Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, may be known as the mushroom capital of the world, but its rise to fame actually had very humble beginnings. While the rest of the world focused on plant crops like corn, wheat, and potatoes, a hopeful bunch hoped to find their fortune in mushrooms. At the time, mushrooms weren’t exactly stable at the dinner table since mushrooms were so hard to come by and difficult to grow. However, the farmers of Kennett Square saw fungi as an opportunity. With years of perfecting their craft, they brought button mushrooms to America, and for the first time, mushrooms were mass-produced and accessible to the everyday person. 

The early days of mushroom farming

The United States grows over 900 billion pounds of mushrooms annually, with 68% coming from Kennett Square. Yet, in the 19th century, the only mushrooms you could access in America were the ones you foraged yourself. 

Europe, on the other hand, had been growing mushrooms since the 1600s, when French gardeners found that certain wild mushrooms (namely Agaricus bisporus) could be grown underground and in caves. This method later spread throughout Europe, but never managed to reach the states.

Fast-forward 200 years, in the late 1800s, a florist named William Swayne recognized how much space was being wasted between the rows of his carnation flower boxes. Around that time, Swayne had heard about the mushroom-growing techniques of European farmers and wanted to try them. He figured that the cool, dark, humid environment beneath the flower beds would be ideal for mushroom cultivation.

After loads of trial and error, Swayne became one of the first people to successfully cultivate mushrooms in America, and the rest was history.

Swayne’s success did not go unnoticed, and many local farmers started their own mushroom farms. As a result, mushrooms like button, baby bella, and portabella (which are all the same species at different growth stages) became popular and widely available throughout the country.

Perfecting the process

In hindsight, our early mushroom cultivators deserve a lot of credit for figuring out how to grow mushrooms without the technological advances we have today. Mushrooms are rather picky about the conditions they choose to grow in. They need just the perfect amount of light, humidity, and controlled temperatures to complete their growth cycle and produce mushrooms. This means that early farmers needed to be extra vigilant with their mushroom crops, manually controlling conditions to ensure a profitable yield.

Today, the mushroom industry is booming and the cultivation process is a lot more streamlined thanks to innovations like automated composting systems, climate controlled grow rooms, and even robots that can pick mushrooms without damaging them. 

Modern-day Kennett Square

Although we’ve come a long way with our mushroom cultivation techniques, Kennett Square remains the largest hub of growing mushrooms in the U.S.  currently there are a little over 50 mushroom farms in the small Pennsylvania town producing a whopping 500 million pounds of mushrooms every year. 

And button mushrooms aren’t the only fungi dominating these farms anymore. As gourmet mushrooms have grown in popularity over the years, many of the mushroom farms in Kennett Square have followed suit by cultivating less common varieties like oyster, shiitake, lions mane, and so much more. 

Kennett Square’s legacy

From William Swayne’s first successful cultivation of button mushrooms to today’s technology-driven mushroom farms, Kennett Square has entirely shaped the mushroom industry in the U.S. What started as a humble experiment has become an essential part of the U.S. food supply chain, producing most of our country’s mushrooms so that everyone can enjoy the delicious taste and health benefits of fungi. 

As mushroom consumption continues to grow in the U.S., Kennett Square remains the undisputed mushroom capital of the world, setting the standard for mushroom farming quality and innovation.