A pound of mushrooms requires less than two gallons of water to grow.
That’s a lot less than crops like sweet corn, which uses 148 gallons per pound. A pound of beef soaks up 1,852 gallons.
Eating more mushrooms could be a helpful adaptation in a world with dwindling water supplies.
That was one of the messages from Dr. Gordon Walker, a mushroom educator who visited Carbondale in April for a talk about his new book, hosted by the Western Colorado Mycological Association. Walker, aka “Dr. Fun Guy” has amassed millions of social media followers of his informational accounts called @fascinatedbyfungi.
But Walker said Americans have barely scratched the surface of edible mushrooms’ potential.
“We in America pretty much eat one species, Agaricus bisporus. That's what a portobello, a button mushroom, and a crimini is,” Walker said in an interview.
There are many other species of mushrooms that could be commercially farmed, and are, in places like China. But Walker said there needs to be more consumer acceptance before those products are financially viable in America.
“No one else at the farmer’s market has to explain that their carrots or their beets won't kill the customer,” Walker said. “Whereas people regularly come up to a mushroom stand and are like, ‘Are these going to poison me? Are these going to make me trip?’”
Walker recommends trying a new mushroom from a local farmer’s market and learning how to cook it.
And while Colorado’s dry winter will likely mean less mushrooms appear this summer, the Western Slope should still have plenty of opportunities for foraging mushrooms. The Western Colorado Mycological Association leads expert-guided forays.
As much as he loves mushrooms, Walker doesn’t think they’re here to save us.
Fungi are ubiquitous, Walker stresses, living in the oceans, the atmosphere and on our skin. And because of the way they alter the chemistry of the environment, their byproducts set the stage for bacteria, plants and even humans to exist.
“It is no [overstatement] to say that life on land is possible because of fungi,” Walker said. “When people say fungi and mushrooms are going to save the world, I'm like, ‘We already live in a fungal world, and we should recognize the pivotal role they play.’”
Walker does support the innovative ways that fungi can be applied to human problems. For example, parasitic mushroom “bio better” products are being used in agriculture to target nuisance insects, replacing broad-spectrum chemical pesticides.
“If you spray something that's keyed in to help manage certain species, you're not going to kill all the insects,” Walker said. “But that's actually a good thing, because if you kill everything, you're selecting for very small populations of things that become resistant.”
Walker believes humans need to think about how they can support the fungal kingdom.
Much of that comes down to land conservation, Walker said, especially biodiverse habitats like old growth forests. He also pointed to efforts by the Fungi Foundation to push governments to include “funga” in environmental assessments.
