Truffle Market: North America

[Ruth BunburyParticipant]

Hello,

I hope this message finds all members well. I am a new NATGA member, located in Eastern Ontario, my family and I will be planting 5 acres of Burgundy Truffles in the late fall. But with the planting comes the paperwork and the budgeting, which is what I was hoping the members of the association might be able to assist me with.

I am currently writing a Market Research Report to go with my Business plan. I have done the majority of the research already but am finding numbers for North American (if possible broken down into the USA, Canada – provincially) annual yields, sales and exports of truffles (any major species) difficult to come by. How much is the market for truffles worth in North America, Canada, USA, and Ontario) currently? Does anyone have those numbers and would they be willing to share them with me? I have been able to find export data for mushrooms and truffles but the numbers are of no value because they provide no clarity for truffles specifically. If you have any insight or could direct me to a resource I would greatly appreciate it.

Kind Regards,

Ruth

[Fabrice CaporalKeymaster]

Hello Ruth,

These are very important questions however you will find that answers are very hard to come by. Part of NATGA’s mission is to come up with the data, but it has been a challenging endeavor for multiple reasons.

Secrecy. Traditional truffle production is associated with black market and hidden harvest spots. This is still ingrained in the practice. It will be very hard to get accurate numbers from the traditional channels.  Australian and to a certain extend Spaniards are changing that practice and recognize the value of an open market.

Lack of production. In the North American continent production is only a very small proportion of the demand. So we don’t significant data on the supply side, beside import. Most volume imports is done by a handful of importers that are still very much intrenched in the old world “business” practices. Further, restaurants would gladly serve truffles if they could rely on a consistent supply of quality truffles. So current market size is grossly under estimated.

Global import does not accurately distinguish truffles. As you know truffles are many different products and often they are amalgamated with mushrooms.  So I found using border control reports and such to be useless,  not even to get an idea of scales.

Please share any information you would find this would be a grate service to the community.

[Ruth BunburyParticipant]

Fabrice,
Thank you so much for the information! I will definitely share every thing I bring together for the analysis and subsequent business plan with you and members. With your permission I would like to address some of the points you made above in my analysis, and expand on them, perhaps with some of Ian R. Hall’s (et al.) work from “Taming the Truffle”? Let me know, and thank you again!
Ruth

[Michael ZablockiParticipant]

Hey Ruth, I am in Hamilton, ON and created a business plan last year for FCC, our agricultural bank. Ultimately, I decided to not pursue truffles at this moment for various reasons, mainly the cost of land is too high right now for me. Please send me an email and maybe we could talk on the phone and share info. My email is zablockimichael@gmail.com.

[Ruth BunburyParticipant]

Hi Michael! Thank you for connecting with me, I would love to talk truffles! I am in Acton, so not far at all. I absolutely understand the cost factor, the investment start an orchard properly is quite intimidating, add land on to that…I am blessed with a family farm that is not being used currently. It is out near out near Kingston; I have had enough of the GTA and need the country life I was so desperate to escape from after university! My parents said I would be back… I will send you an email from my personal email as I tend to check it more. Thank you again!

[george corbinParticipant]

Hello, I have combed through the forums and threads. I hope I didn’t miss the answer somewhere. I read a article published 12 July 2024 called

Status of Truffle Science and Cultivation in North America, it stated:

“Interviews with several successful NA growers indicate that the time to first production for T. melanosporum orchards ranges from 5 to 13 years and averages approximately 8 years (Allen et al. 2023). Annual yields of commercial quality truffles range from 1 to 39 kg ­ ha−1 (1–35 lbs ­ acre−1), with an average of 15 kg ­ ha−1 (pers. comm. Pat Long, Tom Michaels, Simon Cartwright, Margaret Townsend; July 2023).”

13+ lbs./acre of commercial quality truffles at year 8? Is this still the consensus today? Has anyone harvested 30 lbs./acre of T. melanosporum  in North America to date? If yes in what year after planting?

Thank you,

George

 

[Fabrice CaporalKeymaster]

Hello,

As far as I know no US based truffle orchard is yet producing 30lb/acre, however the great majority of orchards are very small (5 acres or less), semi professional,  and youg less than 10 years in the ground. This information can probably be verified with the results of the Truffle Growers Survey. Next Monday we will have a webinar presenting the results for 2025.

30 lb/acre is considered to be a reasonable production objective for a well maintained orchard in Europe and Australia.  Australia has been reporting some orchards producing upward to 200lb/acre. An important consideration is that orchard that produce these numbers don’t necessarily produce much more truffles than the one producing smaller numbers but they are producing bigger truffles.

In our orchard, we found our first truffle at year 5 and today we are in year 7 and found our first kilo of truffle on about 1,000 trees.

Some European and Australian orchard are staring to reach commercial production level on year 8, but this will probably not be our case and I am not aware of any US based T. melanosporum orchard reaching these levels of production.

I hope this helps

• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 4 days ago by Fabrice Caporal.
• This reply was modified 2 weeks, 4 days ago by Fabrice Caporal.

[george corbinParticipant]

It does thank you, my goal is to provide a timeline for income in my financial plan and this part is proving to be very difficult. 

[Fabrice CaporalKeymaster]

We had to go through that process when we created our business plan. There are so many parameters and unknown that you can only make estimates. We decided to create three scenarios one which would define failure, one reasonable,  and one optimistic. This gave us some brackets to assess our progress over the years and some tpe of roadmap to manage our expectations.

• This reply was modified 2 weeks ago by Fabrice Caporal.

[Fabrice CaporalKeymaster]

On this forum I shared a Google Sheet that I used to create a model…

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