Joe Salvo of Ponderosa Mushrooms & Specialty Foods says that as cultural life in France and Belgium has come to a standstill, two of his biggest markets for chanterelle mushrooms have dried up. “The market has severely changed,” Salvo says.
“A lot of my mushrooms are going to restaurants and food service suppliers,” Salvo says of his European buyers. With many of those restaurants closed or experiencing a steep drop off in customers, the market for Ponderosa Mushrooms’ chanterelles has been badly compromised. In the past two weeks, Salvo says that his company has seen, “a 75% drop on chanterelle exports, with no movement in price.”
“We’re just now starting to see a little bit of pick-up,” says Salvo. “Customers are starting to place orders again.”
Damaged yields keep North American markets stable
Salvo says that a combination of wet and cold weather depressed yields of chanterelles on the west coast this season and brought an early end to harvests. “It’s frozen up,” Salvo says. “The cold will pretty much put an end to our harvests in North America.”
While this would be bad news most years, reduced yields helped stop Canadian and American market prices from falling in the face of high supply due to low exports. “It stabilized the market,” says Salvo.
Meanwhile, Salvo expects his company’s supplies should keep Ponderosa Mushrooms steady through December. “We have a store of pre-rain and pre-cold mushrooms to ger us through Christmas,” he explains.
