Mushrooms can grow on a wide range of substrates that need to be decomposed while producing food, medicine, and materials. Able to be grown in vertical gardens, humble mushrooms are popping up in farms located in a wide range of unexpected places, including large cities, shipping containers, and empty office spaces. This is just one of the many ways mushroom spore cultivation benefits our planet as the most sustainable food available.
Mushroom Spores Cultivation and Sustainability
With the world population clock ticking over to eight billion people in 2024, providing what people need in a smaller space while preserving the environment is vital to humanity’s survival. Cultivating mushrooms can go a long way toward achieving that goal. Producing more protein per acre than beef cattle and able to be grown in a wide range of environments that are not otherwise feasible for traditional agriculture, mushrooms can be grown sustainably, providing that it’s done properly. Considered by many to be a vegetable, mushroom is the fruiting body of fungi, which is neither fully plant, as it does not produce its own food, nor fully animal, because it can reproduce on its own.
Cultivating mushroom spores requires a clean environment to prevent other fungi and bacteria from contaminating the spores, but provided that proper sanitation is attended to, it’s a relatively easy process. Sterilized grain, straw or other substrata that is first soaked sufficiently and treated with any necessary amendments such as lime or fertilizer. Then mushroom spores are added to this mixture and allowed to propagate. As the mycelium spreads through the container, spawn is formed, which is the point where the cultivated strata can be added to additional strata. From one end of the process to the other, it takes just a few weeks to a couple of months to have tasty, edible mushrooms, though the variety, conditions, and available nutrition will impact the speed of production.
Once the spawn has been created from mushroom spores syringes, it can spread extensively. When added to logs, growing bags or beds, the fine white hairs of the mycelium network grow quickly, penetrating far into the ground to reach other organisms and communicate. When finding others of its species, it can exchange genetic material and produce additional spores of unique genetic makeup, protecting it from possible extinction events. For mushroom spore cultivation, this strong web of mycelium is the backbone of the fruiting bodies that form what most people typically think of as mushrooms.
Benefits of localized mushroom spores cultivation
Despite being grown on agro-waste sources such as sawdust, coffee grounds, grain, straw and other growing mediums, mushrooms provide a range of benefits, including food, medicine and materials. They require much less water and energy inputs than other crops, while their waste material can be decomposed into valuable compost for gardening use. There is very little waste in mushroom cultivation, with options available to remove almost all waste when one uses reusable growing containers such as buckets or trays for mass production. It also takes very little space compared to other forms of agriculture, with one square mile producing around 403 million kilos of food.
Evidently, there are many benefits to localized cultivation of mushroom spores, including urban farming production, fresh food in urban food deserts, dramatically reduced food miles, improved freshness and a strong cottage industry. Although the United States is still somewhat behind much of the world in mushroom farming and cultivation, an increased understanding of these beneficial organisms can create strong demand in the market in terms of sales, knowledge growth, scientific research and agricultural development.
