Ireland's mushroom production has held steady over the past five years even though the number of growers has fallen, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Niall Collins told the Dáil, Agriland reports.

Answering a question from Fianna Fáil TD Malcolm Byrne, Collins said growers had consolidated over time, with farms "becoming larger to gain efficiencies of scale in what is an extremely competitive marketplace". He said the sector's estimated farm-gate value for 2025 was 13.1 percent higher than in 2024.

Irish producers export 80 to 85 percent of their mushrooms to the UK each year. Collins said Irish demand falls in the warmer spring and summer months, and that the sector, backed by the food board Bord Bia, is running campaigns such as "It's Not Magic. It's Mushrooms." to turn occasional buyers into regular ones.

The department also runs the EU aid scheme for producer organisations in fruit and vegetables, which paid €8.7 million to five producer organisations in 2025. Together with two national investment schemes for horticulture, it has helped growers invest in automation and other efficiency measures to cut costs; the budget for these schemes in 2026 was €8.5 million.

The producer organisation scheme, part of Ireland's CAP Strategic Plan, aims to strengthen growers' bargaining power by grouping them into a larger supply base and to improve the sustainability of fruit and vegetable production.

Photo: Dave Spicer / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Source: Agriland