The Fungal Network: Connecting Nature and People | Notes from American Farmers’ Markets
I.
Xiao Tang and Xiao Wen’s home is nestled in a valley. The stream there is small, barely half a metre deep, yet it flows year-round and can be found on a map. Flowing south, it joins other waterways several times before feeding into the Ohio River, which runs from east to west, merging with the Mississippi River several hundred kilometres further west. Their farm spans approximately one hundred acres—just over six hundred mu—though the mushroom house, vegetable garden, and their modest home occupy only a small fraction of the land; the rest is predominantly woodland.
“The trees here were actually all cleared away once; it was all farmland. Then came a conservation reserve policy—basically, if your land is by the water and you’re willing to return the farmland to forest, the government pays you the rent for that land. Soil by the water erodes very easily, and if you’re farming, you inevitably use a lot of fertilisers, which then flow south along the river and end up in the Gulf of Mexico.”
The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) mentioned by Xiao Wen originated from a ‘soil bank policy’ introduced after the Second World War. The core idea was that soil is a slow-renewing resource; while the total area of land doesn’t shrink, the layer of high-quality topsoil diminishes and can even be exhausted, thus requiring protection.
Although American agriculture is highly industrialised, it isn’t the same as industry; it has its own operational logic. For instance, if a particular car model loses market demand and its price drops, the manufacturer quickly switches to producing other models. However, if the price of agricultural produce falls, farmers often produce *more* to safeguard their income, attempting to compensate for the drop in unit profit with volume. This strange logic warrants a separate article to investigate fully, but it’s safe to say that this law has remained in effect for two centuries.
Consequently, in the decades following the war, agricultural efficiency soared and food prices fell, which led to an unchecked expansion of land clearing in many areas. Farming is hard on the soil; in temperate farmlands, there are typically six months of the year after harvest when the soil is left completely bare, exposed to wind and rain, leading to untold erosion. Against this backdrop, the US introduced the soil bank policy, with the primary goal of protecting both soil and water, as the two are complementary and essentially one and the same. By protecting the soil, water quality naturally improves; without addressing soil erosion, talking about protecting water resources is an empty exercise.
The US Farm Bill is revised every five years. As one of its core components, the Conservation Reserve Program evolved from the soil bank, continuously improving and expanding. It moved from returning farmland to forest, to returning it to grassland or wetlands, and its objective expanded from protecting immediately vital resources like soil and water to protecting wildlife and ecosystems.
A previous piece in this series, ‘Old Kai the Farmer’, mentioned ‘easements’—a concept rooted in medieval English law where land ownership can be split. For example, a government or non-profit organisation might hold the subsurface rights to ensure a piece of land is not developed destructively, while the farmer retains the surface rights for livestock and foraging. These rights can be traded or passed to heirs; essentially, it is a means to protect the environment while allowing the farmer to benefit.
Conservation reserves are not the same as easements. They do not touch land ownership but are a different experiment: the government essentially rents the farmer’s land to create forests or restore other ecosystems, typically via ten- to fifteen-year contracts. Once the contract expires, the farmer can renew it, decline it, or return the forest to farmland—after all, the land remains theirs. From a purely environmental perspective, this might be less than ideal, but since the vast majority of US land is privately owned, it is a more flexible and practical approach—preserving as much as possible.
“Smell how fragrant this honeysuckle is! Most of these trees were planted by Xiao Tang’s father when he was young. He loves honeysuckle and Canadian redbud, so the outer perimeter of the woods is planted with these two species; in spring, the whole walk is filled with fragrance. We’ve expanded the woodland a bit since then, and there are so many wildflowers in there that I pick a bunch every week to take home.”
“Does the compensation for planting trees match what you’d make from crops?”
“It’s not exactly equal; their principle is to pay market value. Every time we renew the contract with the Department of Agriculture, they use the current rental rate for agricultural land as a benchmark, and they also test the specific soil and water quality of your plot. If your soil is good, they pay more. Of course, in practice, once you add in various miscellaneous costs, farmers might end up slightly disadvantaged. But we’re still happy to plant trees; we want to keep our stream clear, and Xiao Tang has always loved trees…”
“Will you be fined if the woods suffer a fire or a pest infestation?”
“They have forestry experts who visit regularly. They’ll advise you on how to mix tree species to prevent pests or control the scale of fires. If a fire does occur, they’ll tell you what to do and which species are best to choose for replanting.”
Farmers tend towards conservatism—it seems to be true regardless of the country. They prefer to keep old things: old houses, old machinery, old trees… they are reluctant to modernise unless absolutely necessary. Xiao Wen’s laboratory contains many modern tools, such as the laminar flow cabinet (a sterilised workbench) that Xiao Tang made for her, yet directly across from the lab stands a cowshed from 1890. Inside the mushroom room converted from the cowshed is a very cool autoclave (a giant pressure cooker), and parked at the door is a 1945 tractor, an Allis-Chalmers. Xiao Tang uses it to farm a small plot of potatoes, which he sometimes sells at the local market if there are too many for the family. I’ve bought his potatoes, never imagining they were grown by a tractor as old as my parents.
“Oh, right, do you know Old To, the butcher at our market? He spends his spare time buying old farm machinery, fixing it up himself, and then selling it on.”
“I know of him, but not well. Fixing old tractors is a big business. For those of us with smaller plots, buying a new tractor isn’t an option; we all go for the old machines. During the festive parades in the countryside, many of those brightly decorated tractors you see are nearly a hundred years old.”
Xiao Tang and Xiao Wen’s mushroom business was the only one of its kind in our little market; they had no competitors. Every general election, the candidates they supported differed from those of most of the other farmers. Despite being at the market for so many years, they never seemed to be on intimate terms with everyone; there was always a certain sense of detachment about them. Yet, the moment the conversation turned to farming, the conviction in their manner made it clear they were talking about their own kind.
Just as they were discussing tractors, their son, Little J, returned. The lad had just graduated from university and hadn’t yet decided on his future, so he’d moved back in with his parents to learn the mushroom trade and the technical side of things while working a few odd jobs. Pang Hu, a family member, couldn’t hide his city-dweller’s naivety as he asked, “Tractors must have different gears, right? Are there any with automatics?”
I watched the family of three with a touch of anxiety, but no one seemed to be sniggering; they all appeared to be considering the question with utmost seriousness. Little J replied in a very pragmatic tone, “I used to work on another farm and drove some newer tractors, but they were all manuals. Working machinery requires a higher degree of control, so manuals are probably more suitable.”
Two
About ten years ago, I suddenly developed an allergy to the shiitakes from Xiao Tang’s farm—essentially a mild case of poisoning. The toxicity of mushrooms is a mysterious thing. Mushrooms that many are accustomed to eating can be toxic to some; even the same species of mushroom may be toxic when grown in certain environments but harmless in others.
Xiao Tang’s shiitakes look very different from those in the Chinese supermarkets; they are much more slender and far less fragrant than dried mushrooms, but in my memory, they were incredibly tender and smooth—I was quite addicted to that texture at the time. Over the past decade, their production of various mushrooms has remained stable. Aside from me, I haven’t heard of anyone else having an allergic reaction. Beyond selling retail at the market, they supply about ten local restaurants. Unlike most farmers at the small market, the couple has no second job or other income; they farm mushrooms full-time, which paid for their two children to complete state university.
And yet, just fifty years ago, fresh shiitake mushrooms were nowhere to be found in the United States. At the time, the Department of Agriculture forbade the import of shiitake spores; apparently, they had confused shiitake with something called the ‘leopard-skin’ mushroom. In English, this mushroom has a colloquial name: the ‘train wrecker’. It thrives on railway sleepers, decomposing the lignin in the wood into sugar until the sleeper silently turns into a heap of mud. During the American Civil War, this fungus destroyed some of the Southern railway systems, which, arguably, was a factor in the North’s victory.
Shiitake are not easy to grow; their mycelium has a long growth cycle, and the timing of the fruiting is unpredictable. In ancient China, the ‘flower-cutting’ method was used: notches were carved into a log to await the arrival of mysterious spores from the forest, or a paste of existing shiitakes was spread onto the wounds. After two or three years, some might grow, or they might not. In the twentieth century, the Japanese developed various inoculation methods to guarantee the growth of mycelium, but when the mycelium-filled logs would actually produce mushrooms remained a mystery. For a long time in East Asia, people followed the ancient Chinese ‘shocking’ method: guessing that the mycelium had matured, they would strike the logs hard on a night of the full moon; it was said that after this beating, the mushrooms would emerge.
