Penn State works with Pennsylvania's mushroom industry to make business better.

Buster Needham, who has been growing and selling mushrooms since 1958, has seen a lot of changes in the industry over the last 17 years.

Despite his financial success, business literally stinks for Buster Needham. The owner of Hy-tech Compost, a formulator of the rich, organic -- and odoriferous -- material used by the state's mushroom producers to grow their crop, Needham looks over a large facility filled with hills and valleys of steaming compost. The more successful he is at selling compost, the more complaints can arise from neighboring developments. As the mushroom industry closes in on the new century, Needham and others in the business are working with Penn State researchers to find solutions to odor, environmental, and disease dilemmas. They aim not only to improve farm aromas, but also to sweeten the bottom line for one of the state's most important crops.

Needham, president of Donald B. Needham and Sons (which includes Hy-tech Compost), has been growing and selling mushrooms from his Chester County businesses since 1958. Until 15 years ago, mushroom producers based mainly in Chester, Delaware, and Berks Counties fed a thriving industry that processed the white Agaricus bisporus "button" mushroom into cans or jars for sale in the nation's supermarkets and restaurants. By the mid-1980s, competitors from China, Indonesia, and other nations were growing, producing, and packing processed mushrooms less expensively than Pennsylvania growers. "The whole industry changed overnight," Needham says. "Growers either switched their production to fresh mushrooms or went out of business." Needham is one of the survivors. His mushroom-growing facility, Needham's Mushroom Farm, sells button mushrooms and portobello and cremini specialty varieties to Phillips Mushrooms, a large wholesaler and packager.

Making the compost that mushroom producers use to grow their crops can create odors, which in turn can bring complaints from residents of nearby developments.

According to Laura Phelps, president of the Washington, D.C.-based American Mushroom Institute, there were 440 growers nationwide in 1982. By 1998, there were 153 mushroom operations left. "Today, about 70 percent of Pennsylvania's crop goes to the fresh market," she says. "Thirty years ago, it was just 30 percent."

Pennsylvania, which has roots in the mushroom industry dating back to the 1890s, still is the top mushroom producer in the nation, accounting for nearly 50 percent of the fresh mushrooms sold in the United States. Nearly 818 million pounds of mushrooms were harvested nationwide in 1997­98, a crop worth more than $800 million. Pennsylvania growers contributed 379 million pounds to that total, a bounty worth $279 million.