Mushroom production has room to grow in Saskatchewan

Mushroom farming in Canada does not look like a typical farm operation with mushrooms growing in dark warehouses in bunk beds filled with a specific compost mixture of chicken manure, peat moss and straw.

With only three prairie-based mushroom farms on the prairies; Loveday Mushroom Farms Ltd. in Manitoba and Highline Mushrooms and Ceres Solutions Ltd. in Alberta, there are comparatively fewer large scale commercial facilities in the prairie provinces than compared to the rest of the country. The prairie provinces, however, still make a larger contribution to mushroom production than people think, said Koeslag, in the shipping of wheat straw needed for the composting process.

“That’s because there’s not as much wheat grown in Ontario with long standing straw and so they go out west to Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba to find wheat straw, and then they ship it out to Ontario to mix in the composting or the mushrooms.”

Considering mushroom farming can happen anywhere, Koeslag said there are specific reasons why Saskatchewan is stalling in that market.

The process itself is quite labour intensive with the pickings needing to be done by hand at a very specific time with a specific technique, and new compost changed after three harvests.

“It’s important when they get to a certain stage that the mushrooms are picked on time otherwise they get too big or they aren’t at the right market and desirability if they wait too long. So it’s both three passes and then the compost is removed from the beds and then it’s replaced.”

However, as of June 1, 2022, the labour standards for Saskatchewan production puts commodity mushroom pickers at between $22.25-$21/hour. That set wage can be a big hurdle to climb when building a production facility, said Koeslag.

“There’s not a whole lot of mushroom farmers that would probably want to start up right now in Saskatchewan because that commodity list wage is out of whack. And we’ve gotten the government and said, you know, it’s really strange that Saskatchewan has a much higher wage rate that’s, you know, $5 higher than other provinces.”

Other subsidies for workers, including temporary foreign workers, like a transportation subsidies are beneficial to workers but does increase the cost of labour for those wanting to start a Saskatchewan-based facility.

However, there is room to grow in mushroom markets.

While smaller, especially for the specialty mushrooms, Koeslag is still seeing year over year growth in those markets and Canadian mushrooms making up a huge portion of the market.

Like in most things, Canada is competing with the United States for grabbing more of that mushroom market but the US is finding new and inventive ways of increasing mushroom marketing, including mushroom blended hamburgers in major food chains.

“We still see a continued growth in consumption in North America — we often refer to the rest of our commodity market not just simply Canadian because of our exports. I think that you’ll find a lot of these mushroom farms are either expanding in size or there might be a newer one crop up here and there.”

While the national organization does not represent mushroom gatherers, which work very hard to gather specific types of mushrooms, like chanterelles and morels in Saskatchewan, Koeslag said they have so far been unsuccessful in trying to replicate these growing conditions in their domestic warehouses. Some mushrooms are more readily available in the wild, he said, but there is that work going into growing their availability.

“You often hear about the morel mushroom gathering because they’re highly desired and a very artisanal type mushroom and in a lot of recipes, but they’re very hard to replicate in a growing facility or growing farm. A lot of times you’ll actually find morel mushrooms that are crop up after a forest fire.”

For the mushrooms they do have there is no specific growing season so production is a continuous process, however, there are certain times of the year that mushrooms are more popular, like Thanksgiving and Christmastime.

The nutritional benefits are also a huge big selling point, said Koeslag.

“Certainly Vitamin D had some recognition during the COVID pandemic… they (mushrooms) have a high content of Vitamin D, which in itself is quite a miracle because if you think about it mushrooms are grown in the dark, and they have vitamin D which is the sunshine vitamin.”

Research into mushroom production has also noticed that mushrooms can be infused with Vitamin D but allowing some growth in the sunshine which is even more of a reason mushrooms are a valuable addition to people’s diets.

While the capital investment can be a challenge and production difficulties can sprout up in these facilities, Koeslag said that growth of mushroom markets is a good reason for starting a mushroom farm, however, there are going to be those challenges ahead.

“There probably will be, certainly starting from scratch, you would have to add some additional costs and just you know, entering into the market and finding customers at the same time.”

One thing potential mushroom growers can count on is the resources available to mushroom farmers, especially, siad Koeslag, through Mushroom Canada.

–

becky.zimmer@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @bex_zim

Mushroom production has room to grow in Saskatchewan

What's Trending