Emirate Mushrooms step up a gear
9th June, 2010
Almost equally distant from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, Emirates Mushrooms grows mushrooms to service local Supermarkets, food traders and Hotels in both those cities and Al Ain. More recently it has started to supply the Emirates Airline Company, providing locally grown mushrooms for their in flight meals.
Originally the farm was designed to be self sufficient and was making its own compost because the owner operated a large scale broiler chicken business on the site and wanted an outlet for some of the DLP produced. This meant importing compacted big bales of wheat straw in containers which was at first sent out of the UK, then tried from the Sudan and latterly arrived from the USA. Small bales were also available at times from Iran and Pakistan although the latter was chopped material and was often rice straw not wheat. The former straws was very expensive but of good quality, where as the rice straw was cheaper but made a far lower quality short compost. However the constantly changing raw materials made achieving a consistent Phase I much more difficult.
Following a visit to last year's Dutch open days in Den Bosh, the General Manager of the Agricultural Operations of His Excellency Abdulla Al Masaood, Mr. Andrew Jelliman, started to investigate the possibility of using Phase III blocked compost imported from Europe. After several meetings with the Coenegrachts company it was decided to give it a go.
Now Emirates Mushrooms has found that the cost of the compost delivered to the farm is very much on a par with making their own compost, but of course as a Phase III material not Phase I. An added bonus was they could also increase production off the farm without any further capital investment as they have 10 rooms which they can now run on about a 7 week cycle.
The first loads of Phase III have proved to be an outstanding success and with the opportunity to take 4 flushes in some rooms by lengthening the cycle, maximising the yields helps ensure top earnings.
The control of the compost temperatures is possibly the only extra problem they need to deal with, as harvesting the greater volumes of mushrooms has been successfully managed by the experienced existing staff that are now employing the grazing method. The main volume of the crop is taken off at a maximum of 50 mm size with only a few larger mushrooms in demand.
The compost yard which has an aerated floor section and small bunker was provided with a Traymaster Mixer Filler in the beginning and this will be now used in the future to make a valuable fertilizer product out of the spent compost and DLP produced off the poultry farm. Products like these are imported into the UAE and are in good demand from the local farmers producing vegetables and soft fruit in the area. This operation will help add some extra income for the farm and properly recycle these valuable organic ingredients.
