owned by Yuichiro Shimizu,
has been
servicing Saitama prefecture in Japan for over 50 years, saw their taxi revenue drop by a
staggering 80% over the covid period, the company, and their roughly 40
employees, got together to brainstorm new business initiatives and
they ended up hitting on something unexpected, growing wood ear mushrooms, which is not as crazy as you may
think, there was surprisingly little domestic production of wood ear mushrooms
and 90% of them were imported from China,
all that was need was somewhere to grow them, a properly
insulated greenhouse equipped with heating that could insure production through
the winter would cost 10 million yen a piece, at today’s rate £55,370, or $78,100, which seems incredibly high but there it is, thinking outside of the box,
in Japan there is a glut of vacant houses, known as akiya, while
traditional akiya with charm and architectural significance have proven popular
for renovations, there were plenty of ugly homes that have fallen into
disrepair and were being offloaded for a fraction of the price of a new
greenhouse, not only that, an actual akiya was better insulated than a
greenhouse and would hold up during hurricane season, or other adverse weather,
and of course mushrooms do not need the light that a greenhouse would have,
Shimizu turned to crowdfunding, where he raised 1
million yen (about $7,100) to buy a rundown, vacant akiya and
convert it into a greenhouse for wood ear mushrooms, so there is a new life for in Japan’s glut of vacant akiya after all, the entire process is documented online where
you can read more about the initiative, buy the mushrooms online, or learn
about local stores that stock their mushrooms, what a neat way to use unwanted resources!
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