Xiao Tang’s family uses the sawdust cultivation method developed by the American company Lambert Spawn in the seventies—sawdust is mixed with grain to create a medium, the spores are added, and it’s packed into plastic bags. After being kept warm for a while, the bag is removed; by this point, the mycelium has bound the once-scattered sawdust into a near-solid block of wood, exposed to the air. This block can even grow a brown ‘bark’, and once this ‘bark’ completely covers the surface, the conditions for fruiting are met. The secret to the mushrooms appearing is actually the temperature difference; move them to a room below twenty degrees Celsius, and the shiitakes will grow. The whole process takes about three months.
Xiao Tang also has a few logs by the river inoculated with shiitake; these are fleshy and fragrant, and some people are willing to pay a premium for them. The entire process takes a year and a half, and finally, a bucket of cold water is splashed on them to trigger fruiting. After a log has produced several flushes of mushrooms, the lignin is completely decomposed, leaving the wood so soft it can be torn by hand.
“Which mushrooms exactly can’t be grown at home?” I asked Xiao Wen.
“Basically, saprobic ones can be grown, but symbiotic ones can’t. Wild mushrooms might taste better for this very reason; they must grow alongside a living tree. Dead matter cannot satisfy their nutritional needs, which is why you can’t just grow them. Some people are trying, but it’s a hassle. They won’t grow on a single isolated tree; they need a whole forest. If the tree is too large, you can’t inoculate it; if it’s too small, it won’t fruit. They must grow up with the trees, so you have to inoculate the saplings and wait for them to become mature trees—it just depends on whether you can afford to wait that long.”
Mushrooms coexist with plants by wrapping hyphae around the roots; the entangled underground portion is known as the mycorrhiza. Wherever there is vegetation, there is usually an extensive trade network of mycorrhizae beneath the surface. Hyphae use their ability to decompose everything to obtain nitrogen and minerals, which they exchange for sugars from the plants. Plants also exchange nutrients with one another via these mycorrhizae; in this case, the hyphae act as brokers and likely take a small commission.
From Xiao Wen’s T-shirt, I learned about a pure white plant called the ghost plant. She said they emerge in the woods during summer, like phantoms; they lack chlorophyll, grow on mycorrhizae, and rely entirely on hyphae to transport nutrients from other plants to sustain them. I once saw a leucistic sapling in the towering redwoods of California, slender and graceful; it was likely pulled along and grown in the same way, sustained by the surrounding mature trees and underground fungi.
Of course, nature is indifferent; evolution hasn’t brought biology to this point for the sake of charity. There are many different “livelihoods” within the kingdom of fungi; for example, some might coexist symbiotically for a while, then kill their partner and immediately switch to being saprobic—they are capable of such things. Then there is the snow fungus I mentioned to Xiao Wen before; I used to think it was just a white wood ear, but as it turns out, they are different. It seems to grow on wood, but it is actually parasitic on other saprobic fungi. Just thinking about how the techniques for cultivating snow fungus evolved step by step makes my head spin.
Consequently, many mycelium-based technologies are developing slowly and costs remain high, perhaps simply because market demand hasn’t reached a critical point. For instance, at different stages of their growth cycle, mycelia can either shape a loose collection of particles or dismantle something solid. Leveraging this property, some place agricultural waste like cotton hulls and wheat bran in moulds and inoculate them with fungi. Once they have grown to a certain extent, they are removed and heat-inactivated to maintain their shape and hardness. This creates biodegradable packaging shells to replace polystyrene, or even building materials—though a biodegradable house is somewhat hard to imagine. These technologies are still in their infancy, but if market demand became as urgent as the public’s craving for snow fungus or shiitake, a breakthrough would likely be just around the corner.
III.
“So did we! Although our high school was so large that we barely knew each other at the time.”
“We got together back in high school. Later, I went to the state university nearby, but Xiao Tang went off to college in New York state. We spent a lot of time driving back and forth. And there’s something that might seem unbelievable now—we used to write letters to each other on paper…”
“Haha, we did that for two years too. He was in the States and I was in China; there were no internet calls back then, and international calls cost a dollar a minute.”
“Goodness, we were never apart by such a distance. We married as soon as we graduated from university; I worked in a hospital and Xiao Tang became an engineer.”
“What did you do at the hospital?”
“I worked in the labs—haematology, chemistry, microbiology, I did them all. That’s why I got the hang of working with mushroom strains so quickly, haha. Xiao Tang studied mechanical engineering with a minor in electronic engineering; he’s the one who laid all the underground piping on the farm.”
