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A colleague of mine recently took a job in an industry where he no longer had a greenhouse to care for and was feeling the challenge of learning new things. In his former job, he said, even if a meteorite fell onto his greenhouse, he would know exactly what to do, step by step, to return the chaotic environment to normalcy. He wasn’t bragging about his abilities as a greenhouse manager, but instead was making a point about the importance of experience in decision-making.

I felt his pain. After some years managing greenhouses at Purdue University, I eventually reached that same level of decision-making confidence in normal and chaotic moments at my own facility. What I have learned in three decades is that cultivating plants is a challenge hardly matched in other business sectors, as we are producing perishable products in a dynamic physical environment, cared for by fallible human beings. By contrast, nuts and bolts don’t wilt, aspirin pills are cranked out by machines and software code can be saved indefinitely and re-opened.

That being the case, decision-making is that much more vital in a dynamic environment with live plants. You can optimize your decision-making environment just as you would in a pharmaceutical, manufacturing or tech field, to ensure best crop outcomes.

Delegate

According to experts, one goal should be to reduce the number of decisions you have to make each day so you can concentrate on the ones that matter most. The best way to do this at work is to delegate decisions just as you would tasks. For example, a trusted assistant could sketch out a list of Tuesday’s priorities at the end of the day Monday.

Much can also be done to reduce your decision load even before your work day begins. Scan your electronic communications in the morning to ensure there are no urgent messages. This will help you resist the temptation to be drawn into these messages when you first arrive to work. That time should be set aside for a walk-through to prioritize tasks.

During this quick scan of the facility, take notes on tasks using your phone or a notepad. From these notes, prioritize your day based on this order:

1. safety
2. people
3. plants
4. administration

Safety

When walking through your facility, identify hazards that could injure people. Those need immediate attention. This seems obvious, but remember you are scanning for both large and small hazards, such as a worker not wearing goggles around chemicals.

Safety of plants is your next concern — are any plants at immediate risk due to temperature or water stress? This is not checking for optimizing plants, which you’ll do later. This is a quick scan to make sure nothing catastrophic is about to take place.

You are also looking for problems that put your facility at risk. Uncommon odors or noises coming from equipment, unusual amounts of condensation, doors chocked open, etc. Again, this is not preparing a maintenance list, just a flash inspection.

Dedicating time early in the day to your employees will empower them to make decisions on their own, reducing your own decision load.

People

If your walk-through indicates no safety problems, move on to the questions or needs of your employees or your customers. Dedicating time early in the day to your employees will empower them to make decisions on their own, reducing your own decision load. Likewise, your customers or the people you report to need to know that you will respond quickly to them if they’ve contacted you. You don’t have to resolve every issue completely, especially if you have crop needs to address, but at least reply, and if it is going to take longer than you can spend at the moment, ask them if you can finish with them later in the day and tell them why. Most understand you are prioritizing plant health for their benefit.

Plants

One way to make better decisions during the rest of the day is to slay the dragon: Do the job involving plants that you most dread doing. Maybe it’s mixing fertilizer, conducting pour-through substrate analysis or mailing tissue samples. If you don’t finish all of it, at least get most of it done. You will feel lightened and more creative, rather than dreading it all afternoon.

A second part of managing crops is making all the decisions that are required to schedule supplies and workers to come together for the next crop task or cycle. This is truly the unsung work of managers because you are holed up in your office doing behind-the-scenes work. You would prefer to be making decisions about the current crop, but not doing these tasks will lead to bedlam for that future crop, with short-staffing or idle employees, or short supplies. Because you completed these same tasks a month ago, today you will have time to spend with your cultivation team, making the decisions about watering, fertilization and unique applications of light to optimize your crop.

Administration

Your decision-making ability is a limited resource and needs to be preserved. A law of diminishing returns applies. As you tire, decision making becomes more difficult and prone to error. That is why the final word in my order of tasks is “administration,” as these tasks often don’t require critical decision making: following up with customers or stakeholders, repairing equipment, filling in for a team member, record keeping and answering all those emails you resisted earlier in the day.

