Pennsylvania’s mushroom growers have seen some setbacks because of COVID-19, but an industry spokeswoman sees better days ahead.
“Because mushrooms are so versatile and there is demand for them, the industry will get through this challenge,” said Lori Harrison, director of communications at the American Mushroom Institute.
Pennsylvania’s nation-leading mushroom industry is based around the town of Kennett Square in southern Chester County.
State Rep. John Lawrence, who represents part of this mushroom heartland, said in a May 27 committee hearing that the coronavirus had caused major problems for the industry.
“There are mushroom growers that are on the verge of collapse and bankruptcy,” Lawrence said.
That’s quite a change from the beginning of the year, when the Mushroom Institute was touting record sales volumes and solid demand.
Harrison isn’t privy to information on mushroom growers’ finances, but she said the industry did see some disruption early in the pandemic.
The closure of foodservice businesses in March caused demand for the highly perishable crop to drop abruptly.
Farms sold what they could, donated what they couldn’t sell, and disposed of what they couldn’t give away.
The disruption was particularly hard on growers who primarily serve foodservice customers, Harrison said.
With demand down, growers cut production. Mushrooms are produced on a six- to 12-week cycle, so supply has been tight for much of the spring.
Still, “it wasn’t like the shelves were bare,” Harrison said.
She expects production to ramp back up as foodservice outlets continue to reopen.
At retail, mushrooms have seen steady demand since grocery stores sorted out their initial supply chain issues.
Harrison attributes the decent sales to the increase in home cooking since shutdown orders were issued. She suspects some consumers used this time to try new foods, including mushroom varieties they had never tasted.
Indeed, Google search trends show a surge of interest in food keywords since mid-March.
Searches for “recipes” and “cooking” spiked, and many food terms — including “mushroom” and “mushroom pizza” — set new records for search interest on the platform.
The jump was particularly noticeable for the term “online groceries.”
At the same time, help is on the way for mushroom growers who lost revenue because of the pandemic.
Mushrooms are one of the specialty crops eligible for federal aid under the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.
Mushroom farms can get payments on mature crops that went unharvested, shipments that did not leave the farm, and product that was shipped but ultimately went to waste because of a lost market.
Growers will get up to 59 cents a pound on product that left the farm and 11 cents per pound on crops that stayed on the farm. USDA will send 80% of the eligible payment up front, and the agency will pay more if there’s money left over.
Lawrence, the state lawmaker, said he’s seeing a lot of federal money heading to farmers right now, but mushrooms often get neglected in federal crop assistance programs.
“What I’ve seen for mushrooms is pennies on the dollar, if there’s even pennies,” he said.
In the coronavirus program, mushrooms actually have some of the highest compensation rates among specialty crops, though there’s one category of payment, based on price declines, for which the crop doesn’t qualify.
Like other specialty-crop growers, mushroom farms employ lots of workers to grow, harvest and pack their products.
The health of those workers has been a major concern during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially after large outbreaks at meat plants focused national attention on the food industry.
Mushroom farms, which are routinely inspected by a number of government agencies, already had safety protocols in place and protective clothing in use. So the industry was quickly able to add rules for social distancing, mask wearing, and increased sanitizing, Harrison said.
“There’s not really a choice between feeding America and keeping workers safe. The industry believes that they need to do both,” she said.
At the Giorgio Fresh Co. packing facility in Toughkenamon on Tuesday, everyone was wearing a mask, and each station on the processing line had a divider between and in front of each worker.
The site employs 200 people and processes half a million mushrooms each week under several brand names, supervisor Angel Rivera said.
Art Petrosemolo contributed reporting.