Agripreneurs Level of Readiness for Environmentally-Friendly Mushroom Cultivation Waste Management

Abstract

Mushrooms are considered as an environmentally-friendly crops by using agricultural waste as substrate, while spent mushroom substrate (SMS) is reusable. However, mushroom cultivation waste (MCW) to be managed in environmentally-friendly is not much practiced by agripreneurs that led impact to the environment. Therefore, this study attempts to evaluate the level of agripreneurs' readiness on environmentallyfriendly management in post-harvest stage. It also evaluated the method of obtaining information regarding MCW management. Survey and interview were conducted involving 40 agripreneurs who were participants of the Young Mushroom Agripreneur Project Package Course. The results showed that agripreneurs knew and aware of caring the environmental quality when dealing with MCW, but most of them did not manage in a proper way, despite received advices from agency. Expanding agripreneurs awareness, skills capabilities in post-harvest techniques, and building-up networking with agencies and small-scale entrepreneur could essential strategies to manage MCW. This potentially increased agripreneurs' income by reducing the input cost, generating side income and improve the environment.Contribution/ Originality: The paper's primary contribution is finding that mushroom cultivation waste should manage in an environmentally-friendly ways. Therefore, agripreneurs need to be exposed, given training and skills in reusing and developing substrate wastes into potential products. This could increase agribusiness and improve the environment. INTRODUCTIONThe mushroom industry is widely produced especially in the Asian continent which is dominated by China as the world's largest producer, besides the USA and Europe. Mushroom cultivation is an industry that is environmentally-friendly in its production process [1,2]. The substrates for this crop use other agricultural wastes such as wood dust, grain straws, banana leaf, cotton waste, corn cob [2] and cocoa husk as a crop substrate or