2021 was a year that started gloomily and ended gloomily, but there were some bright spots throughout the course of the year.
One such bright upland in January was the announcement that Scully Grower Supplies had taken over the trade at AST Totten helping customers to stay local and locally source the mushroom sector expertise that was embedded in that business. In export news, the value of Irish mushrooms exported was up 14 per cent to €115 million - not bad after nearly a year of pandemic mode. Bord Na Mona was ending all peat harvesting ASAP, and concerns were raised about the impending peat crunch, which played out over the rest of the year. The BARF fund got a mention, that’s the Brexit Adjustment Reserve Fund set up by the EU to offset the damage caused to markets by Brexit. Apparently now civil servants in London are not allowed to use the word Brexit - they have to refer to the date of the rupture instead. News that the Balmoral Show was to be cancelled or rescheduled was noted - the uncertainty caused by the new Alpha variant was pretty unsettling all round. Book of the month was Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets.
Temperature wise the year went from minus 8C on January 9th to 31C on July 21st - quite a variation there, with Ireland experiencing above average temperatures and levels of sunshine, with less rainfall than usual.
Flouncing into February another happy mushroom sector news story was of Armagh company McShane Packaging creating 20 new jobs and investing all of £2.3million into technology and sustainable packaging solutions - it certainly was a bright start to the year in that regard. The problem with peat began resurfacing again in February with parties in the Irish government at odds with each other over the use of peat and continuing production of peat within the State. News from the US on the trending mushroom boom there and some in-depth research at Penn State University on a phorid fly scourge afflicting the mushroom growing centre of the country.
There was some science too in the use of sporekill spot against Lecanicillium carried out by Microbiotech Ltd.
March heralded the beginning of spring and the beginning of hope, with restrictions still in place in Ireland and the UK - Monaghan Group were looking to the future with a hook up with Brenntag Food And Nutrition business in North America. The potential sales of mushroom supplements never looked so good. There was more good news for the local mushroom supply sector with word that Axis Technology in Craigavon won a £4 million contract for it's machinery to be used to help a Canadian company improve its mushroom harvest.
Flexitarian trends and alt-milk were making the notes, as too was the continuing peat problem. The Irish Mushroom industry was facing an immediate problem according to Mel O’Rourke. The importation of boatloads of peat from the Baltic region was mooted, and duly came to pass later in the year.
There was also news that mushroom exports to the UK were booming. The Origin Green mark was aiming to improve carbon neutrality in food grown in Ireland with new measures being introduced to target emissions in food production. Word of the month was Non-Fungible Token, which went on to be awarded word of the year by some well established dictionaries.
Brexit reared its head again in April with the blocking of nematodes from the UK to Europe being noted. A Canadian robotics firm had helped develop a robotic picking arm for the mushroom sector out there - the name TechBrew is one to watch. The bright promise of the magic mushroom chemical improving the brain chemistry of depressed patients was making news all last year, and still is. Plastic bags, soap and food, made from mushroom waste was also a novel angle picked up during April, with The FungusChain Consortium an EU project bringing 16 partners from across the continent together including Monaghan in Ireland and Neem Biotech in the UK.
Stuart Whitehall of Nutrigain penned an incisive article on making your disinfectant investment go further. There was also a good look at the new clothing range from Stella McCartney made out of mushrooms - you just can beat them. Cryptocurrency got a little explainer - noted as everything you don’t understand about money combined with everything you don’t understand about computers. To which another wag has now added, in a slightly politically incorrect fashion - cryptocurrency is astrology for men! Watch out for Britcoin, Diem from Facebook/ Meta, and the E-Yuan from China, all cryptocurrencies mooted to make the news this year.
Mushrooms in May keep the medics away - could be a new spake to promote the fresh produce. One article in the May edition espoused mushrooms as a fat free superfood - good for vitamin D; good for selenium and other antioxidants; good for your bowels; good for potassium, hence your blood pressure; and good for B vitamins for the brain, eyes, nerves and blood. Super dooper indeed.
Increasingly more and more newsprint was devoted to the banning of peat based compost in the UK and Ireland. CAFRE campuses in the north were receiving a financial fillip with £75 million investment to underpin future sustainable growth of the Northern Ireland agri-food industry. The UK and Ireland Mushroom Producers organisation were promoting the fresh produce partnering with celebrity chef Melissa Hemsley to demonstrate the versatility of the humble mushroom. A new study from Penn State in the US was also promoting mushrooms consumption as a way to cut the risk of developing certain cancers - as ever Stalker remained slightly sceptical of any health claims.
The Delta variant had also landed on the pandemic scene - with talk of black fungus disease in India where the variant raged through the population.
Jumping into June mushrooms were in the spotlight in Australia - a promotional campaign led to a ‘Mush Boom’ apparently. In the US the labour shortage was causing a mushroom shortage as firms struggled to find workers to pick their produce. The same phenomenon was evidenced all over the western world as the asymmetric effects of the pandemic began to show. Good news from Holland as the 2022 Mushroom Days were scheduled to take place with a firm date given - as firm as anything in the new norm we have entered. The end of the ‘Mushrooms Complement Everything’ campaign earlier in the year was noted - the EU co-financed promotional campaign in the UK and Ireland.
In Ireland the IFA was meeting with the minister of state for agriculture to discuss the difficulties that had emerged in the mushroom sector - specifically the peat ban.
There was news of 250 year old fungal spores being re-spawned - the spores had been kept by the great botanist of the 18th Century Carolus Linnaeus.The mushroom strain in question Podaxis is seen by researchers as having numerous medical applications in the future! The Penn State robotic mushroom picker also got a look in this edition.
