Fungus amungus
By : Anna Kocińska
Mushroom magic: Poland goes into a fungus frenzy as summer turns to fall.
For many Poles, autumn means the start of the mushroom season when many people in the country go mycology mad. Unlike in the West, which tends to prefer its mushrooms shrink-wrapped in supermarkets, Poland is still big on wild mushrooms and by winter most Polish kitchens are stocked with pickled or dried varieties of edible fungi.
These rich pickings can also mean much sought-after work, especially after the tourist season dries up at the end of summer. And for people from Brusy, a small gmina in the Bory Tucholskie forest and lake region of north-central Poland, its often the only way to make a living at this time of year. With a population of 13,000, by the end of September 964 people in Brusy were out of work and only 38 jobs were available, according to the local Labor Office.
So for the inhabitants of the gmina, mushroom season means more than just a bit of a lark in the countryside. With this years rich harvest, locals gathered some 16 kilograms each day, selling them to one of five local companies trading in mushrooms. And business is booming. Last year, about 17,000 tonnes of edible fungi were exported mainly to Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland.
According to the Central Statistical Office (GUS), exports of processed mushrooms (of the non-pickled variety) reached zł. 126 million ($30 million) in revenue last year. And a wet summer resulted in a bumper crop of mushrooms this fall. But the trade is a risky one, as good seasons seldom happen every year and Polish mushrooms have to compete with fungi from Romania, Bulgaria, Russia and Belarus. Ive seen economic guides in which the commercial risk taken by mushroom traders was compared to stock trading, said Jacek Cis-Bankiewicz, cofounder and co-owner of Fungopol, one of Polands largest mushroom exporters. It speaks for itself.
From Italy to Poland
In 1992, when Cis-Bankiewicz set up Fungopol, several private firms trading in fresh and processed mushrooms had already been around for three years. Before 1989, state-owned LAS Brusy was the only company with a license to buy and sell mushrooms abroad. After the launch of the market economy, however, companies such as Fungopol started popping up everywhere, threatening to topple LAS dominance.
We no longer deal with mushrooms, said Jadwiga Szuca, director of LAS. We gave it up five years ago because as a state-owned company we lost out to the private firms. We do have traditions in fungi trading, but its not enough these days. Today the company only processes fruit and fish.
LAS was set up in 1928 by an Italian, Felizio Giovano, who hired 500 women to pick mushrooms from the Brusy forest for export to Italy and Argentina. In communist Poland, the company was turned into a cooperative before being taken over by the state in 1975. Today, LAS employs 103 people, a far cry from the 700 staff it employed under communism.
Two years ago, LAS six divisions in other cities were privatized, and Szuca said the company was looking for an outside investor to get back into the mushroom trade. We are looking for one, she said. With help we could not only process fruit and fish like we do now, but we could go back to fungi. But according to Cis-Bankiewicz, communist leftovers such as LAS have little hope for the future. I dont think anyone would risk taking over LAS and employing hundreds of people full time, he said. Mushrooms are a seasonal business. I employ only a few people off-season.
From Poland to Italy
Cis-Bankiewicz said he has always based his business on exports, selling locally only when the international market has already dried up for the year. When I was planning to create my own company, I was looking for a sector in which I would be able to become independent from the Polish domestic market, he said. Today, every year at least 70% of fungi purchased from regional pickers is exported to Italy and Germany. A great part of my (exports) are fresh mushrooms.
Ive tried to sell fresh mushrooms in Poland but the Polish market absorbs (a bigger portion of) marinated and dried fungi. In addition, to sell fresh mushrooms you need fast transport and well-organized distribution channels. Its what Western partners have and what Polish merchants still lack, Cis-Bankiewicz added.
Poles are also used to buying mushrooms from street vendors, who start selling in bigger cities in early September, Cis-Bankiewicz said. They sell without a certificate (proving their mushrooms are edible), but they are cheaper and are on the streets of Warsaw the same day the fungi is picked, he said. Mushrooms are very delicate and they should be sold within 36 hours, including picking and transport.
Fungopol owns six trucks but also contracts out to a transport company. Last year it invested in its own processing facility. Nevertheless, Fungopol is a victim of the markets whims. There is no such thing as a stabilization of profits in this business, he said. Its true, my revenues are growing, but profits are stuck at the same level. Its due to strong competition, every day. You need to constantly improve your facilities to be successful.
