America’s longstanding appetite for mushrooms has made Kennett Square and Chester County the celebrated Mushroom Capital of the World, but the $500 million industry with roots as far back as a century ago has also proved to be fertile soil for sprouting American dreams in the lives of the County’s newest of immigrants.

“I love the United States, a free country,” Martin Ortiz said of the opportunity to rise from a mushroom picker, packer and driver to a grower, employer and now five-year owner of Liberty Mushrooms, according to a recent feature article in The Morning Call.

His is merely the story of one of the freshest-made mushroom house owners to rise from an immigrant past; immigrants have traditionally flocked to Kennett Square for the labor-intensive, always-in-demand task of growing and hand-harvesting mushrooms.

Over the decades, others have paved the way to savory successes from nearly every shore of the nation.

“Mushrooming can trace its prosperity to generations of growers and pickers — Quaker, Irish, Italian, African-American, Puerto Rican, Mexican, and now a handful of Guatemalans and Hondurans — who start before dawn and often work 12-hour shifts,” the article stated.

The grandson of an Italian mushroom pioneer, Pietro Industries President Chris Alonzo has cultivated the four grow rooms in “Pietro” Alonzo Sr.’s day to 53 rooms today, making his mushroom operation the sixth-largest of Chester County’s 60.

He has also blended “lab science with modern techniques for temperature, humidity and carbon-dioxide control,” but his empire still relies on hard work, driven by the hope of a better life.

Read much more about the storied history of mushrooms in Kennett Square and the hands that have reaped opportunity from the dirt in The Morning Call here, and read previous Chesco Business Today coverage of Kennett Square as the mushroom capital of the country here.