“My sister followed their lead; she studied science too,” J chimed in from the side.
“I remember she wanted to apply to the art college here back then.” Those of us who have been regulars at the market for over ten years have watched this lot grow up.
“That’s right, but art schools are too expensive—completely unaffordable. She liked science anyway. I’m the only one in the family who studied the arts; I was in the history department.”
“American history?”
“European history. Although our state university has a rule: regardless of your region of specialisation, history majors must earn a certain number of credits in local history.”
“Do you know Old Lu, who sells the chicken and beef at the market? He graduated from the history department too, and he’s now on the board of the local archaeological society. They hold monthly lectures, and the October sessions are always about local archaeology. We used to skip the October lectures, but lately, we’ve found that the history right here on our doorstep is far more interesting.”
“I know Old Lu. I’ll ask him about the lectures next time; I actually enjoy homegrown history too.”
“So, how did you eventually get this farm started?”
“I was exhausted working at the hospital back then, and Tang didn’t like his job either. We saved up for a few years and bought some land from his parents. Coincidentally, a friend gave us a book on how to grow mushrooms. We started planning it in ’95, spending every weekend coming back to build the infrastructure. In ’99, we harvested our first crop, applied for the farmers’ market, and finally, we could quit our jobs!”
“Mum, look! The kiwis are flowering!”
“Can kiwis even grow in this climate?”
“This is a cold-hardy variety; the fruit is about the size of a grape. It’s a Chinese variety. Because J loves kiwis, we planted them last year. I’m not sure if we’ll get a harvest; the birds ate almost all the blueberries and raspberries last year.”
“It would be one thing if they actually ate them, but the worst part is they don’t—they just peck a tiny hole in every single berry to taste it, and then they all rot.”
“Fruit farmers have it so hard, fighting birds every day. Even netting doesn’t help; many birds can just squeeze through the mesh. We’ve got it much easier growing mushrooms; they’re all indoors.”
“Those of us who only care about eating have it even easier: take a pair of binoculars to watch the birds, then head to the supermarket to buy the fruit.”
“Haha, we love birdwatching too. If you don’t like wildlife, living here would be miserable. J and his sister have loved animals since they were little.”
“When my sister was little, she once caught a bucket full of snakes and brought them home to show my mum. She put the bucket in the kitchen to find her, but by the time Mum came back, the bucket was empty.”
“Did she eventually catch them all?”
“Let’s just say there shouldn’t be any snakes in the house now.”
“I just used your toilet—your kitchen is lovely!”
“My mum fired all the kitchen tiles herself.”
“Didn’t you also fire some vases to sell at the market? They were really unique!”
“Those few were fired in this pit. They aren’t glazed; they’re coloured using yeast.”
“With what?”
“It’s actually similar to proving dough. A bucket of water, sugar, yeast, and a bit of flour, then let it ferment for a few days. I use the clay from our riverbank. Once shaped and heated, I pluck it out of the pit while it’s still scorching, dip it into the fermentation water a few times, and then rinse it in clear water. With many types of clay, this process causes them to crack. Our clay is similar to Japanese Shigaraki clay; it’s more resilient. I really like the effect it produces—sometimes it looks like animal fur, sometimes like plant veins. Depending on the temperature or how you dip it, the patterns change. They say it’s a pattern printed by proteins, but I’m not entirely sure of the exact principle.”
Clay pots, coloured by fungi from the soil—quite extraordinary. It is a medieval technique from the Baltic region; not exactly ‘advanced’, but eight hundred years later, there are still people in the valleys of the Ohio Basin who use it, with such pots decorating their homes. It is intriguing. Much like my daily enjoyment of kumis, I find myself inexplicably benefiting from the legacy of the Turkic peoples.
History is a vast mycorrhiza, weaving every individual together. Hold onto a single hypha, and you are instantly transported to an unknown time and place. I shall pause here for now, and return another day to explore the transfer of nutrients, symbiosis and saprophytism, heredity and mutation within this microscopic yet boundless network.
Author’s Note: My husband, Mr Panghu, and I live in a small town in the Great Lakes region of the American Midwest. The local farmers’ market has been running for nearly thirty years, and we have witnessed over a decade of its history. This series of short essays aims to document the stories of the farmers we have met at the market, alongside my own observations of the American agricultural economy.
Unless otherwise noted, all images are by the author
Editor: Tianle