From March 20 to March 22, the Mushroom Information Agency UMDIS hosted a group of Spanish mushroom growers at our Gathering School in Poland. We were very satisfied with the course, we compared the Polish and Spanish markets a lot, we looked at what experience we could learn from.

– Spain is the third country in Europe in terms of mushroom production,” Pedro Garcia Fajardo, Amycel’s representative in Spain, told us. – It grows 120,000 tons of mushrooms per year. Somewhere half of the production is concentrated in the South and the other half in the North of the country.

In Spain, the market is quite spoiled when it comes to the quality of the mushroom.

– Often the quality required is even higher than in Poland,” says Samuel Geminaz from Champiñones y Setas Giménez farm.

Mario Rodriguez from Champi Graja Farm says that in Spain the market is also very diverse when it comes to products.

– We have about 30 types of products: mushrooms of different sizes, with and without spines, sliced, mixes of different mushrooms… Every customer, every chain requires something different,” shares Mario Rodriguez.

By the way, Spain produces and consumes many exotic mushrooms. It is the only country in Europe where most exotic mushrooms are grown on substrate from China, whereas other countries rather emphasize locally produced substrate. This is so because the substrate supplier for Spain comes second – and the quality of the mushroom comes first.

– 70-80% of Spain’s exotic mushrooms are grown on substrate from China,” explains Pedro Garcia Fajardo, from Amycel.

You can watch a video testimonial from the Spanish group below

To enroll in the following UMDIS Mushroom Information Agency courses, please fill out the registration form or email inna.ustilovskaja@gmail.com.