Growing fungi in the dark will save humanity!

I had intended to blog medicinal fungi then I read an article in Medium by Paul Greenberg, A Mushroom Farm in Every Closet, ‘where they grow out of sight’ waiting to burst into sunshine from the dark. Greenberg previously wrote Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food highlighting the depletion of ocean fish populations, the last remaining wild foods.

Food insecurity looms, the World Food Program claims that today, in 45 countries there are 50 million people ‘teetering on the edge of famine.’ Greenberg’s growing mushrooms in the closet narrative is a metaphor for broadscale fungi cultivation which can solve food insecurity and change pharmaceutical manufacturing.

“Oyster Mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus)” by Martin Cooper Ipswich is marked with CC BY 2.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse The Ukraine conflict is a harbinger of nuclear war and its ramifications. Adding climate change to war means innovative agricultural practices are needed. After watching the devastating wildfires of 2019’s New Year’s Eve I have thought humans may be forced to become nocturnal. Living underground during hot hours and emerging at night to pursue daylight activities.

Global heating will curtail many cereal and market garden industries that feed us. We’ll have to grow our food underground; this is where fungi play the major role.

Supporting Greenberg; I remember when Australian plant nurseries sold depleted mushroom growing substrate for garden compost. My wife discovered that after sprinkling this compost with water then putting it in a wardrobe delicious button mushrooms grew.

Greenberg’s approach is not new and his article is a simple narrative about growing mushrooms in a cupboard. Greenberg’s first attempt failed, all he got was blue mould, he successfully grew the Oysters after advice from mushroom experts.

Of the 144,000, or is it 5 million, members of the fungi Kingdom some are edible, some are medicinal, some soothe the psyche while others are poisonous or destructive. A Google search found myfoodbook lists 12 edible fungi varieties, cleangreensimple lists 39 different varieties while the spruce eats lists but nine. I favour the 39-variety list to avoid dietary boredom.

Greenberg’s closet growing paradigm can provide wholefoods for nocturnal humans struggling to survive in an arid environment. His adviser, Mushroom Queens, has a vision of using New York’s unused underground sites— railway tunnels and abandoned cellars— to grow enough edible fungi to satisfy the New York market. This, plus hydroponically grown vegetables under LEDs, will be future market gardens of urban communities.

Farming fungi in dark environs is historical. Large-scale mushroom cropping started halfway through the 17th century in France, they were grown in moist caves by French gardener, a Monsieur Chambry. Australia’s mushroom cropping industry was started by Spanish migrant, Raymond Mas, in 1933 in a disused railway tunnel under Sydney’s Circular Quay.

Future humans may become nocturnal beasts dining on fungi-based foods, healing themselves with fungal pharmaceuticals and staving off depression with psychedelic mushrooms. One function of fungi is breaking down of dead flora and fauna. Degrading woody lignin and grassy cellulose to mulch is mostly done by fungi.

Astute humans may exploit the fungal breakdown of grass cellulose to simple sugars by adding yeast to these sugars to make alcohol. A treat for those who enjoy a cool drink on a hot day while sitting in their shady caves. Yeast is also a fungus.

Global warming and climate wars will put great pressure on today’s large scale agricultural industries causing high food prices and famine. Greenberg and many others have found that instead of laboriously growing food grade mushrooms in the open, under hessian or straw, they can be grown in the dark. Edible fungi will play an important survival role in arid Earth conditions. Fungi will be cultivated in containers, dwellings, caves, tunnels and abandoned built environments producing nutritious food and other useful products.