
Has a Startup Found the Secret to Farming the Elusive Truffle? - bko
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/business/has-a-start-up-found-the-secret-to-farming-the-elusive-truffle.html
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ChuckMcM
This is something that I expect the tissue engineering community to break. I
know that sounds weird but according to folks I've talked to who were looking
at various lab grown structures, fungi are significantly easier than say meat.
And an artificial hamburger at $350/lb sounds impractical, artificial white
truffles at $350/lb sounds like a money making opportunity.

~~~
sandworm101
Truffles are like wine. The taste isn't the product. The product is the
backstory, the where and how of the production. Those paying top dollar want
their food to have a biography of picturesque farms tended by hearty farm
folk, with a few inoffensive Labradors throw in. The boots and pants can be
muddy, that shows that they are close to the earth. But never the shirts. No
self-respecting farmer would dare be seen in a dirty shirt.

This is fashion food. They will pay extra for the lab-grown stuff once fashion
shifts back away from the dirt and towards 'clean' synthetics.

~~~
sjm
Well personally I'm near obsessed with truffles and for me it's _all_ about
the taste. It's such a unique and complex taste and I think that's the real
product.

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archildress
Planet Money had a wonderful episode recently about a boy who's been selling
truffles out of the back of his car since he was 15:

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/11/04/500726210/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/11/04/500726210/episode-733-a-trunk-
full-of-truffles)

Most notably, he budgets $10,000 pear year for parking tickets as a cost of
doing business!

~~~
perhonen
There's also a video following this guy (Ian Purkayastha) on one of his daily
routes:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sJ6IJZJhUU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sJ6IJZJhUU)

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briandear
It would be interesting if this were true. I live in Oppède in the Luberon and
I can literally see the town of Menerbes from my back yard -- which is
incidentally on of the most important world markets for black truffles. Every
winter our roads are filled with people from all over the world (generally
chefs) who make an annual pilgrimage to by truffles here.

I would be interested in the economic impact of suddenly making truffles as
near-worthless as common mushrooms since truffles come almost exclusively from
tiny producers -- for many, their entire year's income comes from the yearly
truffle market.

I guess my feeling is I wonder if truffle scarcity is a problem worth solving.
The downside is destroying a lot of people's livelihood for a product that
really isn't that important (people that don't have truffles really aren't
wishing they did for the most part.)

The scarcity isn't because black truffles are just so amazing but because
there's an allure to eating them. They do have an amazing aroma and every year
for about a month or two I am making truffle-everything. But if they were
turned into a mass-produced commodity, I would expect them to not be quite so
interesting.

This startup is sowing the seeds to destroying the very market they want to
disrupt.

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Jack000
I think the price and relative scarcity of the truffle is a part of its
allure. If it became cheap something else would occupy its niche.

At least for me truffles are extremely overrated in the taste department.

~~~
DamnInteresting
Agreed regarding the disappointing flavor. My wife and I enjoy sampling a wide
variety of foods (e.g., we've recently tried horse tenderloin [delicious],
pork brains [bland], wild boar liver [extremely tasty]). We went to a fancy
place that had some truffle offerings, and we were excited about trying them,
but neither of us liked it at all. It was a strong, not great flavor
resembling minced garlic that had been burned to a dry charcoal crisp.

~~~
Pinckney
I'm curious, were these actual truffle dishes? Or were they simply flavored
with truffle oil? Because truffle oil, is by most accounts, awful.

~~~
jaclaz
The "real" truffle is the "white" one, the "black" one is considered (and it
is) vastly inferior and there are several varieties of the "black" one (some
wuite good, some a lot less).

Truffle oil is made (the good one) from the rests of the truffles or from too
tiny ones, and not-so-surprisingly if you use real, good truffle and real,
good olive oil, it is a good product.

Most of it is however made with inferior quality oils and with artificial
flavourings, and quite frankly it is usually terrible.

Any dish with truffle be it the superior "white" or inferior "black" kind is
usually _any_ normal, not particular savoury in itself dish (like the
mentioned "tagliatelle al burro") on which the truffle is added at the end in
tiny slices, often (this is what is done at home and in "high level
restaurants") by bringing on the table the truffles and the special tool to
slice them, and everyone slices what he/she finds adequate on his/her own
plate. The tool is like this one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NucklhqTRU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NucklhqTRU)

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jaclaz
At least here in Italy, it is something like 30 (thirty) years that someone
claims to know how to farm (black) truffles (through this or that "new"
procedure and/or "scientific finding") but at the end of the day the only
money that changes hands is the actual cost of the plants (and the expenses
for planting and irrigation) that is paid by the farmer.

