I have read couple of articles lately about truffle hunters in Italy that use dogs that are coveted as much as good racehorses to find truffles. In some areas they use pigs but they are hard to handle at several hundred pounds and tend to eat the truffles if they possibly can get away with it.
The dogs are so expensive because certain kinds like white Italian truffles can go for $1000 - $5000 a pound rivalling saffron. Truffles can be fairly large too so finding them is more like a treasure hunt than collecting delicate spices.
The key point is that they supposedly cannot be cultivated? Why? Is one germinating (or whatever you can a young fungus starting) like hitting the lottery and it takes massive area?
What other desired plants, fungi, whatever living cannot be cultivated (zoo type animals excluded)?
There’s a few people over here who claim to have hit on the secret to cultivating truffles, and the documentary I stumbled on one afternoon about them seemed pretty credible.
Actually, in many cases, for all practical purposes, they do farm them. They don’t wander around in some random forest hoping their dogs will find some truffles. They own wooded areas they take great care of, where the soil is adequate for truffles, where they grow specific trees, etc… and where they’re sure they’ll find truffles every year.
I think the OP means why cant you just “plant” a whole bunch of them. From what little I know, it seems you need mature oak trees and very special soil that cant be easily duplicated. True?
Theres a whole lot of mystique bullshit surrounding truffles which nobody seems inclined to break. Truffle farmers profit from the rustic, elusive image. Journalists play it up for an easy story and tourism departments love the influx of rich americans looking for a “genuine” experience.
In truth, truffle farming is not much different from most other agricultual industries. There are a few small farmers but also large conglomoretes which do a large amount of the trade. They’re sold on sophisticated electronic exchanges, not in hamlet markets by an old man named Pierre. And yes, they are farmed pretty much.
The problem with truffle farming is that they can only grow on the roots of mature oak trees and oak trees don’t grow overnight. The majority of truffle farms were razed in WWII and it’s only now that they’ve really recovered enough to successfully grow truffles on an industrial scale. The method of innoculating truffle spores is well known although not as reliable as most would like it. It’s just a matter of building up the groves enough. In the 1920’s truffles were so common that they were cheaper than most wild mushrooms.
PS: This information applies mainly to the Perigold black truffle. I don’t know as much about the Alba white but I assume much is similar. It’s extraordinarly hard to get a non-romaticised account of the truffle industry.