The members of the AZMGA are a diverse group—hobbyists to small-scale growers to growers who have their eyes on expanding to grab even more of the growing mushroom market. We thought that giving a face and a voice to these growers would be informative and interesting for other AZMGA members across the state. We all face similar challenges, ups and downs. Hearing from fellow growers reminds us that there are others out there working through the same issues. Meet the Grower hopes to display these hopes, successes and failures. So check out our first interview, this one with Phoenix-area based grower Mark Rhine.
Mark Rhine, Rhiba Farms
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Mark Rhine is the owner of Rhiba Farms, located in Chandler. His is a truly polycultural operation, producing micro greens, chicken and duck eggs, wheatgrass, an ambitious aquaponics system, and of course, mushrooms. He's experimented with all the common varieties grown here in Arizona—blue oyster to king oyster to pearl oyster.
The AZMGA chatted with him during one of his visits to our home base here in Tucson. He was picking up a load of inoculated Pearl Oyster bags to fruit out on the farm, and we talked about some of the realities of being a small food producer in Arizona. |
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What got you started growing mushrooms?
I was looking for additional products for the farm. I’m a micro greens guy. I grow for Safeway-Albertson’s. We have a nice big micro greens account. But I’m a small guy—I’m only on three acres. So for me it’s all about niche growing. I can’t compete in commodity crops. Do you wholesale the oyster mushrooms to Safeway as well? No, I can’t keep up—I don’t have a big enough operation. Even my restaurants are pressing me and I can’t compete so I can’t deliver. How much are you able to produce? I’m doing 100 pounds a week, although this last week I suffered tremendously. I had a problem in my grow space and I was only able to get 34. I always struggle in the heat, just like everybody else. Is that normal for this time of the year, these types of challenges? Yeah. But, I’ve moved production into a bigger grow space. I invested in a 40-footer which was close to $10,000 and the production just skyrocketed. |
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Would you say that the availability of bags is your biggest difficulty when thinking about expanding?
I’ve always wanted [the AZMGA] to help more in the production side…We need somebody to teach us how to do pasteurization. And it needs to get figured out so that I can afford to do it myself.
Have you used lime pasteurization in the past?
No, I’ve never tired lime. We were actually doing hydrogen peroxide, but the bags were just horribly rotten. I thought that the leftover micro greens would be a great growing material [but it wasn’t] so I just put a lot of time and money into nothing.
Sterilization and pasteurization are two totally different dogs, you know. And I’m GHP/GAP certified. I’m the only one in the state. I had to bring a guy in from California to get me certified, and his first question was, Sterilization or Pasteurization? And I said, well, these are all sterilized bags I get from the college. So he stayed off my back about that, but he said that the pasteurization rules are very stringent.
It seems like the mushroom GHP/GAP is more designed with button mushroom producers in mind — growers who are working with animal products like manure.
Yeah, they’re all pathogen-focused.
How much did the whole audit process cost you?
About $1700. I did get some of it back, about $800 of it. I’m also certified for my micro greens, but I’m a year behind in my certification, because they don’t have enough agents. And they come out of Nogales, so I’m paying $95 an hour for windshield time.
GAP is only one of a few third-party certifications. I actually get my organic certification through Oregon Tilth which is a subcontracting company for the USDA. GHP/GAP is just the name of one certification. There’s probably four of them that qualify under the Food Safety Act. For me the GHP/GAP piece was only important for distribution, selling to distributors. For my micro greens, it’s a must for Safeway-Albertson’s. And if I had enough financing, I could do maybe three or four 40 footers [grow spaces], and if I had the bag supply, then I might be able to go after an Albertson’s account [with mushrooms]. It’s pretty hefty, and they want to contract with you. I’m not on contract with the micro greens, and that gives them the ability to order 200 cases from me one week and 20 cases from me the next week.
I’ve always wanted [the AZMGA] to help more in the production side…We need somebody to teach us how to do pasteurization. And it needs to get figured out so that I can afford to do it myself.
Have you used lime pasteurization in the past?
No, I’ve never tired lime. We were actually doing hydrogen peroxide, but the bags were just horribly rotten. I thought that the leftover micro greens would be a great growing material [but it wasn’t] so I just put a lot of time and money into nothing.
Sterilization and pasteurization are two totally different dogs, you know. And I’m GHP/GAP certified. I’m the only one in the state. I had to bring a guy in from California to get me certified, and his first question was, Sterilization or Pasteurization? And I said, well, these are all sterilized bags I get from the college. So he stayed off my back about that, but he said that the pasteurization rules are very stringent.
It seems like the mushroom GHP/GAP is more designed with button mushroom producers in mind — growers who are working with animal products like manure.
Yeah, they’re all pathogen-focused.
How much did the whole audit process cost you?
About $1700. I did get some of it back, about $800 of it. I’m also certified for my micro greens, but I’m a year behind in my certification, because they don’t have enough agents. And they come out of Nogales, so I’m paying $95 an hour for windshield time.
GAP is only one of a few third-party certifications. I actually get my organic certification through Oregon Tilth which is a subcontracting company for the USDA. GHP/GAP is just the name of one certification. There’s probably four of them that qualify under the Food Safety Act. For me the GHP/GAP piece was only important for distribution, selling to distributors. For my micro greens, it’s a must for Safeway-Albertson’s. And if I had enough financing, I could do maybe three or four 40 footers [grow spaces], and if I had the bag supply, then I might be able to go after an Albertson’s account [with mushrooms]. It’s pretty hefty, and they want to contract with you. I’m not on contract with the micro greens, and that gives them the ability to order 200 cases from me one week and 20 cases from me the next week.
