Poor marketing policy holds back the potential of mushroom trade in Bangladesh and the country is also losing chances of availing export orders worth millions of dollars, businesses and experts said.
After three decades of initiation of its farming, the mushroom sector is still limping although the neighbouring countries have gone far in mushroom business, they said.
A K M Fakruddin Farhad, a mushroom grower and proprietor of Niamat Mushroom Products at R K Mission Road, Mymensingh told the FE that the business is struggling due to lack of a mainstream market.
He said only a few five-star hotels and Chinese restaurants in big cities are the main buyers of mushroom.
Mushroom grower Rehana Akhtar of Jamsheng area under Savar upazila has stopped her farming this year due to lack of capital.
"Per kg oyster mushroom is sold at Tk 90-100 against its production cost of 130-140 and it is tough to find buyers all the time," she said.
Talking over bank loans she said: "It is tough to secure even a Tk 20,000 loan from the banks for mushroom growing as many of the growers earlier failed to pay the monthly instalments due to a poor sale."
President of Bangladesh Mushroom Foundation, the country's lone body of private mushroom businesses, Parveen Islam told the FE that the food item is yet to hit as a main vegetable.
"Hundreds of programmes on cooking and curry are broadcast in the public and private television channels, but you will never see any episode of those programmes where the chefs show a recipe on mushroom," she said.
The foundation president informed that the sector has now involved nearly 0.1 million growers and traders and half of them are women.
Mushroom expert and business insider Md Muzammel Kabir said apart from the nutritional value, other potential of mushroom lies in its quality of consuming the least space.
He said the arable land across the world is getting reduced alarmingly due to rapid urbanisation and industrialisation coupled with ever-growing population.
Kabir informed the FE that nearly 36 private entrepreneurs moved to make diversified value added products from mushroom but most of them are struggling to survive for lack of demand.
Inova Food Products is a Dhaka-based mushroom business house which makes nearly 20 value added products from mushroom.
Talking to the FE managing director of the company Md Monowar Hosssain Rana said production of the company has remained stopped for the last two months.
"It is very frustrating that educated persons argue whether mushroom is Halal or Haram," he said.
"When most of the population has no idea whether the food is Halal or Haram, how can you promote such kinds of foods?" Proprietor of Bakul Mushroom Centre in Dhaka Md Akhtaruzzaman Firoz said.
Bangladesh Agro-based Product Producers and Merchants' Association (BAPPMA) President Mohd Ruhul Amin said the government has no comprehensive policy on mushroom which has a possibility to emerge as a sector worth US$ 20 million in near future if there may be shipment of two thousand tonnes of oyster mushroom.
The figure would increase if the entrepreneurs can make foray in exporting value added products.
"But, lack of air-cargo facility discourages the exporters to make shipment of even oyster mushroom," he added.
The government should take a comprehensive marketing policy which will highly emphasise massive advertisement and awareness raising programmes for popularising mushroom as a mainstream vegetable.
