The year began with the effects of the previous autumn’s rainfall having an impact on the vegetable sector. In January, Tesco UK warned customers that smaller veg would be in shops and on the shelves as a result of the adverse weather on the harvest. Sainsbury's meanwhile were touting the success of dumping 775 tonnes of plastic per year by switching its mushrooms from plastic to cardboard punnets. The company said its new cardboard punnets would be easily recyclable. A good green start to the New Year it seemed. The Bord Bia report on the sector was looking ahead to market volatility and inflation being key factors for the year ahead. The overall market for Irish food and drink products was to remain challenging throughout the year. Bjork's new album was noted, entitled Fossora - her interest in all things fungal was pretty evident. The FT reported on Mycorecycle, and the new King was reported as being a serious mushroom forager.
Grocery price inflation was slowing, but the hike in food prices was an issue that would dominate political and news cycles throughout the year.
Into February, one of the slower news months of the year, and the internet was abuzz with news of a mushroom sprouting from the body of a frog in India. More locally British firm Myco were unveiling plans to launch a new burger range with a protein mince made from oyster mushrooms. Mushroom Machine from Northern Ireland were also making news heading off on their Global Implementation Tour - it would see the company doing local expositions of their machine at work, and they also pitched up at the North American Mushroom Conference. Quite a few Irish attended the Las Vegas conference including JF McKenna, Mc Don Peat, and a clutch of Teagasc scientists.
The interesting factoid that mushrooms can help ward off the smell of old age was a revelation. A new mushroom emoji was destined for our social media feeds. A study on how magic mushrooms could help boost people’s sex lives got a mention. Reishi mushrooms boosting hair regrowth was another left of field mushroom application. There was a new range of mushroom energy drinks highlighted, and the fact that Monterey Mushrooms had revamped their website.
An Irish mushroom coffee start-up called OYL also got a mention - they’re certainly surfing a trend.
The big news in March was the discovery of a new antioxidant derived from mushrooms. Researchers in Japan published on the discovery of Inaoside A, along with three other bioactive compounds from Laetiporus cremeiporus an edible mushroom variety. In the UK meanwhile, there was a call to boycott Irish mushrooms in order to protect peat bogs, Padraic O Leary of Walsh Mushrooms was quoted as saying “ This campaign is an absolute shame. Mushrooms are a superfood.. And a massive industry generating a lot of income… and livelihoods depend on it.”
There were more reports of sightings of Irish mushroom industry personnel at the NAMC in Vegas. The price makeup of the full Irish fry up was also scrutinised with all ingredients and their costs calculated by the Irish CSO. There was also a report on research into the carbon negative attributes of a mushroom forestry system being investigated by the University of Stirling. Carbon sequestration being a big deal it is sure that this strand of research will feature more in the future.
The RTE horticultural programme Home Grown featured well known Co. Offaly growers Joe and Dolores Gorman, growing their exotic varieties. As Joe Said - “ I have mushrooms in the blood”.
April saw horticulture employers in Ireland put out a baleful message that wage increases for staff were not sustainable. That message has probably gotten even louder this year. But as cost of living increases bite workers, the thrust for ever upward wage increases remains. It seems as though the economy as a whole is caught in an inflationary spiral. Extreme weather in the form of excessive rain was being implicated as a threat to food security in the UK by no less an organisation than the NFU. As the year ended the UK had experienced its worst harvest season on record. There was news of a rare truffle find in Scotland; genetically engineered petunias in the US that glowed in the dark; and extraction of gold nanoparticles from mushrooms in India.
The latest fasting diet fad was noted, in which mushrooms played a starring role. The mushroom coffee range from Dirtea was in expansionary mode. The National Trust boycott of Irish mushrooms had farmers bracing for impact. And the Edinburgh Science Festival had a lot of fungal threads in the mix - with mushroom engineering and a slow fashion ethos being highlighted. The danger of using apps to identify mushrooms was a concern down under. While some research from Melbourne University on the fire resistant nature of panels made from fungal materials was generating some interest. With the fires raging in California and the conflagrations last year in Greece and Hawaii, it is certain that this will be a recurring avenue of research.
