Agricultural technologies that turn waste products into something useful have been absent from farming systems for too long now. Weeds, manure, bagasse, corn cobs, shells and husks…these are a few of the waste products from a list of many. Yet just as intensive outside inputs are a sign of a failing system in a state of decline, so too is the existence of agricultural “waste”.

After all, Nature produces no waste, and the gold star for healthy farm systems should be measured by their ability to mimic, indeed to surpass, the efficiencies we observe daily in the natural world. One innovative and perfectly logical way to deal with waste is through the use of edible mushrooms. By inoculating things like tree stumps, wheat straw or corn cobs with mushroom mycelium, innovative farmers like Paul Stamets have been able to achieve massive gains in biological efficiency. What’s left of the substrate can be used for compost, animal feed, mulch, or pyrolysis (more on pyrolysis soon).

This type of solution is eco-capitalism at its finest. Organic oyster mushrooms are sold for as much as $10.00/lb. at specialty markets like Whole Foods and Wild Oats. Fungi are a whole kingdom unto themselves, and the number of species being exploited commercially is at a fraction of what exists within the realm of possibility, even for species that have already been domesticated by intrepid visionaries like Stamets.

It is not an exaggeration to say that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of edible species with commercial potential are being lost as humanity continues to destroy the planet’s tropical rainforests. Sadder still is the fact that these mushrooms could be part of the key to preserving the forests, since sustainable forestry integrates nicely with mycoculture. Tropical countries stand to benefit the most from identifying, sampling, and experimenting with the fungal germplasm that exists with staggering diversity within their national borders.