Mushrooms are the darling of sustainability

We are of two minds about mushrooms. As part of the fungi kingdom, they may be the death of us (see HBO’s “The Last of Us”). Or, just maybe, a big handful of the 5 million or more species will be our salvation - cure us of depression and anxiety, reduce our inflammation or curb our addiction to more carbon-intensive foods.

Fungo-philes seem to be winning the debate, however, in part due to awe-inspiring documentaries like “Fantastic Fungi” that showcase the mycelial network, a vast underground connective tissue of fungal strands that link plants and trees in a mutually beneficial ecosystem, and because the number of ways to use mushrooms - the fruiting body above the ground and the mycelium below - has exploded.

New technology is driving part of this boom. Companies such as Ecovative have pioneered growing mycelium for use in food, leather-like textiles and packaging materials, while MycoWorks transforms humble ingredients like sawdust, bran, water and mycelium into leather, cotton and silk. Scientific researchers are pioneering new ways for fungi to better manage environmental problems such as transforming food waste into novel edible materials, eliminating toxins like heavy metals at contamination sites, devouring plastic pollution, or improving soil as an impressive organic fertilizer.

Not unlike the renewed fervor about the mind-expanding potential of psychedelics, some entrepreneurial success has come from thinking way outside the box, sometimes literally. Loop, a Dutch company, sells coffins made of mushroom and hemp fibers that decompose in weeks, the mushroom drawing sustenance from the human remains. And other human waste is getting a fresh look - Pact Outdoors offers bathroom kits for backpackers that include mycelium tablets that break down poop quickly, killing bacteria that can disturb ecosystems.

Some of the “shroom boom” may be aided by consumer and hobbyist excitement, says Sigrid Jakob, president of the New York Mycological Society. “It’s a cultural phenomenon that started around 2020. The pandemic was a big part, when people went out into nature because it was one of the only safe spaces,” Jakob says.

“People are looking for models for better ways of living, and suddenly fungi are the good guys,” Jakob says, noting that the therapeutic benefits of fungi, the growing array of “myco-materials” and uses for bioremediation may have been buoyed by what she describes as “a secular religion” anchored by that metaphor of mycelium’s role in a vast nutrient and communication network. “The membership of our club is a good barometer. A few years ago, it hovered around 400 members. Now it’s more like 1,000.”

The increase in cultivation, manufacturing, transportation and consumption of fungi in all these new forms is not without risks. Already, researchers and citizen-scientists have seen an alarming rise in invasive species such as the discovery of nonnative golden oyster mushrooms, probably from commercial or hobbyist production, in at least a dozen states in the Midwest and Northeast. The risk is that they change ecosystems or outcompete indigenous fungi or plants.

“There is such a thing as an endemic fungus, a place a fungus grows and where it doesn’t. So, moving it should be done thoughtfully,” said Anne Pringle, a professor of botany at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “In practice, we’re only about conserving plants and animals. We don’t have that sense of the biodiversity of fungi. But we’re starting to have that conversation.”

Phil Ross and Sophia Wang, founders of MycoWorks, see the increasing demand for biomaterials as the beginning of a fourth Industrial Revolution: the intersection of biology and technology. At the annual Biofabricate summit, which draws together consumer brands, start-ups and investors eager to contribute to the growing world of biomaterials, mycelium takes center stage in products from cosmetics to textiles. Industry experts project a global mycelium market at $5.8 billion by the end of this decade.

For more than a century, most of the mushrooms in the United States were grown in Kennett Square, a little borough in Chester County, Pa., where two Quaker farmers in 1885 began cultivating mushrooms from spores they brought back from Europe. Today, the global mushroom market is estimated to be worth $56 billion, with a projected surge to $136 billion by 2032.

Pennsylvania is still where the majority of grocery store button, portobello and cremini mushrooms come from, but the epicenters of new fungi tech, as with much of the rest of modern food tech - plant-based and cultivated meats, indoor vertical farming, precision fermentation and the like - have taken hold in Silicon Valley and in repurposed spaces in New York and other urban centers.

Growers who sell directly to consumers, grocers or at farmers markets often aim to minimize the distance between farm and table. For Baris Sonmez, the solution was a warehouse in Jersey City, N.J. where he established LifeCap Farms.

“I read Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring,’ and I saw a TED Talk by Paul Stamets about how fungi can save the world. So, I jumped into it in 2016. I had a one-car garage that I converted to a farm,” Sonmez said.

These days Sonmez has 6,000 square feet of space with the capacity to grow 4,000 pounds of mushrooms per month. He produces 15 different varieties that change seasonally - pink, golden and phoenix oyster mushrooms in the summer; king oyster, maitakes and chestnuts in the winter. He seeds mycelium bags with spores, and once harvested, offers the medium free to the community as fertilizer.

The growth in high-tech mushroom farming has had some bobbles, as have many of the new experiments in controlled-environment agriculture. Smallhold, a high-profile Brooklyn-based specialty mushroom company with indoor vertical farms in New York, Los Angeles and Austin, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, following the demise of the long-standing Colorado Mushroom Farm a year earlier.