It is not at all clear (to me) what the partnership provides, seemingly (just
like all the others before them) they do sell the actual plants and delay to
when the farmer get the profits the payment of their "training" and "ongoing
assistance".

Their UK company sells also single trees online (which you can also
conveniently pay via PayPal):
[http://plantationsystems.com/shop/](http://plantationsystems.com/shop/)

It is an interesting investment, considering how global climate change in only
35.7 (please note the .7) years will make Spain unsuitable for growing
truffles:

[http://plantationsystems.com/climate-change-truffle-
supply/](http://plantationsystems.com/climate-change-truffle-supply/)

>However, within just 35.7 years for Spain, the climate will fall outside of
the known parameters for truffle fruiting.

P.S.: BTW I would have expected, if not fact checking, as if it was difficult
to check Dr. Paul Thomas linkedIn page, at least to doubt that someone that is
35 in 2016 was:

>working on his Ph.D. in 1996

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sandworm101
Nothing new. Some Canadians have been doing this for over a decade.

[http://www.ducketttruffieres.com/](http://www.ducketttruffieres.com/)

[http://terranossa.ca/perigord-black-truffle/](http://terranossa.ca/perigord-
black-truffle/)

"The Perigord Black Truffle was originally produced in France and Italy in
truffle and oak orchards on calcareous soil. Techniques for successful
Perigord Black Truffle production have been developed, tested and shown to be
successful in New Zealand, Australia and parts of the US. There are now a
small number of farmers attempting to do the same in BC, mainly on Vancouver
Island, the lower mainland and the Okanogan."

~~~
toomanybeersies
Yep, I've had New Zealand black truffles before.

I haven't had European truffles, so I have nothing to compare them to though
in terms of quality. The price was about the same as European ones though, I
think it was about NZ$3 per gram?

~~~
sandworm101
Truffle is something you have to eat lots of to understand. I can taste that
there is a difference, but I wouldn't judge one truffle as being any better
than another. They all taste a little the the dirt they came from and I don't
eat them often enough to care. I like a good stilton cheese, but I'm not going
to criticize those who thinks it tastes "like feet".

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alcari
It's not much of a secret:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle#Cultivation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle#Cultivation)

------
beat
There's already an alternative truffle source - China. They are considered
substantially inferior to European truffles.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Not to mention that there are Oregon White and Black truffles[1], which are
quite good, already grow in the US, and are much cheaper.

Now, if they had figured out to grow the mycelium in vitro at scale, I'd be
impressed...

1:
[https://whatscookingamerica.net/Truffles/OregonTruffles.htm](https://whatscookingamerica.net/Truffles/OregonTruffles.htm)

~~~
tptacek
... and are also considered inferior (and are certainly different) than
European truffles.

~~~
jcoffland
Some Europeans will always consider wine, truffles, etc. produced in the US as
inferior and some Americans will believe it or adopt this opinion to seem more
sophisticated but logic would have it that quality wine or mushrooms don't
really care if they are European.

~~~
tptacek
It's not chauvinism; American truffles are a different product.

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wmeredith
> Has the American Truffle Company figured it out? “It remains to be seen how
> well their system will work,” Mr. Michaels said. “The frustrating thing
> about the truffle is we still don’t know the basic conditions.”

No.

Why do headlines still get written this way?

~~~
frutiger
See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines).
Also [https://twitter.com/BetteridgesLaw](https://twitter.com/BetteridgesLaw).

~~~
tome
See tome's law:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9077549)

~~~
eridius
I haven't seen that one before, but that seems more of a corollary rather than
an independent law.

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curried_haskell
No.

~~~
mmmpop
Thanks for saving me the click.

~~~
credit_guy
The way I read it, the answer is more likely yes, but it's not confirmed yet,
as it takes 5 yaers to get the first crop. This seems to be one of the
precious few cases where Betteridge's law doesn't apply; the question mark is
there simply because there is still a question, but all available information
points to a positive outcome. Not to mention this is New York Times.

~~~
imagist
"A Startup Is Trying to Farm the Elusive Truffle" would have been a perfectly
acceptable headline.

The way I see it, the title of an article should provide the key information.
The title as is tells us nothing.

