Food Forests and Agroforestry
Food forest fungi are vital and full of beneficial complexity. Mushrooms grown outdoors in contact with their symbiotic bacterial species and using natural wood sources create a full spectrum of beneficial organic compounds and in larger concentration than mushrooms grown indoors in sterile environments on processed wood blocks or pellets. In contrast, airtight warehouse grow facilities that supply grocery stores intentially prevent exposure to bacteria and competing fungi. The benefit to indoor mushroom farming is year round production and longer shelf lives, but at the expense of the organic compounds that we need most in our diets.
Growing mushrooms in the wild forest has many challenges like weather, pests, competitivie fungi, and fewer production cycles. But it is a higher quality food and worth it. The process of growing fungi varieties on logs in the forest produces a much healthier edible food source. Part of how mushrooms have healthy benefits is from the numerous organic compounds that the fungi create. The vast array of Glycoproteins and Polysaccharides as immunostimulants is the topic of numerous scientific studies. Some of these include compounds like Vitamin D2, Grifon-D, D-Fraction, SX-fraction, PSK’s, and beta Glucan. Bacteria, like soil bacteria and endophyte bacteria, are responsible for the gene expression of fungi that cause the production of many of these compounds. The molecular building blocks are provided by trees storing nutrients in the wood and by bacteria breaking down organic compounds to release molecules of Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Sulfur, metals and other elemental materials.
The videos posted here provide a good introduction to our growing process, a process that is not common within the world of mushroom cultivation. In contrast, most of the mushrooms grown in the world today, other than Agaricus bisporous (button mushrooms and the like), are grown in China. China is the largest exporter of dried mushrooms by a large margin and Chinese dried mushrooms are cheaper. There is a big problem. Browing mushrooms in China is unregulated and almost all Chinese groweres treat their mushrooms with chemicals to make them look better, extend the shelf ife and kill insects. For all the health benefits of mushrooms, why undermine that by adding toxins for profit? Other than the common preservative of Sulfur Dioxide, Chinese mushrooms can contain pestacides, formaldehyde, dichlorvos and acetochlor to name a few.