KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — Roughly 35 miles outside of Philadelphia lies the heart of a booming nationwide agricultural industry: mushrooms.
The small town of Kennett Square was built on its mushroom farming roots, and residents take their fungi very seriously.
Coined the Mushroom Capital of the World, Kennett Square produces 60% of the country’s mushrooms, boosting Pennsylvania’s economy and ecosystem — not to mention providing us with a super important food.
Last month, the town celebrated its annual Mushroom Festival with fried mushroom-eating contests, a wide variety of mushroom recipes and a growers tent, where local farmers showed off their prized fungi.
More importantly, it’s a celebration of those who work directly and indirectly in the mushroom business to help cultivate the local economy.
“A lot of people get involved, including the farmers, but also the restaurants and other vendors,” said Jerry Yeatman, co-owner of C.P. Yeatman & Sons and Mother Earth Mushrooms. “It’s a celebration of what we’ve done here.”
This month, People’s Light theater in Malvern is hosting its production of “Mushroom,” an original play by Eisa Davis that highlights the immigrant workers who make the mushroom business possible. The production runs through Oct. 16.
The play touches on the struggles of being an immigrant in America — specifically, undocumented immigrants and the uncertainty they face as government leaders and policies change.
“We’re all dependent upon each other,” Davis said. “The policies that are really punitive toward undocumented workers don’t take into account that if we didn’t have all of these undocumented workers working on our agricultural farms and in our agricultural centers, no one in this country would eat.”
While mushrooms don’t need sunlight and can grow indoors, they are an incredibly delicate crop that needs to be handpicked almost daily.
Most of this work is dependent on immigrant workers — not because farms are seeking them out specifically, but because this kind of work is not what people born and raised in the United States want to do, said Rachel Roberts, president of the American Mushroom Institute (AMI).
“The number of American-born applicants to mushroom harvester jobs per day is zero,” Roberts said. “This is not a job that really fits the working culture of America anymore.”
Most farmers have trouble meeting labor demands because of the inability to get their workers proper documentation, Yeatman added. Typically, seasonal immigrant workers are eligible for H-2A visas, but because mushrooms are a year-round crop, workers remain ineligible.
Roberts and her team at AMI continuously advocate for policies to help mushroom workers keep stable jobs so that they can support their families and communities.
“We’re trying to do all of the right things when it comes to pushing for immigration reform that can help our workers be where they are,” Roberts said, “and continue to send their kids to our schools … and move on to do great things and come back to the community and serve as lawyers and doctors here. We just really want to keep that going.”
For more on the mushroom farming industry in Kennett Square, listen to this episode of The Jawncast below or wherever you get your podcasts: