In the village of Marum, Netherlands, a lot of work has been done in the past year to get the new, innovative farm of Bertus Baron going. Together with Limbraco Horst he developed a vision and implemented that into his new farm. The farm itself is in production since July, the logistic part of the transport of mushrooms has to start up in the coming weeks.
Unique for this farm is that Dutch shelves have been placed in one layer for the first time, where the mushrooms are being harvested. Baron has played with the idea of a single layer tray farm, because the picking in such a system has a lot of advantages. But tray farms have a lot of disadvantages, mainly logistic. That’s when the grower came up with the idea of fixed shelves.
In conventionally looking growing rooms of 1260 square meters each, compost and casing soil are filled with a standard filling machine for Dutch shelves. The growing starts in here, but after two weeks the beds are pulled to the other side of the farm where the harvesting takes place. These growing rooms also have 1260 square meters of growing surface, but in a single layer. In this part of the farm 2 flushers are being harvested in 2 weeks time, and the harvested mushrooms travel through an ingenious logistic system to the pack house, while being cooled down on the way, without a single hand touching the product or the punnets.
Cost price reduction
According to Baron a substantial reduction in cost price can be achieved. The system is mainly interesting for farms that pack their own production, because it is fully integrated: From harvest to packing. In the coming edition of “Mushroom Business” we will edit a full story on the new farm. Baron and Limbraco will organise an open day on the farm somewhere early in 2010, to be announced.
