Growing opportunities

Rotary members find an unusual way for people in poverty to supplement their income

By Etelka Lehoczky

In an impoverished area of Bhubaneswar, a city in eastern India, residents have found a surprising source of income: the humble mushroom.

Salia Sahi is one of the most crowded and underserved communities in the state of Odisha. Its largely migrant population of 100,000 lacks necessities such as a regular supply of clean water, and many people struggle to support themselves and their families.

“I have been earning about ₹11,000 [US$129] a month working in a park, as a gardener. Now I earn additional money by cultivating mushrooms,” says Mamina Munda, who has lived in Salia Sahi for 15 years. She’s one of around 120 women in the neighborhood who have participated in Rotary-led workshops on growing mushrooms.

“I’m growing oyster and paddy straw mushrooms. I sell them at a nearby market. I make ₹3,000 to ₹4,000 [US$35-$47] a month,” Munda says through an interpreter. “Now I can provide better food for my son. He is 10 years old.”

Why grow mushrooms? It requires relatively few resources and offers many benefits. That’s why several Rotary clubs around the world are starting mushroom cultivation projects, including the Rotary Club of Bhubaneswar Flamingo, Odisha, India.

“It’s a very good, very profitable business which doesn’t require a lot of time and doesn’t require a lot of effort,” says Smita Sinha, the club’s executive secretary/director. “And at the same time, they can do their usual job, if they have one.”

Munda and her fellow entrepreneurs grow their mushrooms in bags of straw. First, the straw is boiled or treated with lime to prevent the growth of bacteria and mold. Then it can be inoculated with mushroom spores or spawn (living fungal mycelium). Within a month, the mushrooms are ready for harvest. The medium can continue to produce mushrooms for several growing cycles before it needs to be replaced.

How to grow mushrooms

Find a good indoor space. Mushrooms need a cool, moist environment that’s not in direct sunlight.
Gather a container and growing medium. The medium can be straw, wood chips, sawdust, manure, or even coffee grounds.
Pasteurize the medium to kill bacteria and mold spores. If you’re using straw, sawdust, or wood chips, you can soak it in a solution of water and hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide) for around 12 hours.
Plant your mushrooms. You can use mushroom spores or mushroom spawn. You may need to make some holes in the container to give the mushrooms room to grow.
Use a spray bottle to spritz the medium with water twice a day.
Harvest your crop. The mushrooms should reach full size in three to four weeks.

Another key benefit of mushroom cultivation, or fungiculture, is that it doesn’t require much time. After the medium is prepared and inoculated, it just needs to be kept cool, dark, and damp. The grower can simply mist the medium regularly with a spray bottle.

Jayshree Mohanty, a member of the Rotary Club of Choudwar, Odisha, helped lead the Bhubaneswar Flamingo club’s workshop. She advised the participants on how to package their mushrooms and how much to charge for them. First, though, she had to convince them that they could master the growing process. “We showed the women pictures of various stages of mushroom growth to say, ‘This is what it will look like,’” Mohanty says. “I could see them thinking, ‘This looks simple.’”

Mohanty and Sinha were particularly eager to work with women in Salia Sahi because the neighborhood’s female residents don’t have many ways to earn money. Members of the Rotary Club of Amelia Kolkata, West Bengal, India, had the same priority when they launched a similar program last year.

“We reached out to women who needed some money in their hands because their husbands were daily workers earning a maximum of ₹300-₹400 [US$3-$4] per day,” says Nilanjan Mitra, the executive secretary/director of the Amelia Kolkata club. “They require money for their children’s education also. We wanted to empower them, give them some economic development, so their family could reach a higher level.”

Members of the Rotary Club of Umuahia North, Abia State, Nigeria, also wanted to help underemployed women develop a source of income. They recruited young men as well, ultimately hosting 200 people in a series of workshops. Emeka Sopuruchi, the club’s executive secretary/director, says that gaining a sense of purpose can be almost as transformative as adding a source of income.

“We entered the community and asked questions to find out if there was anything we could do,” he says. They found that many people needed more income, but one thing they had was enough time to grow and sell mushrooms.

Mitra adds that mushroom production is one of the few businesses that don’t require much money to start, or even a plot of land.

“There’s a minimal initial investment, and you can earn 15 times what you put in,” he says. “In our district, they can earn US$53 in a month.”

Most important, people can use what they learn in these workshops to make an impact on their lives for years to come. After learning how simple it is to cultivate mushrooms, Munda taught her neighbors. Now they all work together. Munda even found another way to make money from mushroom farming: When the bag of straw can’t produce any more mushrooms, she can sell it.

“After the mushrooms are cultivated, I can sell the residue for compost and make ₹20 [US$.25] a kilo,” Munda says. With multiple revenue streams, she says, “my lifestyle has changed for the better.”

Learn more about how Rotary works with communities to find sustainable solutions to poverty.

Growing opportunities

Rotary members find an unusual way for people in poverty to supplement their income

How to grow mushrooms

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