A Colorado Mushroom Farm Closes

Nope.

Not the psychedelic kind.

But the typical grocery store variety. Whole Foods and Sprouts Foods scramble to find new sources for fresh Portabella, Crimini, and White Button mushrooms.

Agaricus bisporus, also known as champignon and the button mushroom. This species also includes the portobello and crimini mushrooms.

It is an edible basidiomycete mushroom native to grasslands in Eurasia and North America. It has two color states while immature – white and brown – both of which have various names, with additional names for the mature state. ~Wikipedia

The Rakhra Mushroom Farm, an Alamosa, Colorado staple employer owned by Baljit Singh Nanda, has struggled financially almost from the beginning. Founded in 1981, the company was in debt to millions of dollars in the first few years of operation.

One of the factors was that mushrooms like humidity, and Colorado is known for its dry climate. The company was able to engineer a solution, enclosing a 10-acre growing area. The mushrooms and the business flourished and prospered. At its peak, the farm grew 15 million pounds of mushrooms a year and served Colorado and New Mexico via private distribution channels. Customers of the giant mushroom operation included grocery stores, restaurants, and small retailers.

Indoor mushroom cultivation as a commercial crop was first developed in caves in France. The caves provided a stable environment (temperature, humidity) all year round. The technology for a controlled growth medium and fungal spawn was brought to the UK in the late 1800s in caves created by quarrying near areas such as Bath, Somerset.[10] Growing indoors provides the ability to control light, temperature and humidity while excluding contaminants and pests. This allows consistent production, regulated by spawning cycles.[11] By the mid-twentieth century this was typically accomplished in windowless, purpose-built buildings, for large-scale commercial production.

Indoor tray growing is the most common commercial technique, followed by containerized growing. The tray technique provides the advantages of scalability and easier harvesting.

There are a series of stages in mushroom farming of the most widely used commercial species Agaricus bisporus. These are composting, fertilizing, spawning, casing, pinning, and cropping."

Climate

Alamosa features a cold desert climate (Köppen BWk) with long, cold winters and warm summers, and dry weather year-round. The normal monthly mean temperature ranges from 16.3 °F (−8.7 °C) in January to 64.6 °F (18.1 °C) in July. Annual precipitation is only 7.31 inches (186 mm), with the months of July through September being the wettest. The aridity depresses normal seasonal (July through June of the following year) snowfall to 27.6 inches (70 cm).

The altitude and dryness of the air cause day–night temperature differences to be severe year-round, averaging 35.4 °F (19.7 °C) throughout the year. There was a long-term annual average of 227 days per year with a minimum of 32 °F (0 °C) or less.[16] In the 1981–2010 period, there was an average of 46 nights with minima at or below 0 °F (−18 °C).

~Wikipedia

While the business shutdown will affect supply and consumer prices, the most significant blow comes to its workers.

A workforce of approximately 270, mainly Guatemalan immigrants, lost their jobs. There are no other businesses in the area to absorb the jobs. These people will have to leave the Alamosa area to seek new employment. It has been their home and job for 30 years. The shuttering of the operations also left workers with unpaid wages. Reportedly, one worker's pay was in arrears by $10,000.

The economic impact goes beyond the employees, as tax proceeds from the business' property amount to about $72,000 annually.

Unpaid fees exacerbated the company's financial woes to the national Mushroom Council of about $137,000. The council provides marketing support for the mushroom industry.

The farm's debt burden amounts to around $4.4 million, despite getting COVID relief of $1.7 million, which has been forgiven.

There may be a bright side and a means to restore the operations.

A group of employees may rescue the operation with the assistance of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center. A feasibility study is due out in February to see if a cooperative is a viable alternative.