Agribusiness: Mushroom Farming

Mushroom farming is one of the fast-growing Agricultural businesses in the World, with the US been the second-largest producer in the world.

The production of Mushrooms involves the culturing of Fungi. Mushrooms are Fungi that survive in organic materials.

Reasons to Start a Mushroom Farm business:

• Mushroom production can be done throughout the year.
• They are in high demand because of their high protein content.
• They do not require large space, they can be grown indoors.
• It requires low start-up capital.

Steps to Starting your Mushroom Farm

• Provision of Substrate and Spawn:

Spawn, in simple terms can be said to be the seed to grow Mushrooms.

It is the Live Fingal culture that grows unto a substrate. It is called Mycelium. While the substrate is the base to grow the Mycelium.

For your Mushroom Farm, you can use already prepared spawn or you may decide to prepare your spawn by culturing Fungi under Sterile conditions.

Various substrates can be used. Some Mushroom growers use Wood Chips while some use Corn husk, but you can use any substrate depending on which is easily accessible to you.

• Substrate preparation:

There are various methods to prepare the substrate but the main focus of every method is to sterilize the substrate to be 100% free from contamination.

Firstly, put the substrate in water and boil for about 30 minutes to kill the Germs/ contaminants. After which, remove and drain the substrate.

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• Prepare the Fruiting bag:

Get Nylon bags or any other flexible bag that can be covered and easily punctured.

Load a small portion of the substrate into the bag and then, add a very small quantity of the Spawn on the loaded substrate as a layer.

After which repeat the same process till the bag gets almost full.

Bind the opening of the bag with a Rubber band or anything available. Then, create little openings at different points around the bag to allow the Fruiting out of Mushroom from the bag.

• Incubation and Fruiting

In this stage, colonization of the darky the Mycelium is to take place.

The room for incubation should be dark having a very cold temperature. Penetration of Sunlight to the room should be prevented as much as possible.

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The loaded bags should be placed in good positions and spacing to allow the mushrooms to grow out of the holes at the sides of the Bag.

The Fruits will eventually start popping out after few days of placing the loaded bags. They will expand to a large size Mushroom. 

• Harvesting

One of the best methods of harvesting Mushrooms is to use a sharp knife or a cutter to pierce the stem. This is to allow continuous growth of other Spawns/ Mycelium.

You must have learned a lot from the Mushroom Farming process. 

The Mushroom farming business is known to be one of the most profitable and easy farming businesses to set up. 

It requires very low capital depending on the desired capacity.

It has various methods of production but has one major condition which every Mushroom farmer must practice and which is to have 100% contamination-free production.

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