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58. Coffee and mushrooms

2010-06-10 Comments Off on 58. Coffee and mushrooms

I spent the first day of the Food Security Solutions event here in Nicaragua with a few dozen coffee farmers talking about — and searching for — mushrooms.

Today was the first day of a two-day workshop on coffee and mushrooms being led by the Latin America Director of the ZERI Foundation, which won the SCAA Sustainability Award in 2009 for its efforts to help coffee farmers in Zimbabwe and Tanzania use coffee pulp to grow mushrooms (which I learned today have a similar protein content to milk and beans, are rich in the vitamin B complex, and represent the highest natural concentration of vitamin B12).

Today was (mostly) talk.  We were sent on a scavenger hunt here on the Selva Negra farm during the lunch recess, however, and tasked with finding big, beautiful or otherwise notable mushrooms.  Here are some samples of the incredible finds that people made.

[slidepress gallery=’coffeelands-blog-coffee-and-mushrooms-10-jun-2010′]