Yen Thanh: Preparing a supply of straw mushrooms for Tet (Lunar New Year)
(Baonghean.vn) - Currently, straw mushroom production facilities in Yen Thanh district are focusing on caring for their mushrooms to ensure timely harvesting and supply a source of clean food for the market during Tet (Lunar New Year).
Taking advantage of the dry straw left after the summer-autumn rice harvest, in December (lunar calendar), the Son Hanh mushroom production cooperative in Son Thanh hamlet, Nam Thanh commune, focused on investing in the production of three types of mushrooms: button mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and wood ear mushrooms, aiming to sell approximately 4 tons of fresh mushrooms to the market during the Tet holiday.
This is one of the production facilities recently certified by the Nghe An Department of Health for producing mushrooms that meet food safety and hygiene standards. Thanks to strict adherence to technical procedures from raw material processing, incubation, inoculation, care, and harvesting, this facility has produced 9 tons of fresh mushrooms in the past 8 months and provided regular employment for 10 workers, with each worker earning an average of 80,000 to 100,000 VND per day.
Farmers in Yen Thanh produce mushrooms.
Photo: Khanh Ly
The project has been underway for nearly a year, but so far, in Yen Thanh district, there are 49 households producing mushrooms in 6 communes, including 19 households with sheds and 9 households with sterilization ovens. In 2011, the entire district produced 80 tons of fresh mushrooms, including wood ear mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, button mushrooms, and reishi mushrooms, worth 2.4 billion VND. Besides providing regular employment for 230 laborers during the off-season, most of the straw and rice husks after harvest have been used in mushroom production, and the waste residue has been processed into organic fertilizer for use in agriculture.
It can be said that mushroom farming is a low-investment, fast-turnover, easy-to-do profession with easily marketable products. In Yen Thanh district, many households have escaped poverty and started to become wealthy from mushroom cultivation. To prepare for the Lunar New Year, mushroom production facilities throughout the district have prepared tens of tons of dry straw as raw material, and are expected to supply nearly 40 tons of various types of fresh mushrooms to markets within and outside the district.
According to current prices, one kilogram of button mushrooms costs 27-30 thousand dong, and oyster mushrooms cost 22-25 thousand dong/kg. Besides supplying local people, many large restaurants outside the district and supermarkets in Vinh City have now contracted with Yen Thanh to purchase all of the produce during the Tet holiday.
The implementation of the mushroom cultivation development project in Yen Thanh district is a new direction aimed at gradually breaking away from monoculture in agricultural production. Leveraging its strengths as a predominantly agricultural district with abundant post-harvest raw materials, in 2012 Yen Thanh district continued to apply several mechanisms and policies to support mushroom cultivation, create conditions for households in need to rent land for sheds and farms, and establish cooperatives and enterprises for product production and distribution.
Initially, the district will invest in building a mushroom spawn nursery to ensure self-sufficiency in production and reduce costs for farmers. The goal is that by the end of the year, mushroom cultivation will be officially widely implemented in the district, with a production of 800 tons of fresh mushrooms, achieving a value of 15 billion VND, laying the foundation for development in the following years and contributing to increasing the income of local farmers.
Sun
