A Hot Commodity

^{Photograph by Owen Franken/Corbis}

Whatever the French can do, Americans can do better. At least, that's what we Yankees like to tell ourselves. First, we toppled their dominance of fine art, then wine, and now ... truffles?

The exceptional little fungi, which grow underground on the roots of trees, have traditionally called France home. Farmers elsewhere have historically had trouble replicating the conditions truffles require to thrive.

It's well worth the effort -- the delicacy that fine dining establishments love to sprinkle on just about any dish can go for as much as $800 per pound.

Although Americans have tried for years to break up France's truffle monopoly (the North American Truffling Society was founded in 1978), the market for the mushrooms continues to be centered in Europe.

But if some North Carolina tobacco farmers have their way, that could soon change. While farmers in the northeastern U.S. have had limited success in harvesting truffles, the trade is catching on in other parts of the country, Bloomberg reports.

After a Tennessee farmer coddled his hazlenut tree roots for seven years and began selling his black truffles to American restaurants this year, other farmers in the Southeastern states took notice.

In North Carolina, 50 tobacco farmers used a $235,000 state grant to plant trees for truffle production. As more restaurants around the country ban smoking from their establishments, tobacco farmers hope to make up for lost business with the fungus.

And what do the French have to say about the potential New World market for their national delicacy? Naturally, they scoff.

"Who here is going to worry about these Tennessee truffles?" Gilbert Espenon, a truffle producer in southeastern France, told Bloomberg. "They may sell a few in America, but we hardly suffer from overproduction here. Maybe next century will be different, but for the moment we are far from overproduction."

by Megan Barnett