Two centuries in the past, French farmers revolutionised mushroom manufacturing by shifting into the maze of limestone quarries beneath Paris, however right now solely a handful nonetheless domesticate a heritage susceptible to fading away for good.
The bitter irony is that demand for historically grown white button mushrooms, and their extra flavourful brown-capped cousins, is as excessive as ever.
“It isn’t a query of discovering purchasers, I promote all the pieces I can produce,” stated Shoua-moua Vang at Les Alouettes in Carrieres-sur-Seine, a brief drive from the bustling La Defence enterprise district west of the capital.
Vang runs the most important underground mushroom cave within the Paris area, unfold throughout one and a half hectares of tunnels in a hill overlooking the Seine river.
He counts Michelin-starred cooks in addition to grocery store chains and native markets amongst his clients, despite the fact that he deems his mushrooms “costly” at €3.20 (RM15) a kilo wholesale.
However dank trays loaded with tons of of kilogrammes of fungi have been going to waste throughout a current go to, as a result of Vang lacked sufficient palms to choose all of them.
Simply 5 of his 11 employees have been on the job after the others referred to as in sick – and Vang was uncertain that every one of them would truly return.
“Folks nowadays do not wish to work all day at the hours of darkness like vampires,” he stated, estimating that today’s manufacturing would prime out at 1.5 tonnes as an alternative of his traditional 2.5 and even three tonnes.
He’s certainly one of simply 5 conventional producers of what the French name “champignons de Paris” situated across the capital, together with a fair smaller quantity in deserted quarries north of the capital.
That is down from round 250 within the late nineteenth century, when farmers flocked to a “royal” mushroom selection that the Solar King, Louis XIV, had made common by having it grown at Versailles.
That they had found that Agaricus bisporus would develop year-round if positioned in a manure-based substrate deep underground, the place temperatures and humidity might be managed and the darkish would encourage development.
It additionally turned out that the caves’ earthy environment, strengthened by masking the compost with ground-up limestone, imparted a nutty, virtually mineral style whereas stopping the mushrooms from changing into over-saturated with water.
Even the macabre tunnels of the Paris catacombs, now a prime vacationer attraction, have been as soon as full of mushroom beds.
Revival in view?
Fast urbanisation and particularly the development of the Paris metro started pushing growers out of the capital within the early 1900s, although round 50 have been nonetheless in quarries below Paris suburbs within the Seventies, usually run by new generations of the identical household.
The arrival of cheaper imports from industrial hangars within the Netherlands, Poland and later China, which use peat as an alternative of limestone to spice up manufacturing charges, proved an excessive amount of for many.
“It is arduous to search out individuals who wish to take over as a result of there isn’t any mushroom cultivation programmes in agriculture faculties,” stated Muriel Le Loarer, who’s working to revive the Paris mushroom custom on the SAFER rural improvement company.
Vang, for instance, had labored 11 years on the quarry owned by Jean-Louis Spinelli, whose kids declined to observe of their father’s footsteps, earlier than taking on in Sept 2020.
“Discovering individuals to choose the mushrooms is difficult, it is arduous to search out good compost, and other people do not wish to make investments when you do not know if producers are going to make it,” Spinelli stated.
“We’re selling the sector, serving to to search out financing and dealing with native authorities to open quarries again up,” stated Le Loarer, noting the rising curiosity in native produce and the farm-to-table development.
For now, although, Paris mushrooms are only a tiny fraction of the 90,000 tonnes produced in France annually, in line with figures from the Rungis wholesale market south of the capital.
Officers say it is too late to create a particular “Paris mushroom” certification below France’s AOP meals appellation guidelines, for the reason that title has been used generically for many years.
Meaning producers face a advertising problem to make sure individuals realise once they’re shopping for the genuine, quarry-farmed fungi.
“Right here our mushrooms develop naturally, I do not increase them by spraying water as a result of that fills them with water,” Vang stated. “These mushrooms from the massive hangars are mainly grown by computer systems.” – AFP Relaxnews