One way to make better decisions during the rest of the day is to slay the dragon: Do the job involving plants that you most dread doing.

Decision-making tips

Some managers make better decisions later in the day. There is nothing wrong with reversing the order above as long as you are not holding your team up. For example, you might prefer to do your walk-through and planning for the following day after most of the team has gone home and fewer distractions exist. Either way, your goal is to manage your decision-making environment, starting even before you arrive on site, to reduce and prioritize your decision load.

Here are some specific decision-making tips for managing crops, facilities and employees:

1. Measure the success of your decisions. You’re probably already rationalizing your decisions in case someone asks; why not jot those rationalizations down along with how you came to the decision? Come back to it a month later. Or ask for input from your team. They may hold back their opinions while you’re making a decision, but a month later will tell you what they’ve observed as a result of it. Patterns may emerge from this measurement, such as discovering that decisions that you made collaboratively tend to be more successful.
2. Verbalize the problem. Having difficulty making a decision? Talking it out can make a solution clear. Occasionally, when seeking the advice of my technician, I would answer my own question by the time I had finished describing the problem!
3. Develop “averted vision.” This is a term most often used in astronomy that describes seeing a very faint star with the naked eye by using your peripheral vision and focusing just to the side of the object instead of looking straight at it. In a greenhouse, this translates to: If it’s not an urgent problem, do another task for a while to clear your head. How many times has a solution come to you driving home from work or at home in the shower? This is averted-vision problem-solving at its finest.
4. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” If you favor perfectionism, which is common in managers, this Voltaire quote can be useful to hasten today’s decisions. Doing everything as well as you can in the given time frame will create a better product than completing most steps perfectly and one or two poorly because you ran out of time. This is why your teachers told you to try to answer every question on an exam and then double check them, rather than getting hung up on one question and risk not finishing.
5. With plants, first, do no harm. Making decisions in a panic can lead to overly aggressive action, such as spraying a pesticide before testing it on a few plants or tripling the dose of a micronutrient. Any action you take must first and foremost not be detrimental to your crop.
6. Remember, there are no silver bullets. Avoid decisions based on an anecdote or claim that this one input change is going to solve all your problems, such as preventing powdery mildew or increasing yield of every cultivar.
7. Follow the data. Before deciding on a cultivation change, run a test. Control the experiment so only one variable is being changed between your control group and treatment(s). Test at least two cultivars. Be patient enough to repeat the test a second time to confirm — this is vital and often overlooked. To better understand results and perhaps gain buy-in from your team, ask them to evaluate the completed study. Label the treatments so they can come to their own conclusions.
8. Err toward flexible-use with your facility. For example, I typically do not like to bolt down tables or hard-wire lighting fixtures, in case I reconfigure our cannabis grow room later. Build wide doors and corridors to get future equipment in. When in doubt on design decisions, fall back on flexibility.
9. Design for maintenance. Architects have rarely worked in a plant growth facility, and general contractors will only follow their blueprints. A grower needs to be on the design team to make sure that, for example, the shade curtain in a greenhouse will not be blocked by the structure and conduit, making it nearly impossible to reach for repairs, or to remind architects that grow rooms should be designed to be pressure washed and disinfected between crops.
10. Teach the ignorant; punish the noncompliant. When trying to decide how to handle an employee error, remember that if they weren’t properly trained, it is your fault. Also, some mistakes are honest ones. A reprimand is not justified until they are knowingly noncompliant.
11. Don’t hit send. If you’re feeling emotional, decide to send that hot email or text you wrote after you’ve cooled down. In fact, a good policy is that electronic communications should only be used for neutral or positive responses. Pick up the phone or visit the person face to face to deal with issues.
12. Decide to take responsibility when bad things happen. Accepting the blame, apologizing and fixing the problem can build trust with employees, customers or shareholders better than if nothing had ever gone wrong. Sometimes, you need to take the blame for the greater good — even when the blame is not yours.

