From a standing start in 1990, Huon Valley Mushrooms is recognised now as the leading producer of specialty mushrooms, and stays ahead of the game with a strong emphasis on research and development.

Michael Brown had been a farmer in the Huon early in his early working life, then in the ’80s owned Cooney’s restaurant in Macquarie Street. There, they used a lot of porcini and other cepes imported dried from Europe. So when Cooney’s closed in 1986 and Michael decided to get back into agriculture, he put his mind to mushrooms.

He built 10 growing rooms on land in what must be the most picturesque crook of the Huon River –where the river tumbles over its only rapids, at Glen Huon. In these sheds grow common white mushrooms and Honey Browns in big plastic bags of sterilised compost. Mushrooms are a waste-not industry, using waste wheat straw and sawdust for the compost, and, after each bag has produced several crops over five or six weeks, the compost is sold to nurseries for enriching gardens.

The work on specialty mushrooms went the way of Asia, rather than the European varieties. Shiitakes, a Japanese variety with a rich, “woodsy” flavour and a meaty texture, were the first developed. In the wild in Japan, shiitakes grow on logs on the forest floor. Huon Valley Mushrooms substitutes a hard “loaf” of eucalypt sawdust.

Two years ago, Huon Valley Mushrooms opened eight new sheds for growing shiitakes and other specialty mushrooms, including oyster, shimeji and wood ear.

The farm produces 5-6 tonnes a week of white and brown mushrooms, and 800kg to 1 tonne a week of specialty mushrooms. However, the specialty mushrooms represent 50% of the value of the entire crop, and require almost double the growing space.

In its first 13 years, staff at Huon Valley Mushrooms has gone from 25 to 40 (including a year-round picking staff of 16-18) and turnover has doubled.

The next big challenge is to find a way of growing matsutake mushrooms, the Japanese equivalent of the truffle, which command prices of more than $1000 a kilogram. Like the truffle, they grow in association with tree roots, and Michael Brown’s team of researchers is working “on breaking the nexus with trees”. “We have had encouraging results, but we’re not there yet,” he says.

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