The Simply Mushrooms farm in St. Lucia has closed, and there are no indications it will reopen for a long time. The company has been struggling to stay in business for a while. However, despite working hard for weeks, it was not able to get the grant money it needed to keep going.
A company statement read: “After the stress of COVID and the loss of two long-term employees to gun violence, we don’t have the skills to keep going. Over the past eight years, young people have built and run the business. Now, they have taken full control and are looking for help to relaunch the Caribbeans-only mushroom farm. They tried to get money to rebuild the solar panel field and retrain the next generation so that it would be successful and last for a long time. Because of these problems and other staffing losses, we were left with few resources and a need to do a lot of retraining and updating in the solar panel field.”
The company has been growing organic mushrooms and selling them to stores and hotels all over the island. This is part of an effort to lower St. Lucia’s $360 million food import bill. The company wasn’t exporting its goods.
Source: stvincenttimes.com
Photo source: Facebook.com