina: A Cash Crop for the Future").
I could see a number of local nonprofits willing to support this effort, including ASAP (The Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project), CPC (The Center for Participatory Change), The WNC Alliance, Wildsouth (formerly The Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project), the Dogwood Alliance, and The NC Natural Products Association. Local 4H groups could also get involved.
Hopefully someone will want to take this idea and run with it. I could see my role as a consultant or perhaps as the public educator. Contact me if you’d like to discuss this idea further.
Alan Muskat