Moving into May the Northern Ireland Mushroom Growers Association was telling the then minister Steve Baker that the sector could not be left behind in the journey towards automation. The contraction of the mushroom industry in the north was noted, as was the value of £64.5 million to the local economy. Meanwhile in the UK as a whole mushroom sales were still buoyant, with a 3 percent growth in the food category since Covid. Sterling was nestling around the €1.16 rate at this point in the year.
A Brexit anomaly in IT systems , in particular the Import of products, animals, food and feed system - (Ipaffs) managed to fox importers into the UK with a linguistic lapsus, demanding latin names for all plants and flowers. Et tu Flora?
Mushroom coffee was being queried by Prof Nicholas Money a mycologist at Miami University in Ohio. “Show me the evidence” he asked re the claims being made for the trendy new coffees!
Aldi were putting their money behind a hobbyist mushroom grower, turned entrepreneur on a Channel 4 prog called Aldi’s Next Big Thing. His dried Lion’s Mane mushrooms were stocked in 1000 Aldi stores soon after broadcast.
The search for alternatives to peat from the mushroom sector was looked at via Teagasc videos available at www.teagasc.ie. We said goodbye to Shirley Conran of “Life is too short to stuff a mushroom” fame; and there was an obit for Pieter Vedder , a giant of the mushroom industry scene in decades gone by - Modern Mushroom Growing was a must have tome in any mushroom growing household.
As June bounced in, news that Northway Mushrooms was being sold as a going concern hit the headlines. The Tyrone based mushroom compost supplier was battling headlines throughout the summer months.
There was a report on the Teagasc Mushroom Automation Seminar which took place on June 11th - all the top names in the autonomous machine systems end of things were in attendance. “Soft robotics uses technologies that focus on imitating living organisms in terms of flexibility and dexterity, such as the human hand” said Dr Helen Grogan. Automation is not a luxury, said one expert - “it's going to be necessary for your business to thrive and survive!”
The Mushroom Machine crew were letting us know that their offering was good to go on farm.
There was a warning on the boom of mushroom growing which one expert was saying could cause a biodiversity crisis. If non-native fungi could alter the microbiology of soil then it could spell trouble for horticulture and gardening in the UK in the future.
Finally there was an obituary for Akira Endo - the discoverer of the first statin - derived from a fungus. How many lives has that medicine saved or extended?
Concerns were expressed in July about the Migration Advisory Committee report by the Northern Ireland Mushroom Growers Association.
NIMGA described the report as a missed opportunity to secure the future of the northern sector of the industry; “Without urgent action from the government the mushroom industry in Northern Ireland as we know it will cease to exist,”said John McArdle.
Meanwhile in the south two new horticulture schemes aimed at the sector were launched - the schemes were designed to increase innovation and diversification amongst primary growers.
There was news of the previous month's automation seminar at Teagasc- one of the organisers stated that 40 attendees had been expected, but 110 showed up- quite the bump! Sterling was continuing to grow stronger throughout the year.
The Yorkshire mushroom firm Myco was in expansionary mode adding more space to its production site. Monaghan Mushrooms offering into M&S was highlighted in a promotional campaign, which also produced the insight into an Irish expression for mushroom - fas aon - meaning the growth of one night. One could also listen to mushroom music on Hampstead Heath in London apparently - a Vancouver based musician had sold out two shows earlier in the year, “sonifying nature” as he said. Weird and wonderful. There was a global I.T outage that struck in July, reminiscent of one that hit in 2014.
And as we headed into deep summer, the hottest day of the year hit on July 21st.
August was a bit of a damp squib - in Ireland for sure. As we experience the hottest years ever recorded globally it would seem that Ireland and the UK are experiencing cooler summers. Front pages of national media were adorned with mushrooms from Monaghan in M&S guise - enriched with vitamin B6. Straw price sensitivity was high in inverse proportion to the solar strength index.
The IFA were looking forward to the 2025 budget and proposing some ideas for the Horticulture Crisis Fund, and also looking at the Spent Mushroom Compost scheme.
An interesting BBC radio programme was aired on Underground Fungi and The Economy - still available on the BBC sounds app if you are interested. There was a ‘patentability of fungi’ case rumbling through the Hague which was of interest to several mushroom sector companies. The US mushroom council had elected a new president, namely Amy Wood.
A new supplement called NADS+ was all the rage in the health and beauty sphere - nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide - some mushrooms have it in spades apparently.