The best decision-makers I know conduct themselves with behavior beyond reproach and with a realistic, yet relentless, positivity. They set a tone that decisions are made based on the organization’s values, provide an example to employees, and also quietly bring in their own ethical code, knowing these are the actions that speak louder than words. They are the type of people who decide to start picking up the pieces when a meteorite hits their facilities.

The author is director of Ag Projects for Core Cannabis in East Lansing, Michigan.

Photo courtesy of Smallhold

Tune into your favorite TV or YouTube chef, or browse leading restaurant menus, and it’s highly likely you’ll see mushrooms there. But these favored fungi aren’t your standard white buttons. These are specialty mushrooms, also known as exotics, with shapes, colors, tastes and textures that spur culinary minds and palates to new heights.

For many years, the only fresh mushrooms found on market shelves were common mushrooms: white buttons, cremini and portabellas — all versions of Agaricus bisporus. (Ask a mushroom grower the difference between cremini and portabella, and their answer is “about three days.”)

But advances in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) have changed everything. Specialty mushrooms, defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as everything outside the Agaricus genus, have gone from seasonal outdoor crops with limited production windows to economically viable, year-round indoor pursuits.

The USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Services and the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center offer some intriguing stats:

• U.S.-produced specialty mushroom sales grew 240% from 2010 to 2017.
• In 2015, the U.S. per capita consumption of fresh mushrooms was 3 pounds.
• U.S. specialty mushroom growers produced just .08 pounds per capita in 2017.
• Only 226 U.S. commercial growers reported producing specialty mushrooms in 2017.
• 2017 sales of U.S.-produced specialty mushrooms were nearly $100 million.
• 2017 sales of U.S.-produced Agaricus mushrooms approached $1.2 billion.

Thanks to the foodie and wellness movements, American demand for safe, sanitary, CEA-produced specialty mushrooms, such as shiitakes, oysters, maitakes, enoki and lion’s mane, has grown. As consumers become more informed on proven mushroom health benefits, demand is expected to build even more.

Opportunities for growers

Cornell Extension’s Small Farms Program recently debuted a new research and education program focused specifically on commercial specialty mushroom cultivation. Steve Gabriel is the extension specialist at Cornell and focuses on agroforestry and specialty mushroom production. He cites the growth of New York’s urban agriculture scene, the previous lack of a national extension program specializing in specialty mushrooms and intense interest from potential growers as factors behind the new program.

“It’s honestly a bit overwhelming how much people are interested in this,” Gabriel says. Among Cornell’s offerings is a free, in-depth monthly webinar (here) that complements web-based courses and draws international attendees.

Gabriel says part of the draw is that indoor specialty mushroom production is an economically viable avenue for growers looking to enter the industry or add an additional revenue stream. However, he stresses it’s important for produce growers to know that mushrooms and plants differ significantly from other crops.

The biggest consideration is that mushrooms and plants are polar opposites in needs. While plants consume CO₂ and produce oxygen, mushrooms consume oxygen and produce CO₂. Temperature and humidity requirements for mushrooms vary, but cool temps and 90% humidity rule. Sanitation is also crucial as molds are especially problematic for mushrooms.

Mushroom production fundamentals

With a dedicated, controlled-environment space, mushroom production can be as simple or as complicated as you choose. Some growers work in lab-like conditions, cloning mushrooms, collecting spores and nurturing cultures. Grains, such as rye, are then inoculated to create “mushroom spawn” — the mushroom grower’s equivalent to seed. Spawn is then used to colonize a substrate, typically sawdust- or straw-based blocks, in which mushrooms are grown.

Gabriel notes that many growers now focus solely on cultivating “ready-to-fruit” blocks produced by other growers, a choice he compares to growing greenhouse crops from transplants instead of seed. “Someone who’s already doing produce production could really increase the diversity of the products they’re offering pretty quickly that way,” he says. “It can be the end game or a way that new growers can transition.”

