,
It’s well-known that the pandemic forced millions of business people to pivot in order to professionally survive. This is certainly true for Amanda Powers, who was serving as one of just two female presidents in the United Soccer League before she moved to Albuquerque from Tucson to launch Enchanted Farms.
“We could go to Europe and really do the Ted Lasso thing,” Powers tells The Paper. about deciding her and her partners next steps, “or we could go back to Albuquerque (and) do something totally different and be with family.”
She found that “totally different” idea when a mushroom farmer showed up to one of her business development networking events. She says she had already been considering sustainable foods as a means of security and a way of localizing food.
“I could see that mushrooms were kind of becoming popular, but I heard [there were] a lot of challenges,” Powers says, pointing to the fact that it’s a fresh agricultural product with a science to it. Mushrooms aren’t necessarily easy to grow, and on top of that, many farmers aren’t capitalized well enough, so a good number of startups “fizzle out,” as Powers says.
If you are picturing a mushroom farm as you would any other farm, think again. Enchanted Farms is located in a 700-square-foot industrial bay near Broadway and Lomas, in the Women’s Economic Self Sufficiency Team (WESST) incubator.
When deciding on a space to house her operation, Powers says she was introduced to somebody who suggested WESST, which houses other biotech companies and has so far proven to be the perfect launchpad for the business.
Powers showed off her current crop of shiitakes, lion’s mane, king trumpet, and blue oyster mushrooms, grown on shelves inside four 10-foot by 10-foot soft boxes. The room was retrofitted with a high-tech exhaust system and an automated water vapor system that maintains the perfect growing conditions. It seems obvious, given Powers’ projections, that Enchanted Farms will outgrow this space pretty quickly.
In New Mexico, the mushroom market is predicted to be approximately a five-million-dollar market, which would equate to around 550,000 pounds of mushrooms a year. Powers says that currently, the largest grower in the state is Full Circle Mushrooms, located in La Mesa, south of Las Cruces. They produce 50,000 pounds a year and Powers says they are maxed out, so the additional 450,000 pounds needs to come from somewhere.
“Best case scenario, we’d like to be in a position where we are growing fifty thousand pounds by the end of year two,” Powers notes. “We would like to get up to a hundred to two hundred thousand pounds.”
After chatting with Powers for more than an hour, it was clear that not only is she a savvy business person, she is earnest in her community-minded approach that ties together like-minded organizations to achieve a common goal. For instance, when she was running the Tucson FC soccer club, she initiated the USL Academy program, which provides a platform for top youth prospects to potentially reach the professional level. She also founded coCreate, a business collaborative that aims to boost entrepreneurs, visionaries and forward-thinkers to develop new business ventures. Powers served for five years on the leadership team for TEDxABQ. Even though Enchanted Farms officially launched a week ago, Powers is already busy making community ties and providing outreach.
“The state is giving one to two million dollars to institutional buyers that feed APS, senior centers, day care centers. Anywhere that is municipality-related, that has a kitchen now, has access to those dollars that don’t go to Wal-Mart,” Powers explains. “They go to people like us. That checks so many boxes.”
Like any successful business venture, diversification is key to success and longevity. In the mushroom world, there is virtually unlimited potential for how this simple fungus can benefit society as a whole.
“Our focus right now is the gourmet and medicinal side, but we have some other evolutions ahead,” Powers says.
Corporate grocery stores carry about three different types of mushrooms, including the rather tasteless button mushroom, yet the varieties and flavor profiles are numerous. Thankfully, there are visionaries like Powers who understand and embrace the possibilities that lie ahead for mushroom producers and consumers.
“I sold out in less than two hours at the downtown grower’s market,” Powers says, “so there is clearly the demand that we thought there was.”