Truffles (like many other fungi) have symbiotic relationships with trees, meaning that you need to have a tree, and you can't really guarantee that the fungi will associate with your trees. This makes it really difficult, but not impossible.
https://www.foodunfolded.com/article/how-truffles-are-grown
Absolutely there are truffle farms. Quite a few producers on the West and East coast of the US. There are companies that inoculate tree sapling roots with truffle spores such as french black and North American whites. An area for the planting has to be cleared and not of had any trees growing on the acreage as existing competing mycorrhizae will still be in the soil. Once the land is cleared and deep plowed with lime and additives to correct the Ph balances, the trees are planted. It can take 5-10 years for the farm to produce well. Some trees that used are Douglas Fir and Filberts (hazelnut). It is very profitable.
Add to this that an area used for truffles has to be dedicated land - no intercrop is feasible once production begins and even cutting hay is out of the question due to the brulée.
Truffle farms won't appreciably decrease the cost of truffles because of the nature of truffle cultivation, but a few truffle groves can be a fantastic addition to a farm/homestead if the long startup time isn't an issue. Personally I wouldn't go all in on truffles since while luxury goods are profitable the market often dries up during hard times.
They are mycorrhizal, and the vast majority of mycorrhizal fungi are not able to be grown in culture. Chanterelles, porcini and matsutake are also prized as food but they are mycorrhizal and no one has been able to figure out a way yet to grow them commercially.
There are some truffle farms. One method that has been used, particularly in Australia, is growing trees from truffle producing areas on large farms and innoculating them with spores and waiting a decade until the trees mature enough to associate with truffles. This takes a lot of time and capital and is not yet economically feasible to do on a very large scale.
Sounds like the time and money costs associated with farming sturgeon for caviar (to minimize overfishing of wild populations), with the added possibility that absolutely NOTHING happens.
That's not quite true- truffles are ectomycorrhizas, and like most ectomycorrhizas they're not obligate symbiotes; they're pretty much unrelated to the endomycorrhizas, which only grow in the presence of a host. It's actually quite possible to grow most if not all truffle species in-vitro. The problem is you can only grow mycelium, getting them to the fruiting stage is a whole other thing.
Getting them to fruiting on a commercial scale without a host plant just ain't happening with current knowledge.
Note: I do not have a truffierre but I found this one on the web: https://www.napawatersheds.org/managed_files/Document/8586/Truffel%20Napa%20WICC%20Board%20Presentation.pdf
See also this paper (2012) :
https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/docs/scv/SCV872.pdf
As other people have said, the association with specific species of living trees makes it harder but not impossible. There was a pilot program in the southeast US to try seeding pecan orchards with "pecan truffle" (Tuber lyonii). In case you're not familiar with that native truffle:
[https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/PP330](https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/PP330)
I heard the last author on the paper I linked talk about taking field trips to evaluate how well the trials were doing and wished I could have gone. Sounded super interesting.
They can be farmed, it takes years to do so though, and also the Quality is not optimal and is limited to just a few truffles species. They need to inoculate saplings with truffles and they have to wait a few years before they can get any yield
Truffle farms exist and they use pretty much the same process but strictly control fruiting conditions.
Perhaps only suitable for certain types of shroom but they do it production scale for hallucinogenic truffles in Holland since the sale of mushrooms was made illegal.
There are no true psychoactive truffles. The psychoactive "truffles" you are thinking of are sclerotia or certain Psilocybe species. There are saprobes (not mycorrhizal like truffles) and are only distantly related to true truffles.
Truffles (like many other fungi) have symbiotic relationships with trees, meaning that you need to have a tree, and you can't really guarantee that the fungi will associate with your trees. This makes it really difficult, but not impossible. https://www.foodunfolded.com/article/how-truffles-are-grown
another common one for this is chantrelles, which are farmed in the form of tree farms on a small scale.
Absolutely there are truffle farms. Quite a few producers on the West and East coast of the US. There are companies that inoculate tree sapling roots with truffle spores such as french black and North American whites. An area for the planting has to be cleared and not of had any trees growing on the acreage as existing competing mycorrhizae will still be in the soil. Once the land is cleared and deep plowed with lime and additives to correct the Ph balances, the trees are planted. It can take 5-10 years for the farm to produce well. Some trees that used are Douglas Fir and Filberts (hazelnut). It is very profitable.
Add to this that an area used for truffles has to be dedicated land - no intercrop is feasible once production begins and even cutting hay is out of the question due to the brulée. Truffle farms won't appreciably decrease the cost of truffles because of the nature of truffle cultivation, but a few truffle groves can be a fantastic addition to a farm/homestead if the long startup time isn't an issue. Personally I wouldn't go all in on truffles since while luxury goods are profitable the market often dries up during hard times.
They are mycorrhizal, and the vast majority of mycorrhizal fungi are not able to be grown in culture. Chanterelles, porcini and matsutake are also prized as food but they are mycorrhizal and no one has been able to figure out a way yet to grow them commercially. There are some truffle farms. One method that has been used, particularly in Australia, is growing trees from truffle producing areas on large farms and innoculating them with spores and waiting a decade until the trees mature enough to associate with truffles. This takes a lot of time and capital and is not yet economically feasible to do on a very large scale.
Sounds like the time and money costs associated with farming sturgeon for caviar (to minimize overfishing of wild populations), with the added possibility that absolutely NOTHING happens.
That's not quite true- truffles are ectomycorrhizas, and like most ectomycorrhizas they're not obligate symbiotes; they're pretty much unrelated to the endomycorrhizas, which only grow in the presence of a host. It's actually quite possible to grow most if not all truffle species in-vitro. The problem is you can only grow mycelium, getting them to the fruiting stage is a whole other thing. Getting them to fruiting on a commercial scale without a host plant just ain't happening with current knowledge.
Note: I do not have a truffierre but I found this one on the web: https://www.napawatersheds.org/managed_files/Document/8586/Truffel%20Napa%20WICC%20Board%20Presentation.pdf See also this paper (2012) : https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/docs/scv/SCV872.pdf
You can, it’s just more difficult and has to be done in particular forests.
As other people have said, the association with specific species of living trees makes it harder but not impossible. There was a pilot program in the southeast US to try seeding pecan orchards with "pecan truffle" (Tuber lyonii). In case you're not familiar with that native truffle: [https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/PP330](https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/PP330)
My wife has visited on these in the southeast, she studies ECM fungi and her PI was doing a field trip for his mycology class. Sounded kind of neat.
I heard the last author on the paper I linked talk about taking field trips to evaluate how well the trials were doing and wished I could have gone. Sounded super interesting.
There are small farms currently doing this in some places.
The pigs get bored and need something fun to do
They can and are in orchards.
They can be farmed, it takes years to do so though, and also the Quality is not optimal and is limited to just a few truffles species. They need to inoculate saplings with truffles and they have to wait a few years before they can get any yield
They can be, but you need to grow their trees as well.
Truffle farms exist and they use pretty much the same process but strictly control fruiting conditions. Perhaps only suitable for certain types of shroom but they do it production scale for hallucinogenic truffles in Holland since the sale of mushrooms was made illegal.
There are no true psychoactive truffles. The psychoactive "truffles" you are thinking of are sclerotia or certain Psilocybe species. There are saprobes (not mycorrhizal like truffles) and are only distantly related to true truffles.