The mushroom growing cycle’s initial four to six weeks demands strict conditions, but Gabriel says the parameters at the fruiting stage are more flexible. Some varieties are surprisingly forgiving. Gabriel calls oyster mushrooms — which grow in an array of colors and multi-capped clusters that look like works of art — “gateway” crops that tolerate a wider range of fruiting conditions and still yield good, consistent results.

Quality, marketing and specialty sales

Production is only part of the story. Unlike common mushrooms, many specialty varieties don’t pack and travel well, and shelf life can be short. “The No. 1 thing that differentiates a grower is quality,” Gabriel says. The competitive edge for the local grower is fresh product that looks, smells and tastes great.

Marketing is the second key. “The first thing is that it’s not a vegetable. The value of it from a food standpoint is more like an animal protein,” Gabriel says. “It has almost identical protein structure to animal proteins. Especially for vegetarian and vegan markets, it’s got really good appeal as an important protein source. That’s a significant selling point.”

Gabriel says that quality-focused specialty growers are asking and getting $16 per pound or more — three or four times the open-market mushroom price. “People say, ‘Wow, this is a beautiful food. I’ve never seen anything like this.’ That’s something growers can really use to their advantage in the market,” he says.

For growers considering specialty mushrooms, Gabriel offers this: “Instead of harvesting ‘x’ amount of pounds, it’s about harvesting ‘x’ amount of A-grade pounds and making sure you can capture the value.”

Grower snapshot:

Smallhold

Brooklyn, New York

Andrew Carter, Smallhold co-founder and CEO, transitioned to mushrooms from leafy greens and herb production about two and a half years ago. At the time, Carter was consulting and doing market analyses of various U.S. cities. He kept encountering what seemed a burgeoning opportunity in the specialty mushroom space.

“It had been growing for quite some time, but I don’t think we ever could have seen the wave that has happened the last couple of years,” Carter says. “More and more people are exploring different types of mushrooms. More and more farms are popping up. More retailers are seeing the opportunity in expanding their offering of different types of mushrooms.”

Carter and his co-founder, Smallhold COO Adam DeMartino, started growing in a shipping container transformed into a CEA-like production unit. Limited NYC farming space demanded innovation. “We needed to figure out a way to distribute the growing process and make it efficient, and then also play to the shelf life of mushrooms, which in the exotics category is very short,” DeMartino says.

As a result, Smallhold isn’t your typical farm. They work directly with their customers — restaurants, grocers, even hotels — to grow mushrooms on site in meant-to-be-seen fruiting chambers called minifarms. A network of supplier farms starts the mushroom blocks, which Smallhold incubates and delivers to minifarms. “We grow the final week right there, so customers have the freshest mushrooms humanly possible,” Carter says.

Specialty mushrooms have gone from seasonal outdoor crops with limited production windows to economically viable, year-round indoor pursuits.

The company has nine minifarm installations, with plans for more. Each installation links to a guaranteed output agreement. Revenue comes primarily from the mushrooms produced, not the units themselves. Using proprietary technology, Smallhold controls every aspect of the process. “We try to make it as hands-off as possible for that customer,” Carter says.

“Each of these units is generating tens of thousands of data points for us to pull from to make the best possible growth parameters,” Carter says. For example, a 3-foot by 5-foot minifarm at the Whole Foods Market in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood yields more than 100 pounds of organic-certified specialty mushrooms per week.

For interested growers, DeMartino says the industry is growing rapidly and demands specialized knowledge. “If you can get over those barriers, it’s a really fun, awesome kind of produce to grow, especially if you’re just looking for an alternate revenue stream for your farm or you’re looking to just get into it,” he says.

Grower snapshot:

Dunk’s Mushroom Products & Foraging

Danville, New Hampshire

William J. Dunkerley, better known as “Dunk,” was shaped by a legacy of living off the land and foraging in the New Hampshire woods. A chance discovery of a rare wild mushroom one day started a relationship with a local mushroom company. When a wild oyster mushroom later inspired him to try to clone it, he succeeded on his first shot and something clicked. The mushroom company and a friendly local chef were ready to buy, if he grew more.

