How A Sleepy Pennsylvania Town Grew Into America's Mushroom Capital

April 4, 2024 6:42 AM

The beds are covered with a mass of pure white, like bubbling foam: thousands of white button mushrooms. These are the mushrooms — along with other strains of this same species, the brown and portobello mushrooms — that account for the vast majority of all mushrooms that Americans eat.
posted by signsofrain (16 comments total)

Off-topic, but are all small towns sleepy, or just some of them?
posted by pipeski at 6:56 AM on April 4 [9 favorites]

Calling a small town sleepy is more an indictment of the writer than the town itself.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:01 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]

Sleepy town may be accurate. It's well known that mushrooms can induce lethargy, loss of consciousness, and eventually death.
posted by phooky at 7:16 AM on April 4 [6 favorites]

This stirred a childhood memory of seeing Fred Rogers visit a mushroom farm (Mister Rogers episode wiki, complete episode video), and I wondered if this might be the same one. Turns out the one in the article is near Philly, whereas the one in the Mister Rogers episode (Moonlight Mushrooms in Butler County, PA) was closer to his studios in Pittsburgh.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:29 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

I had a good friend from college who was from Kennet Square (we went to Pitt) and based on the sample size of her, her brother, and her long-distance boyfriend, the "sleepy" thing may be a misunderstanding based on how incredibly high on weed they were, pretty much all the time. Common misunderstanding of the energy levels, y'know?
posted by Tomorrowful at 7:29 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]

My family lived near Kennett Square in the 1960s. The mushroom farm was a favorite destination for a drive. Sturdy baskets with washable cotton liners were sold there that would be filled and re-filled with fresh mushrooms which everyone munched like popcorn on the way home. It was a mycophile’s dream.
posted by kinnakeet at 7:30 AM on April 4 [3 favorites]

I read this this morning and thought that it was exactly the kind of article I love. It teaches me a little something about the interesting, everyday lives of other people, with hooks for further research.
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:32 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]

The juxtaposition of "sleepy Pennsylvania town" and "beds are covered... thousands of mushrooms" provided a rather Lovecraftian bed and breakfast mental image. There must be a short story there, somewhere.

The article is fascinating, though, thanks!
posted by SunSnork at 7:53 AM on April 4 [3 favorites]

I have read about this mushroom empire before. The concerns over the 20 or so years have been similar. Horse manure is no longer a local product. It must be shipped in from further and further away. It is hard to get labor locally, too. The question often comes down to: "Why not move some mushroom farms to where the horses and workers are?"

It seems that tradition keeps the farms in place.
posted by Midnight Skulker at 8:02 AM on April 4

Mentioned in the post but button mushroom, portobello, crimini, baby bella are all the same mushroom - Agaricus bisporus. When people claim they don’t like mushrooms they have most likely only ever eaten this one. It’s a whole wide world!
posted by misterpatrick at 8:25 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]

Yeah, I didn't even know there were other types of (non-poisonous/non-hallucinogenic) mushrooms until I was well into adulthood. It's a shame, because some of them are very tasty and deserve more attention.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:28 AM on April 4

Local health officials testified that mushroom workers are prone to impetigo, arthritis, back ailments, and the whole range of respiratory diseases: tuberculosis, pneumonia, emphysema, bronchitis,
asthma, and "mushroom lung." Other witnesses spoke of recent cases where workers suffered
nosebleeds, hacking cough, and vomiting of blood, believed to result from allergic reaction either to
chemicals or mold spores in the growing medium. - The Living and Working Conditions of Mushroom Workers, July 1977.

45 years later:

Approximately one-third of respondents had suffered an injury at work and nearly half felt there are workplace factors that affect their health and safety[...] The research has shown that both the indoor infrastructure of mushroom production, including poor flooring conditions and cool indoor temperatures, and the organization of mushroom production work, including exposure to chemicals including pesticides, the physical demands of the job, use of small knives, contact with compost, and the piece rate payment system are perceived as safety and health risks in mushroom farm workplaces. - Latino/a farmworkers’ concerns about safety and health in the Pennsylvania mushroom industry, April, 2022

Organizing efforts among undocumented laborers in the US has historically been quite difficult. The Kaolin Mushroom Workers Union was founded in 1993 and stood out as an exception, but was ultimately targeted by the National Right to Work Foundation and decertified in 2016.
posted by Richard Saunders at 8:31 AM on April 4 [11 favorites]

Does it count as an agrihood?
posted by clew at 8:42 AM on April 4

In 1990, I lived in Morgan Hill, CA which has its own mushroom farming and on hot summer days when we had the windows open I could definitely tell you if the wind was coming from the west where the mushroom farms were or from the south from the Gilroy garlic farms. I'm sure you can figure out which was significantly more pleasant.
posted by plinth at 1:46 PM on April 4

Now I want garlic mushroom pasta for dinner.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:11 PM on April 4 [2 favorites]

Now I'm thinking of "Boys! Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!"
posted by doctornemo at 8:35 PM on April 4