Intense focus on big ticket industry adoption and inclusion detracts from wider, small to medium scale cottage industry potentials for biomass remediation, such as mycology.

Currently, much of the discussion around the Stanislaus 2030 Investment Blueprint biomanufacturing industry inclusion is focusing on large, capital-rich infrastructure, presumably meeting larger swaths of the blueprint’s stated objectives. While a grand vision is admirable and necessary, ignoring smaller aggregate potential cottage industries inhibits conceivable solutions to our biomass problems. General literacy around biological science and application will likely become a prerequisite for anyone involved in biomanufacturing or biotechnology. Mycology, as a part of biological sciences, opens the door for an increasingly valuable workforce with transferable skills related to biotechnology and adjacent sectors. The lack of a biomass industry built around mycology in this tri-county region is ignoring a large gap in potential workforce training and the development of a mid-skilled community labor pool. Across the world, many people have taken freely available information on the internet and built family-sustaining businesses around mushroom cultivation, be that actual fruiting body production, mycological supply and substrate preparation companies, or medicinal extraction facilities. The barrier to entry is low, minimal education is required, and often, short-term workshop trainings are all that are needed for basic skill acquisition. Education and training can be incorporated into both K-12 curriculum and college-level coursework, eventually providing a steady stream of capable workforce participants with transferable skillsets. A scarcity of research into possibly viable, locally available biomass inputs means that substrate research opportunities are wide open. Further, many components of the mycological industry are exceedingly scalable, offering cottage industry opportunities to those that may otherwise not have access to an entry into biological sciences. Mycology and working with fungi are viable analogs for a biomanufacturing adjacent industry within Stanislaus and surrounding counties.