Armed with a basic understanding of mushroom requirements, Dunkerley converted a $30 indoor greenhouse and started growing. Before long, that grew to an 8-foot by 10-foot controlled-environment room in his basement and 200 to 300 pounds of mushrooms per week. He soon faced a decision: stay a passionate part-time hobbyist or leave his job of 30 years. Dunk decided to go all in.

Today he operates a 3,000-square-foot facility, complete with storage, refrigeration and growing rooms modeled after his original basement design. Production now runs around 700 pounds per week of eight specialty varieties, including what Smallhold’s Adam DeMartino describes as “hands-down the best blue oyster mushrooms I’ve ever seen.”

Dunkerley stresses that mushroom growing “isn’t rocket science,” as long as you provide the specific temperatures and conditions each variety needs for maximum quality and shelf life. He says it’s about 90% science and 10% art, like having a green thumb with plants. “Some mushrooms tolerate a wide temperature range, but there’s a sweet spot,” he says.

Though he initially handled growing from petri dish to produce, Dunkerley estimates he’d need three times his production space to accommodate the long colonization times of some varieties he grows. Instead, he focuses on the final stage, cultivating ready-to-fruit blocks. Some varieties fruit in less than one week, many take 10 to 14 days and some types take three weeks or more.

Restaurants, wholesalers and stores comprise Dunkerley’s primary customer base. He does one farmers market and recently added twice-weekly retail hours. He harvests two times a day, every day of the year, which keeps him and two part-time employees busy.

For growers considering specialty mushrooms, Dunkerley offers this advice: “This is not get-rich-quick or easy. It’s a seven-day-a-week gig.”

He also emphasizes due diligence. While the specialty mushroom market has great potential, some areas are saturated with growers. “Be very cognizant of your local market conditions and what it can bear,” he says.

Grower snapshot:

Gourmet Mushrooms (Mycopia brand)

California and Michigan

Industry pioneer David Law has been growing specialty mushrooms commercially since 1977. Gourmet’s president and CEO, Law originally partnered with a U.K.-born biologist on a plan to penetrate San Francisco’s Asian market with their indoor-cultivated shiitakes. The pair quickly discovered the Asian market was demanding dried mushrooms, not fresh. Undeterred, they turned to upscale restaurants with European chefs instead. Before long, Gourmet’s mushrooms were bicoastal favorites.

Gourmet’s early production at its California facility grew from 200 pounds per week to 3,000 pounds by the year 2000. Then, a farm expansion bumped square footage to 65,000 and weekly production rose to 20,000 pounds. With 2015 came the purchase of a Michigan farm. Gourmet’s collective production jumped to 260,000 square feet and nearly 60,000 pounds of organic specialty mushrooms per week. Law expects to reach 80,000 in the next 18 months.

Grown on racks six levels high, Gourmet’s California mushrooms grow in reusable bottles using a Japanese method developed in the 1960s and adopted by Gourmet in 2001. “We were the forerunner of vertical farming,” Law says. In Michigan, certain varieties are grown on the multi-level racks using bagged substrate instead.

The company produces seven specialty varieties, soon to be eight, including some notoriously difficult types. About 80% of their production goes to restaurants and institutional customers through wholesale distributors. Retail packages of the Mycopia brand make up less than 20%.

Law credits the increased awareness of discerning Millennials for much of the growth in specialty mushroom sales. He compares mushrooms to restaurant wine selections of years ago. As consumers become familiar with the various distinct mushroom flavors, simple “red” or “white” won’t do. He champions a “myco-cultural revolution” — a cultural attitude shift about consuming mushrooms — as consumer sophistication and specialty mushroom appreciation in America grows.

For growers interested in specialty mushrooms, Law points to European mushroom consumption, roughly double U.S. rates, and Asian mushroom consumption, more than five times U.S. rates. He also notes that China’s mushroom production has grown from 30 to 40% of the global mushroom market 30 years ago to 80% today. “That tells me the potential for the rest of the world is huge,” Law says. “We need 10 times the mushroom growers.”

