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• When you have finished downloading the two links above, and you agree to its terms, you can download the necessary prerequisites for growing mushrooms, below, or drop your application at this time.
• When you have fully downloaded the 3 documents that you have read the documents, you can register using the button below:
Registration License - Candidature
1. Content of a professional license to cultivate morels
We sell morel cultivation licenses with exclusivity in geographical Europe.
1.1. Each professional license includes the supply of seedlings (substrate + morel mycelium).
1.2. Each professional license includes the supply of boosters (mainly to increase yields).
1.3. Professional graduates benefit from permanent support, mainly by email and telephone. The accompaniment is also done through the keeping of a notebook of culture and obligatory photos (at the time of the colonization of the ground by the mycelium and at the time of the fruiting).
1.4. This personalized support begins in step 4, before buying a license, for the choice of equipment, according to your personal pedoclimatic conditions (see Chapter 5 - 3 registration steps for license request, further down in the text).
1.5. After purchasing your license you will receive a guide to cultivation practices in French (we do not have an English version to date).
1.6. You have the possibility of following a training course after the purchase of your license. This training takes place in the center of France, in Saugues in Haute-Loire, each year on the last Thursday and the last Friday of September.
This training includes, in particular, the content of the guide to cultivation practices.
This is a key moment to meet other licensees (old and new).
1.7. Culture review meeting, each year, between the last week of June and the first week of July.
This meeting is based on feedback from the culture notebooks of each licensee to establish statistics and refine the profiles of morel strains.
Example: strain 37, early strain released in February for all our licensees; strain 176 which grows everywhere and later with 20% more yield between 400 and 800 meters of altitude in clay-limestone soil in hot regions, etc.
2. Experimental Professional Exploitation License
2.1. The professional licenses, the first two or three years, are called "Experimental Professional Exploitation License".
⁃ The operating area is then limited between 100m2 and 500m2 (risk management - We don't want poker players - We want careful and reasonable growers.
⁃ The culture of morels must first be considered as a supplementary culture, before becoming a culture in its own right).
We can - on a case-by-case basis - grant a 1000m2 license from the first year. (example: market gardener who owns 5 hectares of greenhouses or tunnels => 1000 m2 is a risk proportional to the size of the activity).
2.2. The objective of the first year of "Experimental Professional Exploitation License" is to learn the cultivation technique.
We choose for our Year 1 licensees the strains of morels that seem to us to be best suited to your pedoclimatic conditions (soil and climate conditions).
2.3. In year 2 of "Experimental Professional Exploitation License",
our licensees choose their own morel strains from our catalog of strains.
Generally, in year 2, our licensees improve the good management of water supplies and their fight against predators.
2.4. A third year of "Experimental License for Professional Operation" is possible, on a case-by-case basis.
These are licensees who obtain morels in year 1, but who do not obtain the expected return.
Then, in year 2, these licensees progress (better yields) but still do not obtain the expected yields. In this case, we grant an additional year of "Experimental Professional Exploitation License". (In ±100% of cases, the licensee has made a human error and corrects his error the following year).
3. Professional Exploitation License
Structuring of the sector
3.1. It starts automatically from year 3.
(Except in the case where an additional year is granted, in "Experimental Professional Exploitation License")
3.2. The "Professional Operating License" allows access to an operating area of up to 1 hectare (10,000m2 - ten thousand square meters) of exploited cultivation area. The objective is to open the sale of licenses to as many people as possible and in priority to farmers with modest or low incomes.
3.3. The "Professional Exploitation License" includes royalties of 10% on harvest, for the financing of part of the Research and of a legal entity, allowing the development of the new economic sector of morel culture.
Legal entity of the cooperative type (=> each licensee = 1 vote in the cooperative), whose mission will consist of:
3.3.0. Manage the selling price of morels
3.3.1. Managing the distribution of morels
3.3.2. Managing excess production of morels
3.3.3. Manage the communication of the morels growers sector by relying on the communication tools of FRANCE MORILLES.
3.3.4. FRANCE MORILLES internet domain names: We own more than 100 domain names around the word "morel" (including Chinese domain names).
