North Carolina's ambition to become U.S. truffle capital encounters many obstacles

In a perfect world, the emerging North Carolina truffle industry would be able to help replace the hole left in the state's economy by the decline of tobacco, but the industry has encountered a plethora of problems. The black Perigold truffle can bring in $800 a pound, but the 80 orchards that make up the North Carolina sector of the industry produced less than 50 pounds during the last harvest, Kim Severson of The New York Times reports. (NYT photo by Travis Dove)

If the industry ever took hold in North Carolina the payoff could be huge. "Truffle orchards could help replace tobacco as a crop and preserve farmland," Severson writes. "Cooks who embrace local food could stop looking to Europe for their truffle fix." One acre of trees cultivated to grow black Preigold truffles can produce around 75 pounds of the crop. "Even at a wholesale price of about $600 a pound, a truffle farmer could earn $45,000 an acre," Severson writes.

Setting up a truffle orchard is anything but quick and easy. A sapling whose roots have been inoculated with truffle spores and costs around $20 can take five to 10 years to actually produce a truffle. Weather and disease also complicated the process. "The market is essentially like a Wild West operation, populated with cagey truffle hunters and savvy brokers who set the prices each season," Severson writes.

Other efforts to establish a truffle industry are underway in other states including California, Oregon and Tennessee, but soil conditions and moderate climate have led some to hope North Carolina could be the country's leader. For now the state's food community remain skeptical. Says Nancie McDermott, a Chapel Hill cookbook author and teacher: "Yeah, and we’ve learned to spin straw into gold, too." (Read more)