In recent years, mushroom farming in our country has turned from a niche segment into one of the investment-attractive areas of agriculture, the Ministry of Agriculture of Russia reported. They clarified that state support measures, in particular investment loans, became an incentive for the development of the sub-sector, as a result of which large projects in this area began to be launched.
According to the ministry, last year the volume of production of cultivated mushrooms increased by 16.1% and reached 128.7 thousand tons, which is a record in the modern history of Russia. Champignons and oyster mushrooms are grown mainly in our country.
The leading regions in the segment are Krasnodar Krai, Kursk, Leningrad, Moscow, Kaluga Regions and the Republic of Tatarstan. The main measure of state support for producers is preferential short–term and investment lending, the Ministry of Agriculture noted.
In early May, Interfax wrote that Russia’s leading “mushroom” companies were able to significantly increase revenue in 2022. Thus, the AgroGrib company received a net profit of 159.8 million rubles, revenue increased to 1.5 billion rubles from 1.2 billion rubles in 2021. The Russian Mushroom company achieved a profit of 79.3 million rubles, revenue increased to 919.7 million rubles from 755.4 million rubles a year earlier. “Mushroom rainbow” increased profit to 359.3 million rubles, revenue increased to 4.6 billion rubles against 3.7 billion rubles in 2021.
Earlier, Ilya Gamov, Director of agroindustrial production of Magnit, told Agroinvestor that in Russia the volume of consumption of cultivated mushrooms reaches about 180 thousand tons per year and the bulk are champignons. Consumption of oyster mushrooms on the Russian market does not exceed several thousand tons per year (in 2022 – 6.5 thousand tons), he noted.
According to Gamov, the main challenge of the market now is to increase the volume of consumption of mushrooms. “And here the reserve is simply gigantic. If we talk about China and other Asian countries, the specific consumption of mushrooms there is an order of magnitude greater, in Europe the consumption of mushrooms is twice or more higher. I believe that all mushroom producers need to jointly develop a program to popularize these products and stimulate consumption, because now the main barrier for the buyer is a low level of knowledge about the usefulness of products, methods of its preparation,” the expert said.
According to Andrey Golokhvastov, CEO of Agriconsult, all major mushroom producers are interested in their own mycelium. This, on the one hand, reduces risks, on the other — additional earnings. At the same time, the production of mycelium of champignons is a technologically complex direction if it is planned to develop its own highly productive strains, Golokhvastov emphasized.
A source: https://e-cis.info/news/567/109291/
