Mushroom Production: A Profitable Income Source
Among several income- generating activities like dairy and poultry industries, Mushroom
cultivation also has a new opportunity of earning and has become most popular income
generating activity among a good number of landless farmers and unemployed people. But the
farmers are facing many problems like lack of spawns, insufficient loans, lack of promotion and
so on. The study reveals that there are about 46 Mushroom firms in Savar Upazila. It is playing
significant role to cultivate mushroom in this region. Mushroom Centre at Savar provides free
training and Mushroom spawns among the farmers. As a result many middle class and poor
people get attracted in this business. Mushrooms can be grown in the small space of a farmer’s
own house for small scale of production and whereby they can afford to invest in a small scale
capital which generates income that aids in the family support. Basically Mushroom production is
labor and management intensive and it takes only a considerable amount of knowledge, research,
planning, and capital investment to set up a production system. Table 2 depicts how easily a
farmer can produce mushroom with the support of small scale of space, capital, and labor. The
farmer sells fresh Mushrooms to the Mushroom center or merchants only at Tk. 110-130 per kg.
But if they can sell the Mushroom in Dhaka, the price would be at least Tk.200.