The button mushroom is hardly Paris anymore
Audio 02:40
The image shows mushrooms growing in a bagged container with coffee grounds on a farm in Saint-Rémy-les-Chevreuse, near Paris.
(Illustrative image) AFP / ERIC PIERMONT
By: Florent Guignard
8 min
Two days before autumn in the northern hemisphere, the mushroom season, “It's in your nature” goes to mushrooms.
A special picking since it is button mushrooms, the most consumed species in the world.
Cultivated in old quarries, the Parisian mushroom is a species threatened by globalization.
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As autumn approaches, we went to mushrooms.
Not in an undergrowth, but in a basement.
In the meanders of neon-lit galleries of an old stone quarry, in Méry-sur-Oise, about thirty kilometers from Paris.
The mushrooms that we are going to pick are button mushrooms, less known by their real name,
Agaricus bisporus
.
The mushroom of Paris grows mainly thanks to the hand of the man, and with the mushroom farm of Marianne, in Méry-sur-Oise, the man is called Bruno Zambera.
He leads us, under the stone vault, in front of his "fields" of mushrooms, boxes lined up, from which emerge little round beige hats.
“
We haven't picked here yet,”
explains the farmer
, “and what you see are the first mushrooms that have just appeared.
They'll be good to cook in two or three days.
"
The Paris mushroom grows and is consumed quickly.
The mushroom is not a plant
Bruno Zambera buys his "seed" in the laboratory, the mycelium, "planted" in a mixture of compost, manure, and limestone.
He then develops his underground network, before the mushrooms come out.
But some conditions are imperative.
Humidity first.
“
Here we have between 98% and 110% humidity,
”
explains Bruno Zambera.
You also need good ventilation and a constant temperature.
No need for sunlight, however;
the fungus, which does not belong to the plant kingdom, has no chlorophyll and does not photosynthesize.
“
The profession cannot be improvised
,”
concludes Bruno Zambera.
As in the forest, there are mushroom spots in cellars and quarries.
The button mushroom is the most consumed mushroom in the world, mainly canned,
made in China
.
Originally in France, the Paris mushroom, which is sometimes found in nature, only grew in Paris,
"
first in old stone quarries, then in the catacombs,"
says Bruno Zambera.
Over time, Paris has developed, and farms have been pushed back to the suburbs.
From the suburbs, they went to Touraine, and from Touraine, we went… to Poland.
»
The famous Polish mushroom mushroom, which flooded the European markets.
"The Parisians have been eaten by the Poles
"
Direction Belleville, in the east of Paris.
“
My mushrooms from Paris, they are from Poland,
laughs a salesman.
The Parisians have been eaten by the Poles
!
"
"
It's cheaper,
says another.
Two euros per kilo
!
This is not even the cost price of the mushrooms produced by Bruno Zambera's Marianne mushroom farm.
Polish mushrooms are cultivated on an industrial scale with cheap labor.
In Méry-sur-Oise, the operation is family-run, with only one employee.
Bruno Zambera is a reasonable farmer, who sells his production in a short circuit.
Direct sales to individuals, and to a few restaurants and shops in the region.
“
We can't compare
,
we have to feed everyone
.
"
So Bruno Zambera resist, even when confronted with real estate developers.
There are, today in Ile-de-France only five producers of Paris mushrooms, an endangered species in Paris, victim of globalization.
The question of the week
The question of the week
Everyone in France this week has given their opinion on 5G. But what do animals think?
They were not surveyed, and yet ... They would appear to be directly affected.
The German Association for the Preservation of Nature revealed this week, with more than a hundred studies in support, that mobile telephony could well be, like pollution, pesticides or urbanization, jointly responsible for the decline insects, flies, bees and wasps in particular.
The electromagnetic waves of telephones and wifi disturb their reproduction, their immune system or their sense of direction.
Much more than high voltage power lines.
No offense to Emmanuel Macron, the fly and the Amish: same fight!
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