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Always sad to see this kind of thing happen, and I feel for the truffle farmers of Périgord, France. Americans are also trying to do the same with kava.

Inevitable the native peoples of the world end up in poverty while some Johnny-come-lately capitalist in the US eats their breakfast.

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I just happen to have looked at the truffle prices in Austin, Texas, USA yesterday. It was $1200/pound. We have, essentially, no truffles in the US. It is clear that the truffle farmers of France do not have enough to be exporting to the US (or else there is some other obstacle). If a US farmer finally manages to produce significant quantities (and we have heard news of this kind of breakthrough before that never really delivered), it will be filling currently unmet demand.

>We have, essentially, no truffles in the US

It sounds like you've studied this market, so I'm curious if you have thoughts on Oregon, as it has been my understanding that there are meaningful quantities harvested there. Is it a matter of variety, lack of commercial production, or am I just misinformed?

From what I’ve read, the Oregon truffles harvested are different varieties noticeably different from the top ones, and even more perishable and time-limited. I don’t think many people eat Oregon truffles outside of Oregon.

Well what I meant is, far less than we would be eating if we could get them. A price like I saw in the grocery store is not at all reflective of cost, even with a profit, it's the kind of price you get when there is a finite supply that cannot (yet at least) grow any, so the price goes up until enough people say "never mind".

For all I know, that truffle I saw was from Oregon. But regardless, there aren't very many. It was priced at about 4x the price of silver, per unit weight.

We do have them throughout the US in elite restaurants. Shipped in, I assume. If you go to The French Laundry, there is a special guy who comes to your table with a gorgeous long hardwood box. He opens it with a flourish, and set into several indentations in the box are baseball-sized truffles. You get to select one, and then he gets out a microplane and starts shaving huge truffle slices onto your plate. He does this until you can no longer see the dish in question (usually it's The French Laundry's legendary truffle mac and cheese). Then he keeps doing it until you think your eyes might pop out of your head and there is a thick fragrant layer of truffle slices all over your dish.

This costs a lot of extra money on top of an already expensive bill. It's worth it.

Granted not at French Laundry but I’ve done this at a fancy NYC restaurant. I’ve also had less desirable truffles (summer truffles) at a far less fancy restaurant in Italy. The Italian ones were much better.

The decay function on truffles is insane. Maybe the very top restaurants can get them from ground to plate in 48 hours but it’s pretty clear that the meal I had used truffles older than that.

I’m excited about the possibility of US truffles because I think a very tight supply chain is more likely.

Nobody in France is going to be importing truffles from California when they can buy them locally

fun fact: all french grapes are grown from american root stock [1,2] due to an infestation in the 1960s. one could argue it is a benefit so that if either country is struck with something like this for truffles, they can share.

[1] https://www.alearned.com/wine/

[2] https://gizmodo.com/how-the-great-french-wine-blight-changed...

Great articles, it seems that most (not just French) wines are produced by grafting wines onto a phylloxera (insects that feed on the vines) resistant rootstock. From the gizmodo article:

It's hard to compare modern wine, which is all grown on grafted vines, to pre-phylloxera wines (the notable exceptions being Chilean wine, and wine from the occasional European vineyard that was spared from the blight).

And:

Though modern chemistry and genetics have given agriculture plenty of new tools to fight pests, the ancient practice of grafting, honed during the Great French Wine Blight, remains the method of choice for protecting grape vines. "Rootstocks are the 'cure-all' for many soil-borne pests and diseases, but not all," Walker says. "In the past fumigation and pesticides controlled some of these issues, but if phylloxera are present, rootstocks are essential."

Yup, but now they've lost their US market.

The world is richer because people took the potato and learned how to grow it all over the world.

Oh for sure. But that still leaves the peoples who gave the world the crop (after centuries of selective breeding), living in poverty.

Meanwhile, if one of them tries to sell a Mickey Mouse t-shirt they'd get hanged before noon by the US govt doing the bidding of a US megacorp.

Would you say the same about potatoes, peppers and tomatoes which originated in the Americas.

Yup. The people in those countries still live in dire poverty. The same with the Ethiopians who gave the world coffee.

Rather than flying truffles transatlantic they can just be trucked across the country, or take much shorter and much less carbon-intensive flights. This is a massive win for the climate.

Is it a massive win for the climate? Truffles are light and small, and I think the quantities small enough that they are only modest packages in airfreight right? Even if on a weight-normalized basis flying them is extravagant, given the scale it would seem like the aggregate impact is pretty small.

I wonder if they account for more CO2 emissions than vinegar and baking soda science fair volcanos.

I'd rather have it grown locally than like coffee or cocoa beans where entire country-sized economies are devastated by US megacorps (see the reasons why we need fair trade), not to mention what they do to the environment.

sounds like the native peoples need to diversify their portfolio

Too busy with casinos and over harvesting fish

In France?

Grandparents post was all over the place

Actually despite the name, more truffles are harvested outside of Périgord in France than within.

So no one should have nice things to protect the incomes of the few lucky enough to possess the only natural supply?

the natural supply are forests. The overwhelming majority of truffles are found, not farmed.

Anyway, I don't like the idea of wasting so much soil, water, chemicals for few pounds per acre. It really seems like between preserving nature and money we always choose money.

don't worry, the french farmers are also capitalists

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