The fabulous world of fungi was also being heralded in a new multimedia art exhibition in Edinburgh - which ran from August to December.
September, famed in the US for the Mushroom Monday initiative promoted by the Mushroom Council, stole in on us very quickly after the coolest summer in a decade. News that Harte Peat had become RHP mushroom certified was highlighted - the RHP quality mark being much sought after in supplier circles - as Aidan O’Harte said “We can ship our products anywhere in the world”.
Penn State University had received grant aid to investigate agricultural microbiomes. The study involved button mushrooms, seeking a deeper understanding of fungal devomes with implications far beyond mushroom production. As Stalker enquired - devomez-vous?
Mushrooms were at least hitting the right headlines in the media - with “the veg you should and shouldn’t be eating” articles tipping mushrooms in the beneficial category. Vitamin D, selenium potassium and copper being the righteous constituent parts.
The Top 1000 Irish Companies list was published again, featuring the two biggest companies in the mushroom sector, namely Monaghan and Walsh. Mushroom robots had been making more headlines too - with a Cornell University research team unveiling a mushroom-controlled biohybrid robot - truly amazing. Monaghan town was also the setting for the first dedicated mushroom festival on Irish soil. It took place on Saturday 28th of September and there was something for everyone happening in the fungal treats that abounded on the day.
Observing October Sainsbury's were headlining with news of their first peat free mushrooms offering from Monaghan Mushrooms. The new peat free variety was heralded as a commitment to lowering climate impact from the sector and helping achieve net zero goals going forward. It's all about the carbon footprint.
French authorities were putting out an alarm around the use of new apps to identify mushroom species. The French are very fond of their mushroom hunts in the autumnal season, but with the rise in poisonings year on year the national food agency was adamant that people should seek expert advice and not rely on apps.
A new book by Richard Fortey was reviewed: Close Encounters of the Fungal Kind - surely a valuable addition to any mycophiles library. There was a move on a supranational level to have fungi named as a wholly separate branch of life, to have its own kingdom in the biological and botanical sphere. Chile and the UK were proposing the change at convention on biological diversity during the Cop16 meeting.
The inflationary spiral that had gripped the West since just after the pandemic was finally beginning to abate. Grocery price inflation however was still something that was on consumers minds.
Nibbling around the edges of the end of the year, November was full of Swiss bliss, reishi and gloomy weather.
Mushroom growers in the north were reportedly furious at UK government seasonal worker visa rules and costs. The apparent discrepancies between northern sector and southern sector worker availability was seen as tightening the screws on the industry in the north. The age of robotic picking was sharpening the focus of many industry players, with plenty of innovation coming from the Northern Irish machine companies Axis and Mushroom Machine. Down under Sean O'Connor, CEO of 4AG Robotics, indicated that their latest machine was capable of picking 40 kg/hour, 24/7.
There was promotional material from the GEPC group highlighting European mushrooms as the hidden gem. Christiaens and Highline were teaming up to create the mushroom farm of the future. And the planetary climate emergency was highlighted by the certainty that 2024 was the hottest year on record - even before we got to the end of the year.
Dipping over the line into December, the ability of mushrooms to combat cancer in the human body was once more being explored, with news of a study on white button mushroom extract shrinking tumours and delaying their growth. Even when the research comes from reputable sources Stalker always advises caution in relation to health claims. Still munching on mushrooms can certainly do no harm.
The mushrooms were lying all over the road around Dungannon it would seem from facebook posts by a local councillor - that is an ongoing mystery.
Storm Bert and storm Darragh were mentioned - however the fallout from the latter was not fully apparent by time of printing. The huge winds that hit Holyhead port in Wales were set to have a dramatic knock-on effect for all transit via the main landbridge port. Sailing to the port only recommenced on January 16th 2025. Many mushroom supplies were diverted to other ports for delivery - it’s still unclear what the full effects were on local producers.
There were plenty of Christmas ideas presented in the December issue - from mushroom martinis to a bright fungal geansai. Munching on 5 small mushrooms a day could be the secret to a healthy heart and help prevent dementia, one item revealed - after forty years of The Mushroom People, one can only concur!
Let's hope 2025 brings less chaos than is predicted and that mushroom related goodness continues to spread positive vibes throughout the globe.
