Finnish matsutake mushrooms highly sought after in Japan
Shortage of pickers and purchasers impedes exporting
By Petri Manssila
This summer’s pine mushroom (Tricholoma matsutake) yield seems reasonably good after a couple of poor years. The mushroom is favoured especially by the Japanese, but there is a shortage of pickers as well as Finnish buyers wiling to export the goods.
In Lapland, the matsutake season began last week. One of the few buyers is the Savukoski-based Korvatunturinmaan osuuskunta cooperative.
“The previous good year was in 2007. We only purchase mushrooms from the Savukoski area, but there are no buyers in the entire Eastern Lapland area, and there are simply no pickers”, frets the cooperative’s chairman Kari Kilpimaa.
The low picker price combined with a mushroom that is not easily found has kept the number of its collectors at a minimum. Good matsutake locations are difficult to unearth and for all his efforts the picker is paid between one and seventeen euros per kilogram.
”The collector should receive around EUR 40 per kilogram”, Kilpimaa calculates.
Many opt for picking bilberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) instead.
It would be a gross understatement to say the matsutake is very popular in Japan; consumer prices there can easily climb into the hundreds of euros a kilo for domestic specimens, which are revered almost on a plane with truffles. There are not enough to go around, however, and hence the need for imports from China, the U.S. and Canada, South Korea - and Finland.
According to Kilpimaa’s estimate, even this year hundreds of kilogrammes of Finnish matsutake will end up being exported overseas. A large portion of this will find its way to Japanese auction rooms.
“They buy everything we can offer. Earlier this week a 25-kg lot was sent to Japan.”
Each year around three million kg of matsutake are consumed by the Japanese. Roughly half of this amount comes from abroad.
The mushroom in question grows most happily in forested areas on sandy moraine ground with a thin layer of organic topsoil, and can be found in Finland from late July through to October.
Even though it is eminently edible, and identical to the delicacy enjoyed in Japan - pine mushrooms are not widely used hereabouts.
A couple of years ago the Finnish Forest Research Institute METLA carried out a study into the exporting potential of matsutake (see attached article).
The mushrooms growing in Southern Finland are of no use, as mercury concentrations have been found in them.
At the same time, the season of another Finnish export mushroom, Boletus edulis - commonly known as the penny bun, porcino, or cep - has begun.
The cep is distinctly more common than matsutake in the Finnish forests, but it is another with a ready market abroad, this time in Italy in particular.
“This year perhaps around half a million kilos will be exported”, explains managing director Loreno Dalla Valle of Dalla Valle Oy.
Last year the company exported 300,000 kilograms of the gourmand mushrooms to Italy.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 28.8.2010
Previously in HS International Edition:
Mamma mia, what a year for the boletus mushrooms! (9.9.2003)
Porcini! Porcini! Porcini! (22.8.2000)
Dry spell shrinks summer´s mushroom and berry yield (4.8.2010)
See also:
Matsutake enthusiasm grows in north of Finland (28.8.2007)
Mushroom expert hints that correct timing is more important than knowing the right location (25.8.2009)
Links:
Matsutake (Wikipedia)
Boletus edulis (Wikipedia)
PETRI MANSSILA / Helsingin Sanomat
petri.manssila@hs.fi
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Finnish matsutake mushrooms highly sought after in Japan
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