3.3.5. We have had an internet strategy since 2008 (before the creation of FRANCE MORILLES in 2011).
Our strategy allows us to always be on the first page of search engines, worldwide.
3.3.6. We have, for example morillesfraiches.com (and its attachments .fr, .eu, .bio, .net, etc.) and its counterpart in different languages.
This website is intended for all of our licensees to place advertisements and sell morels directly to consumers.
3.3.7. Our website francemorilles.com has a "purchase morels" button which already allows us to help our licensees in the sale of their morels.
This is particularly true in 2020, due to the 1st Coronavirus, which led many licensees to dry their morels.
3.3.8. Manage the development of a social system
3.3.9. Create an insurance system allowing a licensee to restart after a natural disaster (frost, bad weather, snow, floods, hail, diseases and predatory insects, etc.).
3.3.10. Create a supplementary pension fund.
4. Sale of morels during the "Experimental License for Professional Exploitation" period
4.1. We promote the creation of short distribution circuits.
4.2. Each licensee is free to sell his morels to whoever he wants.
4.3. We graciously help licensees who may have trouble selling their morels (only once since 2016).
Note:
• Our licensees easily sell their morels at a net price of between €100 and €150
• Our licensees offer full traceability to the consumer and product freshness to the consumer, generally 2 to 4 hours after picking and no later than 24 hours after.
5. The steps to obtain a professional license
5.1. Download the document "pre-requisites of culture" which helps you to choose a land (you can propose several places, we will help you to choose) and sign the confidentiality agreement online.
https://francemorilles.com/fr/4-download-the-pre-requisites
5.2. Create an account on our website francemorilles.com and answer the questionnaire included in the form of checkboxes (in French).
To create an account, when you are on the home page of our website francemorilles.com, you go to the top left of your screen and click on "connection".
https://francemorilles.com/en/login?back=my-account
A new page appears and offers you to create an account or connect to an existing account.
5.3. Send 5 photos for each prospective cultivation location + ID copy.
https://francemorilles.com/fr/contact-us
Attention ! 1 photo per email. A total of 6 emails, including 5 for the field (environment and soil) and 1 passport photo or valid ID.
5.3.1.
4 (four) photos concern the environment => Take a photo facing North, then a photo facing South, then West, then East, from the center of the land you want to exploit for the culture of morels.
These photos allow you to see the state of the soil and its environment (Is the place sheltered from the wind? Is there a contradictory crop nearby?, etc.).
5.3.2.1 photo of your floor structure.
=> You will use a spade (fork) to remove a clod of earth without distorting the walls of the hole. (No use of shovel for example).
=> You will then take a photo of the hole.
5.3.3. To send the photos, you have to go to the home page of francemorilles.com, then at the top left of your screen, you click on "contact us".
https://francemorilles.com/fr/contact-us
• You must send the photos 1 by 1 (5 emails to send for each location).
• In the subject of the mail you choose from the drop-down menu "send photo license" (send_Photo_Licence).
• In the body of the text, you indicate for example, "Photo Nord".
• Then as an attachment you associate the North Photo.
5.3.4. Send a photo of yourself and a photo of a valid identity document (identity card or passport).
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When we note the signature of the electronic confidentiality agreement, and that you have opened an account on our website, and that you have sent your photos, we examine your candidacy for a license request.
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If there are no major objections, we accept your application. Otherwise, we justify our refusal which is not eliminatory. (For example dangerous agricultural cultivation practiced near your morel cultivation, … inadequate soil, inadequate water, … etc.).
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When your application is accepted, you will receive a confirmation email. This e-mail contains the coordinates of the referent who will accompany you for the choice of the material, before the purchase of your license.
