Possibly - but pigs are fairly hardy, and have very few dietary limitations, so you can often buy very cheap feed, or just let them forage.
Basically - outside of the cost of the land, pork is really cheap to raise, even for small farmers. As low as $0.64/lb for commercial production, and around $2.50/lb for small farmers and families.
Current mushroom production methods are FAR more expensive (just the spore cost can be $0.50 to $1.00 per lb).
This might scale to make it cheaper, but I'd be pretty surprised. Mushrooms require much more intensive care and handling.
Depending on the species used mushrooms can be cultivated very, very, very cheaply. You only have to look at the average cost of agaricus mushroom per lb ($1.5 - $2) wholesale vs processed whole pork per lb ($6- $7) wholesale to see that. Mushrooms also have a much shorter supply chain in terms of inputs and much less water input.
Creating more spores from mushrooms is incredibly easy and cost effective, so is creating liquid culture which is a process that allows you to create huge amounts of mycelial growing base you can then introduce to more growth medium(corn syrup and water that's been sterilized).
The entire reason the kingdom funga exists is to eat waste. You may have heard that dead trees piled up for millions of years before fungi came along, whereafter they carved a new niche for themselves in the ecosystem and consumed the detritus. Life finds a way ;)
funga is the name of the kingdom, a recent change to align with the now-accepted designations flora and fauna (and of course bacteria and protista). Fungi is the plural when referring to organisms (i.e., instances), I am rather referring to the kingdom (i.e., the category).
Thanks for the clarification. It’s still sounding ugly, like if someone decided that the kingdom of mugroomz would include multiple mushrooms, but I guess it’s too late to complain
Basically - outside of the cost of the land, pork is really cheap to raise, even for small farmers. As low as $0.64/lb for commercial production, and around $2.50/lb for small farmers and families.
Current mushroom production methods are FAR more expensive (just the spore cost can be $0.50 to $1.00 per lb).
This might scale to make it cheaper, but I'd be pretty surprised. Mushrooms require much more intensive care and handling.