The border town of Gelephu consumes about 30 kilograms of mushrooms daily, much less than 55 kilograms produced by the only mushroom farm catering the town.
As such, the farm at Zumlingthang, about a kilometer from the main town, has to dispose the remaining 25 kg of the edible fungus daily.
C.B Subba started the mushroom farm in December 2008, at an estimated cost of Nu 430,000. He said Gelephu town is not a market big enough to consume the quantity he produces and said he lacks the infrastructure to send it to other parts of the country.
“People scarcely buy mushroom in Gelephu,” said C.B. Subba. He buys hay stacks and transposes the mushroom seeds in the stacks where it grows.
The agriculture provides the farm with 30 to 40 bottles of seed in every two to three months, which is much less that the requirement of more than 100 bottles of seed in a month. C.B. Subba is grateful to the ministry for the seeds and also for the technical advisory and farming techniques.
He added that he could do much more if the ministry could also help him come up with a proper marketing strategy and help him sell mushroom in other parts of the country. He has plans to explore the market in neighboring dzongkhags and Thimphu.
C.B. Subba said another concern for him was that only 40% of the seeds survived in the farm as the hay stacks in which the fungus is bred are not of good quality because of which he incurred losses of about Nu 150,000 last year.
The farm produces two kinds of mushrooms. The white mushrooms fetch him between Nu 80 to 100 a kilogram while the black ones get between Nu 100 to 120 a kilogram. C.B. Subba earns about Nu 25,000 a month which he said is much lesser than the earning of mushroom farms in other dzongkhags who earn about Nu 40,000.
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