According to statistical data from FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), global mushroom output has been increasing from 30.256 million tons in 2010 to 47.956 million tons in 2016, with 8% of CAGR. As the value of mushroom is constantly explored and approved, global mushroom output is expected to maintain a high growth speed.
As the income level of Chinese rural and urban residents constantly rises, and with the transformation of comprehensive health awareness and consumption concept, consumers place more importance on safety, nutrition and health-care function of foods. In view of the public pursuit to a healthy and energetic life, status of mushroom products is getting its improvement on consumer’s dietary structure.
1. Evident growth trend to food consumption expenditure on Chinese rural and urban residents: Along with the steady improvement of urban and rural residents’ income, expenditure on food category rises. For rban and rural residents, per capita consumption expenditure on food category was respectively increased from 4955 CNY, 1200 CNY in 2000 to 6500 CNY, 3215 CNY in 2016.
2. Rapid development of catering industry further stimulates the growth of mushroom consumption: Mushrooms’ downstream industry is catering industry, incomes of residents and growth of catering industry are the powerful support on the demand end. Mushroom products are sold to restaurants, canteens via distributors, and they gush into thousands of households by supermarkets or farmers’ markets while a small portion of them are sold to end consumers after the deep processing. Since the 21st century, catering industry has been rapiding developed in China, turnover was increased from 52.85 billion CNY in 2000 to 512.71 billion CNY in 2016, showing nearly 10 times of growth.
As the dishes cooked by raw and auxiliary materials of mushrooms increase year by year and along with the growth on retail sales of catering industry, Catering Industry has become one of the crucial channels for mushroom marketing. Besides, in order to meet the requirement of clients, staffs working in Catering Industry have to strive for the standard on food safety, and strengthen the consciousness on raw materials’ safety and environmental protection, thus gradually driving the development of factory mushroom production and satisfying the rapidly-growing of mushroom requirement.
3. Capacity of mushroom production gets sustained growth and shows strong reserve strength in China: China’s mushroom output rises year by year, now, its gross output value ranks the sixth position, next only to Grain, Cotton, Oil, Vegetable and Fruit. During 2005-2016, output value of mushroom industry was increased from 58.5 billion CNY to 251.64 billion CNY, with 14.2% of compound annual growth rate. It is estimated that China’s mushroom market scale is hopeful to lead above 10% of rapid growth speed.
As the world’s largest nation on aspect of mushroom production volume, China consumes 98% of its native mushrooms, which indicates substantial consumption. On the one hand, China holds a large population that is accustomed to ingest mushroioms from ancient times to the present. On the other hand, since the reform and open up in China, a great number of rural population have been transferred to big cities, the improvement of living standard and cultural integration changes people’s dietary consumption habit. For example, Hot Pot, a kind of popular dietary style that carries regional characteristics, is widespread in China while mushrooms such as Enoki mushroom, Shiitake and Oyster mushroom are the important components of its ingredients. (Source: China Commercial Industry Research Institute.)