I was lucky enough to attend the Meadow Mushrooms shiitake launch last Thursday with delicious food and opportunity to learn a bit more about cooking with shiitake mushrooms hosted by Nadia Lim and Miranda Burdon, Chair of Meadow Mushroom.
In 1970 Meadow Mushrooms was founded in Christchurch and has been a family owned business since. This was a time when the people of NZ didn’t really eat mushrooms, so it was an innovative (and risky!) business. Today, New Zealanders eat over 2kg of mushrooms per person, per year. Meadow Mushrooms currently produce around 190T a week and are the leading producer of mushrooms in NZ.
The sustainability of the business environmentally, socially and economically is central to the decision making at Meadow Mushrooms. We realise that this is a journey, we are always thinking how we can incorporate sustainability into the business and the production of mushrooms.
These goals are reinforced through innovations like Meadow Mushroom’s prototype stalk punnets, which are punnets made from the leftover mushroom stalk cuttings. These offcuts otherwise produce a large amount of organic waste, which Meadow Mushrooms is looking to combat by incorporating them into their packaging. This is a world-first for the food industry.
Many of the circular practises Meadow Mushrooms have applied for years are now being recognised and valued for their impact on our sustainability. While intensive horticulture and vertical farming is very much in-vogue for its energy efficiency and relatively low carbon footprint, this is something Meadow Mushrooms have been doing for decades. Their button mushrooms and portabellos are well established stars of intensive horticulture and as such, they have one of the lowest carbon footprints in the food industry. Meadow Mushrooms has the goal of achieving carbon neutrality in the near future.
Photos from the event:
May 2019