A huge land of huge opportunity--Russia.

I recently was honored with the opportunity to speak at the annual conference of the Russian mushroom industry. Not knowing the language, the people, or even the alphabet, I was intrigued by this adventure so I accepted it. The president of the Russian Mushroom School, Alexander Khrenov, a tall imposing man of great energy and stamina (which seems to be a national trait), took care of all the details without a hitch and next thing I knew I was jetting off to Moscow via London.

My volunteer visit took the form of an extension service, and I visited some mushroom farms to provide some direction and advice. After the farm visits, the three-day 15th Annual Russian Mushroom Conference began aboard the fabulous riverboat aptly named the "Mushroom Eater" as it navigated the great river Volga. The rest was an adventure into an emerging industry, in a reemerging nation, within an ancient and passionate culture.

The first day of the visit I was greeted at the Mushroom School. The School and the extension service catered to my immediate needs and then greeted me at the office with several toasts of vodka and caviar. I was briefed on my assignment and was transported along with a translator east of Moscow to the town of Noginsk. My experience there was with a farm that had to switch to Pleurotus growing because of serious disease and composting problems, but was reemerging as an Agaricus farm. The farm is owned by a former Russian general named Yuri Alexandreyev Davidov who fasted 15 days, twice a year to purge the body and maintain discipline! I must say working with the suspicious growers and communication problems was a challenge, but once we got into a flow we discussed various bulk Phase I and Phase II issues extensively. They sell some blocked compost outside the company but the majority was used on site. The farm itself had enormous potential. It was a good-sized farm for Russia, capable of 2 million pounds annually, although the systems were less than stellar and the past was spotty. I mention that the farm has great potential because the market is begging for mushrooms and the systems are no worse than some North American farms I've visited, and perhaps better than some. As thanks late in the day, we had a group meal that was interspersed with numerous toasts of vodka and tasty chasers.

Another farm was a modern shelf farm in Ledovo that was more sophisticated than 90 percent of American farms. Clean, spacious and organized, the farm was doing well financially despite only growing a bit over 4 lbs/[ft.sup.2]! The market is such that apparently they were still making good money, but as good growers they sought to do better. Again I worked with their bulk systems, but more time was spent on growing and particularly pinning, which was the topic of my conference presentation. The people were engaging, passionate about mushroom growing, and spoke some English, which helped immensely. At the end of the visit we bid our adieus with a few toasts with vodka and mushrooms. As you can probably see there is a trend starting here.

As I came to find out, the Russian market is as wide open and full of opportunity as the Russian Republic. With a population of over 140 million, tremendous emerging wealth from natural resources, free market reforms and growing annual per capita income, the nation is beginning to assert its economic potential. The mushroom industry shares some of that potential since national consumption is only about 0.3 pounds per capita!! This is in a country where mushrooms have been reserved for the ruling class until recently and the common people were only allowed to hunt wild mushrooms. Beyond the miniscule per capita consumption, a staggering 75 percent of national mushroom sales are canned and about 65 percent of the fresh mushrooms sold are imported. That is only about eight percent of total mushroom sales are grown in Russia! Furthermore, Russia is an enormous country where great shipping distances and import duties are great disadvantages to shipping fresh mushrooms into Russia! Still the economic incentives are so great that large volumes of fresh mushrooms are being shipped in from Poland and Hungary. Oh, the opportunities that are there for young Russian mushroom growers.

After my time with the growers I returned to Moscow. All the drives were interesting because of the evidence of decay of the old economic and social structure of the Soviet era and rebirth of the new free market economy. There were many, many Soviet and monarchy era factories in various degrees of operation or inoperation. In the years to come there will be no shortage of work for the wrecking ball and demolition teams. There were the occasional statues of Lenin and the hammer and sickle was embossed in many concrete structures, various war memorials or propaganda monuments. Old Lada autos were ubiquitous. By contrast there were emerging shops and stores of all sorts. Locally owned and western franchised restaurants and retailers were operating or in various stages of construction adjacent to street vendors and local open air markets. BMWs and Mercedes imposed their will around the slower Ladas and the young people dressed for action whisked through the streets walking past older, heavier women in babushkas. Cranes were commonplace. Eventually I arrived at my hotel where I worked with my interpreter on the delivery and technical aspects of my presentation over a beautiful traditional meal ... with several toasts with vodka.

Finally the day of reckoning was upon me, the conference. I was picked up by Petr, a thick, heavy conference attendee, who was to deliver me to the boat with his "freelance" driver. We stuffed all my things along with Petr's into the small Lada for a very low ride to the river. I sensed things going wrong from there when the two began an expressive argument in Russian, and we abruptly hopped out of the car and onto the highway with all our suitcases and luggage. From there we walked through a riverside park with all luggage in tow for at least a mile or more. Poor Petr was sweating bullets by the time we got to our tour destination, but it was all good. After all, it was just a walk in the park.

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I was assigned a room on this river cruise ship and got settled in before the opening ceremonies began. I finally made my way to the deck where I was introduced to various attendees, and we all had champagne and, of course, toasts with vodka. After the first talk I thankfully was up for my turn and the transition from English to Russian through Alla Safray went famously. My talk on pinning, pinset control and staggering, was very well received, and there was an active question and answer period on my topic as well as other mushroom growing topics since my talk was heavily interspersed with photos. Whereas initially I felt like a bit of an outsider, the talk seemed to break the ice and from then on everyone was my buddy or new best friend. Perhaps I broke the political and language barrier with a presentation loaded with photos and information and the curtain came tumbling down. Alternatively it was the recognition of a fellow mushroom person and that common thread united us in ways not otherwise possible. Actually I believe the latter was the reason since I was then able to converse, usually through a translator or the use of broken English and "body English" about mushrooms, but also about the United States, Texas and other matters of interest. And in more cases than not, the talk was interspersed with toasts and vodka.

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The river cruise turned out to be a perfect vehicle for a mushroom conference. It forced the group to be within a physically close area, yet all the attendees had the privacy of their own rooms. Additionally the boat had enough space for a vast number of small groupings (which seems to be a Russian characteristic) along with alone time on the multiple decks. To avoid the claustrophobic feeling at the halfway point of the voyage, all were encouraged to leave the ship for tours of the historic town of Uglich. A beautiful 13th century town with some fabulously spired Russian Orthodox churches. The colorful onion shaped spires were something to behold and the town was a genuine relic of centuries gone by. It is the town where the Grozny dynasty met its end with the death of the last heir to Ivan the Terrible. Soon the Romonov dynasty prevailed and the course of Russian history changed. Strangely enough beyond the history of the Czars, Uglich also housed the Museum of Vodka. All the information about vodka you could ever want was there, along with, you guessed it, toasts with vodka.

Beyond my talk were several other technical talks on equipment, the European industry, people management and immigrant labor. Mushroom industry labor always seems to come from a place other than the local population. In Ireland it's the Lithuanians and Latvians, in Holland it's the Turks and Asians, in Poland and Hungary it's the Romanians, and in Russia when local labor is not plentiful it's the central Asians from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. So mind you, we North Americans are not alone.

Finally the ending ceremonies were unique in that they involved individual performances within the group structure. The evening was punctuated with quite a display of song and dance talent. There were individual and group-singing performances, guitar playing, joke telling and even belly dancing. Throughout the evening each of the 20 some odd tables of attendees delivered toasts to the association, the conference and for success in the industry. Of course each toast was with vodka.