July duly arrived with extreme hail showers in southern England and extreme heat in Armagh and Tyrone. The sleet showers in Essex destroyed crops in the fields there. The highest temperature of the year of 31.4C was recorded in Armagh, but later discounted as the instrumentation wasn’t accurate enough somehow. CastleDerg in Tyrone took the top spot for highest temperature at 31.3C. The peat question was dominating the political scene in Ireland with politicians claiming that the government there was causing the demise of the horticulture sector. Peat alternatives were also at the forefront of the debate - but as yet no other growing medium comes close to the perfection of Irish peat. Growing Media Ireland stated that their members were hugely concerned with the recommendations being set out by governmental departments in the south. Meanwhile Stalker had spotted a novel use for SMC reported on Sky News - as a camouflage covering for toxic tar pools in the UK - more than slightly illegal.
The UK and Ireland Mushroom Producers organisation unveiled a Seasonal Vegetable League Table to show consumers what produce was locally sourced in what season. There was also news that the Ukrainian Mushroom Days event was getting the go ahead for October. The Northern Ireland Protocol was exercising folk left, right and centre - which seems to still be the case - see newly installed Liz Truss at the FO.
Advancing to August - mushrooms in space were the big draw. An article homed on on the potential use of mycelium to build satellites from that would be less harmful to both orbital routes and less hazardous for burn up on re-entry to Earth. More psychedelic mushrooms were being touted as the means to send human crews into deep space without them going off their heads. It all sounds very plausible - The Expanse beckons. The regenerative aspects and bioremediation abilities of mushrooms were also explored in another piece on the future trends for humanity. Mushroom beauty products are also becoming very popular and one of the most versatile mushrooms in this regard is tremella mushrooms. As one contributor to the beauty debate said - “Mushrooms are super fun, interesting and sexy”; thon is a quote for ya!
The incipient staff shortage in many sectors in the UK was exemplified by the scarcity of lorry drivers. Tesco were offering substantial carrots to lure drivers to their operations. The Irish government outlined new strategy targets for Agri-food exports by 2030.
Stepping gingerly into September, the ongoing shortage of drivers was becoming acute in the UK and evident elsewhere in Europe. In Northern Ireland one representative of a major mushroom producing group made a point in reference to the alternative peat future - David Dallas said “Until a suitable substitute is available, the loss of peat for mushroom casing will wipe out the mushroom production sector in Northern Ireland – a sector which has a farm-gate value of £46 million and employs 1,000 people.”
Codd Mushrooms Ltd was hailed among Ireland’s Best Managed Companies, a programme led by Deloitte Ireland in association with Bank of Ireland.
Energy prices hitting an upward trend was noted as a concern for the future. In the US the value of all mushroom sales was standing at an eye watering €1.06 billion - a billion dollar industry.
Meanwhile in Canada a spokeswoman for Fyffes said that a review of their recently acquired mushroom business determined that it should be managed separately as it is “fundamentally different” to the tropical fresh produce operation, “requiring a different approach to farming, production, financing and marketing”.
Also of note was the fact that UK food and drink exports to the EU were very much in decline - the Brexit effect was beginning to show in the data.
Ostensibly October followed the pattern of preceding months as the peat debacle rumbled on, with news that 200 truckloads of peat had been imported from Latvia into Ireland. The IFA described it as a travesty.
Codd mushrooms garnered more plaudits with Origin Green Gold membership, following exceptional annual performance in their sustainability initiative.
Local company Mushroom Machine based out of Lisburn in Co. Antrim were pushing their ‘Gamechanger’ robotic mushroom machine - to lessen dependence on labour and improve picking performance.
Sylvan were purveying a new spawn in Europe called Tuscan 820. The world’s largest vertical farm was being constructed in Gloucestershire. And from Estonia, a battery made from peat was touted as a potential alternative to the normal batteries found in EVs - turf powered vehicles here we come!
One other fascinating piece looked at the idea that mushroom consumption may lower depression - now that would make them medicinal mushrooms!
Nimbly skipping into November, by the end of the month the news cycle was dominated by the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus - just in time to make sure Christmas ‘21 was going to be another doosie. Avian flu was detected in Monaghan, in England and in Northern Ireland.The new date for the Dutch Mushroom Days event was settled on - as things stand they will take place in July 2022. There was news of another robotic mushroom picking system out of Cambridge, called Ceres Agri-Tech. Monaghan Mushrooms supplied fresh mushrooms to feed the delegates at the COP 26 eco -summit in Glasgow. Stella McCartney was nearby too promoting her mushroom leather goods.
The shortage of labour in the mushroom sector was a talking point in the north with an assembly member raising the issue with Daera Minister Edwin Poots.
Finally we reached the terminus of the year with an ever bleaker December descending upon us as the new wave of covid cases started to rise. The giant mushroom farm being built in Lancashire was making the news. As was the peat harvesting report in Ireland - talk of a just transition and reducing grower dependence on peat were talking points. An item on how fungi can help with the climate crisis was welcome reading after the downbeat mood post the COP26 meeting the previous month. Ireland got an approved €920 million subsidy from the BARF fund in the end - not chump change, but probably not enough to help assuage the bumps raised by Brexit. Teagasc were reporting that the horticulture sector was under real cost rising pressures, with the mushroom sector not immune to the increases.
However as the year ended there were reasons to be hopeful that industry issues were being solved in some measure, and hope too that the new covid variant wasn’t as hard hitting as Delta. Even though things are still tough, there are once again bright spots up ahead, and a hope that 2022 will bring a more positive outlook with it. Fingers crossed.
