The Fruit of the Forest Fires: Intro to Morel Mushroom Market Opportunities
The Silent Gold Mine: A quiet rush for morels
There are three requirements for good morel mushroom growth: forest fire burn (charred ground), a nearby water supply (lakes and rivers), and elevation (rolling hills or mountain sides). Pickers, like myself back in June 2015, venture out with Home Depot paint buckets and exacto knives, and engage our mushroom vision to find the winding paths of proliferating fungi.
If fortune favours the picker, they can strike a “patch”; that is to say, an overwhelming amount of sprouting morels that bring the forager to their knees and turn their pupils into dollar signs. More often than not, patches are only found by the very experienced or the foolishly adventurous, and everyone else is left to skirt the mosquito-infested bogs and the “are you sure that’s not a bear den” areas of BC’s rural north. With every sweat-drenched step, pickers eventually lose their patience for the day and return to camp near the buyer’s station, where they sell their collected morels for cold, hard cash.
Truth be told, there aren’t many pickers who vacuum up morel patches with 8 hours of work for hundreds of dollars a day. Even so, their income is subject to volatile buying rates, and tomorrow’s fortune is never promised. In 2015, most pickers began the season selling a pound of morels to the buying stations for $14, but the price quickly dropped to $8, and in some cases, flatlined at $5. During my time as one-half of the best-friends-forever picking team, my buddy and I were able to pull in just about 200 pounds in 2 weeks at the $8/pound rate.
Things get really interesting when independent foragers and mushroom exporters bring their product to the local and international markets. It’s important to note that the fresh morels eaten in BC have likely been picked within the last couple of days, while those in Europe and Asia have been dried (or in low-quality cases, flash-frozen) and re-hydrated.
Given that a dried mushroom will weigh a tenth of its original weight, this explains the drastically different prices between the dried and fresh product types. Brent King, owner of Pacific Rim Mushrooms, sells dried morels for $185/pound, while competitors like West Coast Wild Foods sell for nearly double the price and only in packs of 15g or 30g. Meanwhile, fresh morels found in retail stores like Whole Foods or Loblaws are typically priced at $40/pound.
Wild Economy: where roughin’ it pays off
For Andrea Carlson, Owner and Head Chef of Burdock and Co. and owner of Harvest Community Foods, she only deals in freshly foraged mushrooms. Like many other west coast chefs looking to get creative with their menus, she jumps at the opportunity to work with chanterelles, porcini, and morels.
“Mushrooms are the focal points of the dish, which has a lot to do with its limitedness and its high price. People want to know that they’re eating a mushroom.”
Nevertheless, Carlson admits that there is very little demand in the Lower Mainland for morels, “We have tried to sell wild mushrooms [at Harvest]. They seem to be a really hard sell. They can be upwards of $20 a pound; not a spontaneous purchase for most people. The consumers either won’t spend the money or don’t know what to do with them.” On the other hand, bigger suppliers, like King’s Pacific Rim Mushrooms, are facing a constant struggle with exporting to massive food suppliers who like to negotiate the price of their stock against those coming out of India, Chile, and even the U.S. When King does secure a good price for his products, he still notes that the size of his purchase orders are diminishing. “When there’s too much product in the world, [the food distributors] hold the cards.”
By the looks of all the forest fires that have raged through British Columbia and The Northwest Territories in 2015, it appears there all the ingredients for another boom year in yielding morel mushrooms. While more fires typically means more possible environment for the morels to spring up, King isn’t convinced next year will be any different than this one. “I don’t forecast anymore,” he says, “it would be like me telling you the weather next year: sunny with a chance of clouds. I’ve seen many years with record numbers of forest fires but no extra amounts of morels the next year. You can’t really tell.”
Despite his reluctance, when asked to pick a few spots where the fresh market for morels would more than likely boom in the coming June, King pointed to Pemberton and Whistler. His impression is that these areas will be overrun by pickers trying to turn a quick profit to supply Vancouver’s early-season fresh morel demand. Even so, without a real increase in end-consumer’s interest, it’s likely that this forest meat will only be found in farmers’ markets and in limited-time menus.
Like most commodities, i.e. raw goods, the price of acquiring them will shrink given the abundance in supply. Would a cheaper price tag entice young and curious hobby chefs to experiment with the morel? In the context of eating what is available to us “within 100 miles”, perhaps the morel mushroom has been overlooked by conscious diners in BC. What would happen if the forest fire morel was branded in the same way kale was only a few years ago? Though the morel mushroom season only lasts a few summer months, its possibility for popularity still seems far from fully realized. Remember to look out for it next June, and if ever found on your plate, consider its testament to regenerating the lands we occupy, despite our presence.
