I want to start a mushroom growing business. How feasible will it be?
The business of mushroom growing is not a simple one. Although it is easy to grow a few mushrooms for home consumption, it is far more difficult to grow a large number of mushrooms for commercial sale. The reasons include problems of maintaining reliable supplies of substrates and supplements, regulating climate and ventilation, excluding insects and rodents, keeping equipment functioning, dealing with waste, excluding contaminants (even with the peroxide method), maintaining production schedules, keeping stock cultures healthy and viable, and managing space requirements, among others. And even if you succeed in growing the kind of crop you need to make money, you may run into other obstacles like high insurance prices and unreliable markets. So, to be successful at mushroom growing, you need to be determined and you need to be good at improvising and solving problems. For more on the business of mushroom growing, visit the web site of the Mushroom Growers' Newsletter.
You may freely copy and distribute the information on this webpage to friends or colleagues, as long as you include the following notice:
This document is Copyright: ©1999 by Randall R. Wayne, Ph.D. All commercial rights are reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used for sale in any form or by any means without permission of the author.