Brighter futures sprout for Kenyan women

System redesign

However, local production conditions were far more challenging than Xu had anticipated.

"The local mushroom sheds were built with simple materials and lacked standardized temperature or humidity control equipment," Xu said. "The power supply was unstable, with frequent outages, and there was no irrigation system, forcing farmers to water manually."

Due to the farmers' limited knowledge of microbiology and sterilization, many mushroom bags were contaminated and infested with pests. As a result, the standard cultivation techniques brought by Xu and her colleagues from China could not be directly applied.

"We had to redesign the entire system," she said.

Their approach was guided by three principles: low cost, use of locally available materials, and no reliance on stable electricity.

Instead of constructing steel-framed structures, the team converted local mud-walled rooms into functional mushroom houses by adding ventilation holes — a low-cost solution that required no new construction. For the cultivation substrate, they replaced some imported ingredients with local agricultural waste: sugarcane bagasse, coffee husks, corn stalks, and wood chips. They also developed a simple open-air composting process that relied on natural heat rather than machinery.

Pest control was another challenge. Kenya had no approved fungicides for mushroom cultivation, so the team introduced physical and biological solutions: sticky traps, ash and chili water as natural repellents, and better spacing between mushroom bags to reduce mold.

The sterilization method also had to be rethought. In China, mushroom growers use high-pressure autoclaves. In Kenya, Xu found farmers were using an old-fashioned method, an oil drum filled with water, heated by fire beneath, with mushroom bags suspended inside on iron rods. It was the same technology Chinese farmers used decades ago.

"We could not bring in expensive equipment or specialized materials," Xu said. "Everything we designed had to work with what was already available in the community."