Two centuries ago, French farmers revolutionized mushroom production by moving into the maze of limestone quarries underneath Paris, but today only a handful still cultivate a heritage at risk of fading away for good.
The bitter irony is that demand for traditionally grown white button mushrooms, and their more flavorful brown-capped cousins, is as high as ever.
“It’s not a question of finding clients, I sell everything I can produce,” said Shoua-moua Vang at Les Alouettes in Carrieres-sur-Seine, a short drive from the bustling La Defence business district west of the capital.
Photo: AFP
Vang runs the largest underground mushroom cave in the Paris region, spread across one-and-a-half hectares of tunnels in a hill overlooking the Seine river.
He counts Michelin-starred chefs, as well as supermarket chains and local markets, among his customers, even though he deems his mushrooms “expensive” at 3.20 euros (US$3.61) a kilogram wholesale.
Yet dank trays loaded with hundreds of kilograms of fungi were going to waste during a recent visit, because Vang lacked enough hands to pick them all.
Just five of his 11 workers were on the job after the others called in sick — and Vang was doubtful that all of them would actually return.
“People these days don’t want to work all day in the dark like vampires,” he said, estimating that this day’s production would top out at 1.5 tonnes instead of his usual 2.5 or 3 tonnes.
He is one of just five traditional producers of what the French call “champignons de Paris” located around the capital, along with an even smaller number in abandoned quarries north of the capital.
That is down from about 250 in the late 19th century, when farmers flocked to a “royal” mushroom variety that Louis XIV had made popular by having it grown at Versailles.
They had discovered that Agaricus bisporus would grow year-round if placed in a manure-based substrate deep underground, where temperatures and humidity could be controlled and the dark would encourage growth.
It also turned out that the caves’ earthy atmosphere, reinforced by covering the compost with ground-up limestone, imparted a nutty, almost mineral taste while preventing the mushrooms from becoming over-saturated with water.
Even the macabre tunnels of the Paris catacombs, now a top tourist attraction, were once filled with mushroom beds.
Rapid urbanization and, in particular, the construction of the Paris metro began pushing growers out of the capital in the early 1900s, although about 50 were still in quarries under Paris suburbs in the 1970s, often run by new generations of the same family.
The arrival of cheaper imports from industrial hangars in the Netherlands, Poland and later China, which use peat instead of limestone to boost production rates, proved too much for most.
“It’s hard to find people who want to take over because there’s no mushroom cultivation programs in agriculture schools,” said Muriel le Loarer, who is working to revive the Paris mushroom tradition at the SAFER rural development agency.
Vang, for example, had worked 11 years at the quarry owned by Jean-Louis Spinelli, whose children declined to follow in their father’s footsteps, before taking over in September last year.
“Finding people to pick the mushrooms is complicated, it’s hard to find good compost, and people don’t want to invest when you don’t know if producers are going to make it,” Spinelli said.
“We’re promoting the sector, helping to find financing and working with local authorities to open quarries back up,” said Le Loarer, adding that there is growing interest in local produce and the farm-to-table trend.
Yet for now, Paris mushrooms are just a tiny fraction of the 90,000 tonnes produced in France each year, according to figures from the Rungis wholesale market south of the capital.
Officials say it is too late to create a distinctive “Paris mushroom” certification under France’s Controlled Designation of Origin (AOP) food appellation rules, since the name has been used generically for decades.
That means producers face a marketing challenge to ensure people realize when they are buying the authentic, quarry-farmed fungi.
“Here our mushrooms grow naturally, I don’t boost them by spraying water because that fills them with water,” Vang said. “These mushrooms from the huge hangars are basically grown by computers.”
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