Matsutake mushroom Mecca goes from boom to bust
Matsutake pickers in small Oregon town once the centre of the worldwide trade in the 'truffle of Asia' paying the price for glut in the fungus
While some commercial hubs obsess over the price of stock shares, or real estate, Chemult, a dot of a town in the US state of Oregon, population 135, briefly flowers each autumn into a global capital of the wild mushroom trade.
However, with just US$5 a pound paid recently for the best-grade raw matsutake mushrooms, the market has just about crashed into the dirt.
For the truffle of Asia, as the matsutake has been called, there is now far more supply than demand.
A mostly Asian-American, freelance army of pickers, drawn to Chemult by economic need or family tradition, still floods into the woods each morning armed with digging sticks and hope. But the economic winds at day's end are harsh.
"The price goes down and down and down," said John Souvannasay, 26, of Weed, California, who was taught the lore of the woods and the harder, subtler skills of grading matsutakes - one to five, different quality, different prices - by his father, Soulinh, 58, an immigrant from Thailand.
In truth, there was probably only one direction, in the long run, that matsutake prices could go.