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So it makes it hard to have that predictability and reliable income.
With the mushrooms you’d want to contract up. They’d say, “we need 100 lbs. a week”, and I need to know that so I can build some kind of a matrix to figure out if i can make money doing this. Of course they're gonna want [the mushrooms] for 5 dollars per pound, and they're selling them for $12, right now, and they look just horrible. Do you do any direct marketing or are you exclusively wholesale? I do some direct, but not much. Is it just that it’s too time consuming? Yeah. It’s me and three other guys. So I’m just keeping the restaurants happy with this batch and now Stern’s [food distributor] was my latest pickup. But I can’t even come close to doing business with them yet because I’ve got a CO2 problem—everything’s pinning out so badly, and my production’s just dead. I can’t even keep my restaurants happy! Which is kind of OK now because its the middle of summer and everything’s slow. Restaurant orders just collapse. The mushrooms, the micro greens, and my eggs are the three hot sellers for me. And with the eggs, I have the same problem [as with the mushrooms] — I don’t have 1000 chickens, I only have a couple hundred, and their eggs are sold [out] every week, just like these things [taps mushroom bag]. |
What percentage of your business is oyster mushrooms?
Ten. If I can keep it going. We started with blue [oysters], and then there was a while where I was into king [oysters], and I rocked the king market—they just went nuts. And then they got tired of kings. I started slowing down, and I started having a hard time. I had to separate them—I couldn't grow the kings with the blues. And then everybody was complaining that the blues were too tough and they didn’t have longevity, but the pearls were delicate and everyone decided to stick with them.
And everybody wants “weird food”, so we tried to grow phoenix oysters for a while — not a lot of activity there, although they were easier to grow in the heat.
But they’re not as high yielding.
Yeah, and of course the pinks or yellows never gave us any yield, even though they were fun colors.
If you had more bags available, or if you had a reliable method of pasteurization down, would you expand the mushroom component?
Yeah, absolutely. For me it’s that $10,000 investment into the 40 ft box—I want to get paid back in a year in order for it to keep humping along. And it’s such a unique thing here in the desert. People are enamored. But as Americans, we don’t eat a lot of mushrooms, compared to Europeans—people don’t even know what to do with them yet. The chefs like them just because it’s a fun new weird thing. But as a household item, even at the farmers market, I would sell, I didn’t even sell one-pound bags. And farmer’s markets have an catch—you can only get so much money our of somebody at a farmers market. They’re still going to go to Trader Joe’s or wherever afterwards to pick up their basics. But I was selling 1/2 lb. containers for $5 and we would blow through those.
And you have the advantage at the farmer’s market of being able to talk to people and tell them what they can do with the mushrooms.
Yeah—and as soon as we bagged and kept that $5 cap on it or put it in a deli container, they really started going. That was a better way to market it. Now its just the ten-pound boxes that go out to the restaurants. And Stern’s will have us at 5 lb. boxes.
So despite the difficulties of growing mushrooms, do you feel like in the last few years there has been more interest or more market space—is there more demand that you feel like you’re not meeting?
Yeah, there’s way more demand than I can meet. I get a lot of calls. And I have to tell them that I can’t produce [enough]. So then they might move on to someone from California. But everyone wants to try and do something local.
I think there’s huge potential, and that’s why I’m sticking with it.
Check out Rhiba Farms at rhibafarms.com
Ten. If I can keep it going. We started with blue [oysters], and then there was a while where I was into king [oysters], and I rocked the king market—they just went nuts. And then they got tired of kings. I started slowing down, and I started having a hard time. I had to separate them—I couldn't grow the kings with the blues. And then everybody was complaining that the blues were too tough and they didn’t have longevity, but the pearls were delicate and everyone decided to stick with them.
And everybody wants “weird food”, so we tried to grow phoenix oysters for a while — not a lot of activity there, although they were easier to grow in the heat.
But they’re not as high yielding.
Yeah, and of course the pinks or yellows never gave us any yield, even though they were fun colors.
If you had more bags available, or if you had a reliable method of pasteurization down, would you expand the mushroom component?
Yeah, absolutely. For me it’s that $10,000 investment into the 40 ft box—I want to get paid back in a year in order for it to keep humping along. And it’s such a unique thing here in the desert. People are enamored. But as Americans, we don’t eat a lot of mushrooms, compared to Europeans—people don’t even know what to do with them yet. The chefs like them just because it’s a fun new weird thing. But as a household item, even at the farmers market, I would sell, I didn’t even sell one-pound bags. And farmer’s markets have an catch—you can only get so much money our of somebody at a farmers market. They’re still going to go to Trader Joe’s or wherever afterwards to pick up their basics. But I was selling 1/2 lb. containers for $5 and we would blow through those.
And you have the advantage at the farmer’s market of being able to talk to people and tell them what they can do with the mushrooms.
Yeah—and as soon as we bagged and kept that $5 cap on it or put it in a deli container, they really started going. That was a better way to market it. Now its just the ten-pound boxes that go out to the restaurants. And Stern’s will have us at 5 lb. boxes.
So despite the difficulties of growing mushrooms, do you feel like in the last few years there has been more interest or more market space—is there more demand that you feel like you’re not meeting?
Yeah, there’s way more demand than I can meet. I get a lot of calls. And I have to tell them that I can’t produce [enough]. So then they might move on to someone from California. But everyone wants to try and do something local.
I think there’s huge potential, and that’s why I’m sticking with it.
Check out Rhiba Farms at rhibafarms.com