We visited The Mushroom Initiative!

On the 29th of May, me, Maria and Emma visited the Mushroom Initiative’s headquarters at Pak Ngau Shek, Tai Po. With a vision of a world where living things live in harmonic sustainability and where the environment is conserved appropriately, the Mushroom Initiative harnesses the carbon sequestering potential of soil ecosystems as carbon sinks, where their extensive knowledge of soil ecology assists in issues ranging from climate change to forest reforestation.

Despite the seemingly small scale of the farm, up close the Initiative’s headquarters contains an array of diverse facilities, from fungi fermentation rooms, labs, composting gardens and organic farms. Braving the many mosquitoes, we was able to meet Chi Chi(芝芝) and Hilda in order to learn much more about the role of soil in promoting biodiversity and sustainability, evidenced by their projects – from upcycling community waste into mushroom cultivation mediums, to carbon sequestration and plantation enrichment. In doing so, the team was able to pick up a set of basic soil management strategies, from determining soil quality to understanding the role of composting and fertiliser, and ultimately, how a circular ecosystem provides a regenerative approach to nature.

Further discussions between the Mushroom Initiative and MakerBay yielded remarkable potential – for example consulting their advice for the “Touch Tung O!” project. In particular, their work could potentially be applied to Fabricademy, a transdisciplinary course that focuses on the development of new technologies applied in the textile industry, in its broad range of applications, organised jointly by FabTextiles and TextileLab Amsterdam – a study group session regarding their course will be on each Thursday with the link below for the signups to the session this Thursday 11th June. https://www.meetup.com/DIYBIOHK/events/nrczsrybcjbpb/