The Russian sector

By Alexander Khrenov

Mushrooms have been cultivated in Russia since the first half of the 1820’s, in St. Petersburg. In the middle of that century, there were already eight family farms, which were big for that time.

The first article ‘About mushrooms growing’ was published in Russia in 1861 in the ‘Garden bulletin’. It was written by the famous Russian vegetable grower Mr. Efim Grachev. After twelve years of mushroom growing he designed his own project mushroom farm. In 1869 this project got a silver medal at the International Garden Exhibition in St.Peterburg. In 1876 his project was introduced at the International Exhibition in Brussel, where he got a special award.

Mr. Grachev’s mushroom farm consisted of several rooms, and he produced 4 tonnes of mushrooms per year, which amounted to 1/3 of the total mushroom production in St. Peterburg at that time. For sales, the mushrooms were packed in small baskets which could hold six mushrooms each.

Some of Grachev’s advise in his article are still quite relevant today: “The main art of mushroom growing is in substrate preparation. Substrates must have the right heat and the right moisture level. All the other circumstances depend from that.”

First farms in the Soviet Union

In the Soviet time the first mushroom farm was established in 1930 in the Moscow area. It had 70 small growing rooms. In 1933-1934 there were 600 growing rooms near Moscow, St.Peterburg, Kiev, Harkiv and other cities. Total production was 500 tonnes. Average yield was just 5 kilograms.

The first spawn lab was build in Russia by a Hungarian project for 45 tones of compost spawn.

In 1976 the first two Dutch system mushroom farms in Russia were build near Moscow and near St. Petersburg. Both comprise 10.000 square metre of growing. Later, four Russian copies of those Dutch farms were build.

To provide the spawn for these farms, a new spawn factory with Dutch technology started production in 1982. The capacity was 500.000 litres.

Modern times

Then with Gorbatchov, Perestroyka came, and Perestroyka pushed small businesses. A lot of new small farms started their own production, mostly growing Pleurotus. 

Why Pleurotus? When people saw the big Agaricus farms with big compost yards, they believed this is the only way to grow Agaricus. But they didn’t have a lot of money to invest, and a Pleurotus farm needs smaller investments to start production. So at that time we had a lot of small oyster mushroom farms all over the country. Just a few of them are still in production nowadays, because of the poor level of technology.

In the middle of 1990’s Polish mushrooms started to be supplied on a regularly basis to the Russian market. Through Moscow their Agaricus was distributed all over the European part of Russia to the Ural and even into Siberia.  

In 2002 the import of Polish mushrooms overtook the top of Russian local production. The rise of consumption of Polish mushrooms in big cities motivated local businessmen to invest in mushroom growing. But till 2004 import grew faster than local production. By estimation of the Russian mushroom journal ‘Shkola gribovodstva’, local production in 2004 was about 9.400 tonnes (including 2.500 tonnes of oyster mushrooms). Import of fresh mushrooms was about 30.000 tonnes and processing mushrooms about 50.000 tonnes.

The mushroom business in Russia is very small and not very interesting for big investors. To start a family mushroom business is very difficult because there is only one compost farm which produces Agaricus compost for sale. Wild mushrooms still dominate the consumption pattern. So mainly, people collect different types of mushrooms in the forests and consume them all year long in marinated, dried or salted fashion.

The price of mushrooms in Moscow supermarkets is about 3 euro per kilo, and only people with good wages are ready to buy them there.