Still, there has been a steady increase in demand for more, and more kinds of mushrooms to satisfy the fresh food market and as an ingredient in the deluge of meat alternatives. In surveys, consumers prioritize taste over all else when choosing alternative proteins and have expressed tepid enthusiasm for those made of soy or pea protein. Mushrooms, naturally rich in glutamates, have a more palatable meat-like umami flavor.

Eben Bayer, chief executive of Ecovative, knew two decades ago that mycelium was the answer: He just wasn’t quite sure to which question.

“It was a wonderful way to develop technology,” Bayer said, auditioning mycelium as a material for surfboards, insulation and structural materials as the company grew to a materials fabricator with over $1 trillion in annual expected sales.

At the farm’s headquarters in Green Island, N.Y., they grow mycelium in 89-foot-long and 5-foot-wide sheets of fibers layered in tall, vertical racks, destined for one of three distinct uses: It is turned into leather and textiles for apparel, made into foamlike packaging material and transformed into food for humans.

Forager, a division of Ecovative, produces the textiles, much of it at a partner farm in the Netherlands for Ecco Leather. The company has fashion and footwear brands working on prototypes poised to launch, and featured products this fall in Patrick McDowell’s runway show.

The packaging arm of the company has had high-profile partnerships. One of them - Renais, the luxury gin label founded by siblings Emma and Alex Watson last year - entered the U.S. market this summer packaged in 100 percent mycelium-based compostable materials made by Ecovative.

Bayer cautions that mycelium is “not a silver bullet for packaging, because packaging requires 1,001 things in your tool kit,” but it is a promising option for companies and consumers who aim to phase out plastic use. “Plastic has a massive cleanup cost that no one bears,” he said.

Food, however, may be the market where Ecovative has found its sweet spot. MyBacon, a premium-priced product sold at Whole Foods, Mom’s Organic markets and more than 400 independent retailers, is outselling many of its plant-based meat competitors. Bayer thinks this is due, in part, to positioning.

“The original thought for plant-based meat was low cost and high volume - hot dogs, chicken nuggets - companies made great promises,” said Bayer. “But it wasn’t healthier, and we have to deliver something that is delightful to consumers. People care most about whether it’s yummy.”

MycoWorks is one of the other big mycelium biofiber companies that is chasing alternatives, especially among luxury brands. The company has partnered with luxury furniture brand Ligne Roset to incorporate a proprietary material called Reishi (at a price tag of roughly $25 per square foot) made of mycelium which has a structure similar to the triple helix found in collagen, rendering it malleable and versatile. They have worked with Hermès on a custom fabric called Sylvania, and with General Motors they are co-creating interior fabrics for a new Cadillac concept car called Sollei.

Using a reusable and stackable tray-based system, they grow mycelium sheets batch by batch under controlled and engineered conditions in a new alternative leather facility in Union, S.C. A life cycle assessment last year found the company’s products had one of the lowest carbon footprints among luxury materials. And while price parity is still a way off, according to Ross and Wang, as more people and designers seek out textiles that aren’t reliant on the petrochemical industry, increased scale will bring prices down.

The specialty mushroom and mycelium markets are still in their infancy but the allures are myriad: Fast-growing, they can be produced at scale without a large agricultural land footprint, they are biodegradable and compostable, and they are nutritious.

All this promise has led to some irrational exuberance. Companies like Bolt Threads launched mycelium fabric Mylo with great fanfare, only to halt production when funding ran out. Materials and ingredients created with new technologies are frequently more expensive to manufacture, a cost that must be passed onto customers until there are enough to help companies achieve economies of scale.

Then there’s messaging: Whether in the beverage aisle, the fitting room or online, new brands have just a moment to convey how their product is different from others. Whether foams, textiles, leather or food, the more disruptive and innovative the product is, the more incumbent upon the company the explanation to prove its authenticity. In the past, there has been room for hyperbole without a lot of checks and balances: The Food and Drug Administration does not have the authority to approve dietary supplements before they are marketed, and companies don’t have to provide the FDA with the evidence to substantiate safety before or after marketing products (although they must use ingredients that are “generally regarded as safe”).

As mushrooms and mycelium products displace or outcompete traditional materials and products, there will be pushback. In the way the plastics, oil and forestry industries worked to criminalize hemp in 1937 because it was feared as a competing construction material, the meat industry has launched a significant campaign to discredit the health and sustainability advantages of plant- and mushroom-based meat alternatives.

Time, as the vast network of mushrooms that has persevered for millennia has proven, will tell.

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Based in Brooklyn, Tanya Navasiolava studied at the Belarusian State Technological University in Minsk before moving to the U.S. She started her career as a graphic designer and recently finished her graduate degree at the International Center of Photography.

Laura Reiley is a former reporter for The Washington Post who covered the business of food. She has written four books, has cooked professionally and is a graduate of the California Culinary Academy. She is a three-time James Beard finalist and in 2017 was a Pulitzer finalist.