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Comment by jelliclesfarm | Hacker News Reader

When we develop tech like this, we are betting against environment and habitat. And trees.

Alternatively, we're reducing the demand on the native habitats morels grow in.

That's not necessarily true. Industrial scale foraging of mushrooms isn't great for forests, so relieving some of that pressure is a good, pro-habitat thing imo.

Is industrial scale foraging really a thing? That is scary. I figured that there must be some cottage level foraging going on, but that most mushrooms available for sale were simply species that are easier to cultivate.

Yup. A lot of the "nicer" (chantarelles, porcini, truffles, morels (until now! :)) ones can't be cultivated.

Here's [1] an old NYT article saying there's ~8k commercial mushroom foragers in the US in 1993. I'm sure it's more now.

I know that in Europe there's a lot of commercial scale mushroom foraging going on in Eastern Europe.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/28/us/rushing-to-gather-up-c...

My favorite so far is chicken of the woods. I might try cultivating it next year.

I’d love to know how you prepare it… in my area we’ve found a few, but it’s been a dark art of waiting for the snow to be off the ground to get into the areas where we know them to be, and them being dried out and dead by the time we get there…

That's interesting. I guess you're in a cold area for snow 5o still be around, since they typically fruit June-Sept here.

I like to cut them into pieces and either sauté them or pan fry them like with light breading, like my homemade chicken nuggets.

I may have been given incorrect information, but I've heard that chicken of the woods is incredibly difficult to cultivate, close to morels (you need just the right conditions).

You might like this book, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mushroom_at_the_End_of_the...:

The book describes and analyzes the globalized commodity chains of matsutake mushrooms.

Two sides of the same coin - building resilience and independence, having a "plan B" is effectively betting against everything working fine, risks not materializing and not needing any alternatives; no matter if it's about environment, software or politics.

However, I do consider it a good and prudent thing to "bet against" things that are crucial to us. Whenever there's a major threat, it's wise to also prepare to mitigate its consequences, since saying "we must prevent this" "we need to achieve X or the bad thing will happen" is, even if very true, often not sufficient, and betting everything on the expected success would be just naive wishful thinking, we definitely have to hedge our bets for everything that matters.

Morels grow under a whole host of trees, some of them of very high commercial value, so I wouldn't bet on that.

What's more, one simple way of getting a bunch of morels to grow on a specific patch of land turns out to be setting it on fire, so growing them on a basement would even probably end up being a net positive.

What's the line of argumentation here? That the only reason humanity hasn't clearcut every forest in the world is because they were needed to grow mushrooms?

No. The argument is that the inter connected web of mycelium is much more significant and crucial than edible mushrooms.

No one is going to die without morels but without the soil food web, we are a dead barren planet. Mushrooms and fungi and mycelium is evidence of a living planet. We need that signal to determine the health and viability of earth.

When I ask for robots on the farm, I am betting against low paid manual labour. When I develop long supply chains and invest in more and more warehouses, I am betting against local manufacturing industries. When I create indoor morels(even amongst all the other wild mushrooms, morels are very special), I am betting against the soil food web of life and cycle of life.

Then you're going to be really upset when you hear commercial hydroponics exists, which grows food crops without any soil at all, and is a multi-billion dollar industry.

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