Our mushroom project has benefits galore. It teaches our young people hygiene is crucial in our lives. It is needed everywhere: in the kitchen, the nursery, the barn -- and believe me -- in a mushroom seed-multiplying lab!! We are 'organic people'. We refuse to use pesticides to solve problems. This means extra RandD work. Let one microbe into your seed pack, kiss your mushrooms good-bye. Using this simple method, we have had good results- not perfect, mind you. We sterilize the poly-packs, the wheat seed, and our young ladies. Then they mix seeds and wheat in clouds of steam. Hardy hands they have! Sad to say we have to mask their beauty, but it's the price you pay for SASAC's delicious mushroom soup or curry!! 

Seeds ready, they are sown in cylinders. First a two inch layer of 1-inch rice straw is packed down in the plastic bag, called cylinder! It has been sterilized by soaking in lime water or by boiling. Then seeds are sprinkled on the straw close to the side of the plastic. Then layer by layer the seeds are sown. The spawns -- need I mention the obvious!! -- grow up big and strong eating the straw. They would grow up bigger and stronger if we used wheat straw. But in West Bengal for every stalk of wheat there must be a million stalks of rice. After tying up the cylinders, our young people make holes with a pin all around the cylinder. And after +/- 45 days, through these tiny holes, spawns burst forth into mushrooms. Yum! Yum!

The production cost of a mushroom cylinder is rupees 20. Usual yield 1.5 Kgs. Income = 175 rupees. Profit = 155, OK, so you expect the worst. You're a little sorrow 'If it does not rain today, it is bound to rain tomorrow'. Cut income in half -- i.e. rupees 75. A day and half's pay for a 'coolie' worker. The work? Why, an old crock like me can make cylinders. Put chopped straw in a bucket. Pour lime over it. (2 minutes) if exhausted, rest for 6 hours while straw soaks. Seed cylinder. Even if you chat like magpies - our girls don't of course! - still 10 minutes at most. Take it to shed, hang it. (5 minutes- unless your shed's in Siberia!) Total= 20 minutes' work for a day and a half's pay. You wonder why I think mushrooms a bonanza for our poor?!!? 

Gandhi was convinced until village people -- 75% of India's population -- developed their resources by 'cottage industries', India would be a country of a few rich and teeming millions of poor. For them his dream of freedom, would remain a dream. But a cottage industry has to pass many tests before it can help the poor. Will its product be marketable? Can it begin with little capital? Are few skills needed? Can it be done in a village home? Will it produce something worth producing? I don't want our poor producing cigarettes or bubble gum. (Well maybe ok bubble gum, me being a great bubbler in my youth!) Now mushrooms pass all these tests with flying colors!