The author is a Wisconsin-based freelance writer specializing in the horticulture industry and a frequent contributor to GIE Media publications.

Reach her at jolene@lovesgarden.com

In March, Freight Farms announced its new container farm — The Greenery — that the company says will allow growers to produce 70% more products than its previous farms. Outfitted with LEDs and sensors that collect data through the growing process, The Greenery is what founders Jon Friedman and Brad McNamara see as the next step in the company’s mission to make food more local.

Produce Grower: Freight Farms recently launched The Greenery, a successor to the Leafy Green Machine. How long does it take to develop that new growing model?

Jon Friedman: We’ve got over 200 farmers out there on the network at this point and we don’t talk about that a lot. We’re very heads down but when we look at all the feedback we’ve gotten in over the original LGM models, each year we try to put in more work so our customers get more. It ultimately took about four years. We realized we had to build a completely new framework. We really reached a breaking point out there about [the] fourth generation of the LGM. We realized there’s no way we could really have pushed this that much further; we can’t really make that quantum leap unless we really overhaul the entire system and start from the beginning.

PG: What are the most uncommon crops you’ve seen growers produce in your systems?

Brad McNamara: It’s kind of old habits now but I think all of the strawberry trials — strawberries have become the new ‘it’ crop in the last eight to 10 months. That’s been fun, to watch people on the network experiment with different strawberries and then talk to us about it close to our very own. The entire berry phase is obviously very exciting right now.

JF: And we have people who are growing flowers for reasons other than food. We have had people who are looking for edible flowers. That’s a very popular market in the produce space right now, especially for high-end restaurants. We’re not seeing people who are looking at flowers and things that can be uniquely grown in The Greenery as opposed to an open-air greenhouse.

PG: Freight Farms was represented at South by Southwest this year. What does appearing at an event of that scale do for your brand?

BM: It’s no longer just a text, music, it may be a little bit of politics mixed in. It’s encompassing to larger social issues and so being there, and just being represented, it was really probably interesting to sort of hear how food connects through all of the different channels that are really important at South by Southwest. That’s something that’s been a little surprising to me, personally. We knew how important food was and food production and localizing food and the idea of creating a distributive network, but I don’t think you can really grasp how pervasive and kind of omnipresent that idea is throughout all the different areas of shelf life.

About 15 miles south of Toledo, Ohio, is Shared Legacy Farms, a certified organic vegetable farm that runs as a community-supported agriculture membership program. Co-owned by Kurt Bench and his wife Corinna, Shared Legacy Farms has met the organic produce needs for 400 people in Elmore and Northwest Ohio for 10 years.

With a total acreage of 25, 10 acres are used to grow vegetables of all kinds. While they primarily produce lettuce-based crops like Asian greens and salad, they also grow tomatoes, peppers, onions and radishes, just to name a few.

As a third-generation farmer, having a green thumb was inevitable for Bench, but his production enhanced once his cooperative, Great River Organics, switched to Proptek’s trays, which are made of reprocessed material and have a lifespan that's often up to 10 years, or even more.

“The plant quality is awesome and out of this world,” Bench says. “The plants grow faster and harden off differently in these trays. They root out faster and there’s a quicker turn so I can move them in the cold frame faster than I would using a 128. I’ve even had to change my soil mix to a heavier soil because it drains so well.”

Shared Legacy Farms uses the trays for about 70 to 80% of its crops. At first, Bench was skeptical about switching from a tray of 128 cells to 231 cells because of the double in size. He was worried about plant health, diseases and the lack of air movement, which according to him, was eased with Proptek’s swift assistance with any questions and concerns he had. Luckily, the transition to their 10x20 trays saves him space and improves production.

“The biggest thing about Proptek is that they help us become more efficient farmers,” Bench says. “We can produce a plant faster in a smaller amount of space, which saves money. And, since the plant health is better, that’s less time worrying about applying certain products.”