Mushrooms like cool, dark, humid growing environments. So it may seem strange that Below Farm is cultivating fungi in hot, sunny Abu Dhabi.

But Liliana Slowinska and her partners at Below Farm are using technology and waste biomass to grow their mushrooms inside specially adapted industrial buildings. Although plenty of other companies are farming indoors, cultivating mushrooms presents specific challenges.

“The key here is this: Mushrooms are not plants,” says Slowinska, the company’s co-founder and business development director. “In fact, they metabolically resemble animals more.

They digest their food, which is the feedstock we create in the form of a growing medium from locally available materials such as date palm leaves.”

These palm leaves come from waste that would otherwise go to landfills.

Home grown

The United Arab Emirates, which traditionally imports most of its food, has ambitious goals, aiming to top the Global Food Security Index by 2051. Part of the strategy is encouraging local, sustainable food production. Read more›››

The first phase aims to encourage domestic production of red meat, eggs, poultry, dairy products, dates, leafy vegetables, tomatoes, peppers and aubergine.

Another campaign called Ne’ma – Arabic for blessing – aims to reduce food waste.

There are about 38,000 farms operating in the UAE. ‹‹‹ Read less

“Then there is the fact that mushrooms breathe out CO2, just like us, and this necessitates appropriate levels of gas exchange,” Slowinska says.

Another issue: Also like animals, the fungi don’t require watering the same way plants do. “They absorb moisture from the environment, and to that end we maintain variety-specific levels of humidity in each fruiting chamber.

Overall, growing mushrooms consistently is more complex than other types of produce,” Slowinska says.

The Below Farm team believes that the operation could be a model for food production in an age of climate change and increased urbanization.

“Businesses like ours are the future of food production,” Slowinska says. “As the world gets hotter, drier and more urbanized, there is a dire need for robust and decentralized food systems.

The UAE is the perfect training ground for our fungi proof-of-concept farm as we know now firsthand how to grow food in arid environments.”

Local businesses have taken notice. Abu Dhabi restaurant Marmellata Bakery uses Below Farm’s mushrooms in some of its top-selling pizzas.

“We choose Below Farm because their mushrooms are amongst the highest-quality ingredients that we source locally, period,” says Marmellata owner Raj Dagastani. “They allow us to participate in our local economy, they help us build a community of like-minded food professionals, their mushrooms arrive fresh and in their prime, there is less waste produced, less environmental impact, less drama. But most importantly, their mushrooms are delicious.”

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