It will be, in advance, Mr. Louis Gilbert.
You will also receive 2 pdf documents as an attachment: one to help you calculate the necessary surface of shade net + tarpaulin (Excel document) and the other to inform you and help you choose the shape of the tunnel or most suitable growing shelter for your pedoclimatic conditions.
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When your application is accepted, you can return to our site and access a set of information that is not accessible to you with your visitor status.
This information concerns the cultivation equipment and its price evaluations, the suppliers. The professional license purchase button becomes accessible.
You will also have access to download the culture book.
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When you have purchased your license, you have access to an additional layer of information including additional documentation and special recommendations and the possibility of ordering a license.
5.4. Carry out a soil analysis to be sent in addition to your file. This analysis is mandatory and must be provided to us as soon as possible (3 months maximum after acceptance of your application, ideally to be provided as soon as we have accepted your application after sending the photos in step 5.3.3.
AUREA, analysis laboratory is present in all departments of France.
5.5. Carry out a phytosanitary analysis on a sample of morels from the first harvest obtained.
• We will provide you with the list of items to look for for the phytosanitary analysis.
• This analysis is mandatory (to be provided during fruiting and no later than 2 months maximum after harvest).
6. Cultivation stages
• Keeping of a compulsory culture notebook + compulsory sending of photos at 2 key moments of the culture (monitoring of your culture + learning allowing a diagnosis and monitoring of the good development of the morels + methods for any problems to be managed.
• Soil preparation between the beginning of spring until the beginning of summer, then from September to October possible.
• Sowing end of October - beginning of November.
• Colonization of the land (compulsory sending of photos of the evolution of the colonization)
• Exit of the morels in the spring (sending of obligatory photos).
• The photos and the culture book are mandatory and are used to diagnose and monitor your culture.
• We will teach you how to diagnose.
• We discovered that it is possible to sow in spring and harvest the same spring (reserved for Year 2 and later licenses).
• We have discovered a way to check the vivacity of a morel seedling at any time – which is particularly useful for our licensees.
• We have also developed a method and a test, based on weight, to assess the quality of the production of each licensee.
• We have discovered how to fight springtails (among the main predators of the morel along with the slug and the mold Paecilomyces penicillatus)
• and we have created a trap for springtails.
7. Expected returns
• The breakeven point (break-even point) is 5 adult morels per m2.
• An adult morel is a morel measuring 15 to 20 cm on average, with an average weight of 35 to 50 grams (and more).
• A score of 10 morels per m2 is profitable.
• A score of 20 to 40 morels per m2 is possible, with our best licensees.
• The average score obtained by licensee is ± 300-350 grams per m2.
• In 2019, we added 6 new strains of morels to our catalog, 100% French.
• It is the fruit of 9 years of Research in species selection.
We have signed a research agreement with INRAe (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique et environnement) (the laboratory which created the mycorrhizae of truffles, yellow boletus and delicious milk cap) and we carry out work in molecular biology particularly with them and our integrated researcher.
• Each of these strains made it possible to obtain scores of 100 adult morels and more on surfaces of 2.5 m2.
• The best of the six new strains yielded a score of 185 adult morels on 2.5 m2.
• That is, a yield potential of ± 74 morels per m2.
• Assuming the highest average weight (50 grams per morel), the potential for this strain is 37 tonnes of morels per hectare.
• That's five to ten times more than our other strains.
• The 2019-2020 cultivation campaign allowed our licensees to test these new strains called "strains of the future".
• The 2020-2021 cultivation campaign is already showing the success of these new strains.
• 3 licensees obtain 80 to 100 adult morels/m2 in the south of France.
8. Cultivation limits
• Ground frozen at -10°C to a depth of 10 cm
• Temperature greater than or equal to 25°C
• Lasting gel impacting during the growth of morels
9. Main causes of failure of good yields of morel culture
No. 1 Predators
No. 2 Human Errors
No. 3 Major climatic accidents