Spain: A Mushrooming Business
21-minutes, 2002
Ref: 01tvc

In Catalonia every autumn thousands of people head for the woods to pick mushrooms. Local hotels, restaurants and businesses thrive on this activity, and mushroom gatherers and dealers make small tax-free fortunes during the two-month season. But local governments have no control over this mushrooming business and get no revenue out of it.

Catalonia's one million hectares of forest produce one kilo of mushrooms per hectare or one million kilos of mushrooms. Despite this spectacular figure, there are not enough mushrooms to go around so they are imported from other regions in Spain, other European countries and even countries as far away as China and Chile. Last year alone over 13 million kilos of mushrooms were imported, according to the Spanish Mushroom Export Association.

This is a thriving blackmarket business and our team had no way of finding out just how much profit is being generated. This is why the crew visited some of the areas where mushrooms are produced to find out for themselves.

One of the regions visited is a place on the Spanish border between Portugal and the province of Caceres where hundreds of pickers sell their mushrooms to dealers who then resell them to preserves manufacturers and wholesalers.

Though it is difficult to know just how much money is moved by this business, we were able to make an approximate estimate of how much mushroom pickers earn and how much profit is generated by a business for which there are virtually no laws.