On this Monday 4^th October 2021, RAB conducted a one-day meeting of Mushroom Value Chain Stakeholders in Rwanda.

The meeting discussed on current challenges of the Value chain and agreed on recommendations that can help them face and resolve the challenges.

Although mushroom cultivation is getting popular among the farmers, there are still some problems which stagnate the mushroom production in Rwanda such as;

• Lack of knowledge on mushroom production, the market for mushroom flour is still very small in Rwanda, due to a comparable high investment needed to buy the machinery, such as the mushroom dryer and the grinder and Some people has negative attitude in terms of culture.
• The mushroom producers complained of high costs of cottonseed hulls and shortage of chemicals such as lime for mushroom substrate treatment.
• Market challenges such as fluctuations of buying and selling prices.
• The cost of importing mushrooms in the country is still high

The estimated number of mushroom tubes producers is 30 cooperatives, 22companies, and 35 individual working as tube producers. The number of farmers growing fresh mushrooms are around 32500 people.

In addition to job creation and improving income, other upsides of mushroom cultivation include no-fuss technology, low capital investment and little space to plant required.

End.