Sandhills Cooperation Association’s Mycelium Lab

In January 2019, Sandhills Cooperation Association held a workshop on the income potential of growing mushrooms and the opportunity to form a mushroom growers co-op. 25 Black farmers attended. This led to a dozen farmers later expressing interest in being co-op growers, two of whom bought 40′ cargo containers converting them into grow rooms. Three grants were acquired by SCA to pay the equipment costs for a mycelium propagation lab and a grow bag kitchen. A building was completed for the lab, kitchen, and classroom. The lab has been completed and lab operation training conducted.

Focus is now on completing the container grow rooms. An additional grant was just received to pay for the conversion of a 20′ cargo container into a walk-in cooler to aggregate and distribute the harvest by all co-op members. The conversion is scheduled for May. Pictured here is Tanya, the co-op’s primary lab tech with a first generation mycelium culture petri dish.