Desert-Grown Healing: How Mushrooms Nourish & Nurture People and Planet

Desert-Grown Healing: How Mushrooms Nourish & Nurture People and Planet  - Conversation with Below Farm

Mushrooms have a unique ability to support both human and planetary health. They can be cultivated following circular principles, upcycling biproducts of other agricultural industries, without the need for pesticides or fertilizers, using relatively low water. Their reasonably high protein content plus their meaty texture & umami flavour makes them a healthy meat alternative, as well as offering many, varied functional health benefits. 

At Below Farm, we grow mushrooms in the desert, bringing the wonders of the fungi kingdom, to the Middle East. Because, until recently, the only mushroom you could find in the UAE supermarket was a white button mushroom. But reducing the vast fungi kingdom and all of the edible mushrooms within it to just that one, is equivalent taking the animal kingdom and all the meat that comes from it, and just eating chicken. There is a huge range of diversity in flavour, texture, preparations and health benefits. We saw an opportunity to establish the region’s first localized mushroom farm: from seed to fruit. 

Bronte Weir is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of UAE-based Below Farm, which uses the power of fungi as nature’s tool in the circular economy to take waste organic plant matter in arid climates and produce nutritious food: mushrooms.

Socially certified, Below Farm is recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Top Innovator in the Circular Economy space, and a speaker at COP28, Bronte’s mission is to create climate smart food system, from both a production and consumption perspective. She has a Masters of Chemistry from The University of Edinburgh, and a background in R&D for multinational Consumer Goods companies. 

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