Chester County farmers who produce the majority of the mushrooms eaten in the United States are ensuring business continues as usual despite the suffocating heat wave, writes Conner Barkon for KYW Newsradio.

Mushrooms require strict environmental conditions to continue thriving.

“We check humidity every day,” said Brian Guest with Kennett Square Specialties. “If it gets too high, we get what we call bacterial blotch, and that white stem gets all these reddish brown spots on there.”

Every week, Guest harvest thousands of pounds of mushrooms.

“If you have it all closed up, the CO2 will get really high, and it will deform the mushrooms, so we are basically pulling in 95-degree air and also running an air conditioner to get it cool,” he said.

The business has been forced to crank up the air conditioners to ensure that the growing rooms remain cool and the crop can still be harvested for the market.

“You gotta have your backup air conditioner units ready in case it’s really hot and you can’t get your temperature down, so you put what we call a backup, an extra unit, in the back door,” said Guest.

Read more about how the heat wave is affecting farmers and crops at KYW Newsradio.

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