Further complicating matters, Fungopol has to compete with mushrooms imported from Romania, Russia and Belarus. If Romania has an exceptional season for boletus, I wont sell my mushrooms, he said. Polish boletus are better than Russian because we have a shorter distance to cross when traveling to Italy or Germany.
Competition isnt the only problem. If mushrooms begin to appear too early in August when most Italians are on vacation, no one will buy them. Also, too much rain means poorer quality mushrooms, while too little means they cannot grow. We dont start purchasing until we are sure we can buy more than 500 kilograms per day, Cis-Bankiewicz said. This year, though, the crop was impressive and Fungopol bought 1,000 tonnes of wild berries and mushrooms, including more than 600 tonnes of boletus. We were buying even 30 tonnes per day, paying on average zł. 4-zł. 16 per kilogram of boletus, he said. If the season is not good enough, you can always turn to mushroom processing, but one has to decide what to do with fungi the same day they were picked.
Fickle weather is not the only threat. Fungopol, like most exporters, has to cooperate with smaller firms, which in this case buy mushrooms from local pickers. Small family firms complain that exporters, who sell large quantities of mushrooms abroad, cheat them and dictate impossibly low prices.
According to Cis-Bankiewicz, though, his export sales depend on price. So, I have to be flexible too, he said. When I learn that the price of boletus, which I ordered earlier somewhere in Poland, goes down, I call my partner and ask at what price he can sell it to me. And I can tell you that most agree to the lower price because they know that I will let them earn more next time.
Polish connection
While Fungopol is almost exclusively geared toward Western markets, Stefan Skwierawski, founder of a mushroom processing plant in Brusy, is focused on the domestic sector.
Before establishing his plant in 1989, he worked in LAS Brusy for 10 years, but had become a mushroom connoisseur well before that. I wrote a graduation thesis on mushroom processing, he said. I dont export mushrooms because I would have to invest too much. I sell my products (dried mushrooms and a mushroom concentrate) to Makro Cash&Carry and other commercial chains, mainly in southern Poland where fungi are the most popular.
Polish cuisine is peppered with recipes whose main ingredients are mushrooms. Every year Skwierawski buys some 300 tonnes of fresh mushrooms, which yields 30 tonnes of dried product. Although he has no plans for export, Skwierawski admits to being dissatisfied with the business deals he makes with commercial supermarkets. While I have to pay my pickers on a daily basis, stores pay me terribly late, sometimes even after 100 days, he said. Its a nightmare. We also have to pay retailers an annual premium for placing our products on their shelves they call it marketing costs. Sometimes its even zł. 20,000.
Renata Juszkiewicz, spokeswoman for Metro, operator of the Real supermarket chain, said these fees are negotiable. I havent heard if they have to be paid to our chain, but from the press I know they exist, she said. But Fungopols Cis-Bankiewicz said such payments are standard. I have been working with retail chains since the early 1990s and I think that the goal of such fees is to make producers aware that they have to be big enough and well organized to cooperate with supermarkets, he said. And you can always negotiate.
Supermarkets also have other requirements. We do sell fresh mushrooms during the season, but we need certificates that prove they are not poisonous and this makes prices go up, said Zbigniew Kudrycki, a buyer of mushrooms and vegetables at French supermarket chain Géant. You can buy them cheaply from street vendors, but then you have no guarantee they are edible.
The Epidemiology and Hygiene Control Office (WSSE) in Poznań is the only place where a trader can receive a special license for selling mushrooms. Once a year we organize nine-day courses for 25-30 people, said Elżbieta Osowska, of the WSSE. The number of participants hasnt grown significantly since early the 1990s, but I can see more young people doing courses.
License holders have to know 34 kinds of edible mushroom that can be sold in Poland. Mushroom traders also have to be in touch with the local officers of Polish State Forests, who decide whether mushroom picking is environmentally safe. The State Forests hold 79% of all forests in Poland, occupying 28.1% of the country. I dont think companies like mine cause degradation of the environment, its rather the industry that should be blamed, Cis-Bankiewicz said. But for some years now, we have all been trying to pay more attention to methods of picking. For instance, one shouldnt pick fungi that are too young. We have to take care because forests feed us.
