Mana Mushrooms

I hope you find these links to info useful. For the fans, I'll be snagging photos from the oft-mentioned flickr sets and adding explanations. Sign up for the newsletter for more info and breaking news before it hits the site!
Cheers.

Links:
CNN – Healthy Foods:
CNN on Healthful Foods

Bioluminescent fungi:
Bioluminescent fungi from Bioresurs
Bioluminescent fungi from Trek Nature
Bioluminescent fungi From Kiwi Pulse
Bioluminescent fungi from Pink Tentacle

Other fungi-related articles:
Washington Post Photographer-Mycophile
Electronic Gourmet
For what it’s worth, I had this idea when trying to figure the most space-efficient means to cultivate. The implications for transport-ready climate control may be daunting, especially considering conditions en-route. Just a consideration for the careful observer…
Mushrooms, trucks: grow ‘em on the way

And a quick quote of interest for avid Mana Mushrooms followers - accept no imitations

The Mushroom Growers’ Newsletter Vol XVI Number 11 March 2008
Front page:
Energy Impacts
“The Philadelphia Inquirer, February 17, carried an article highlighting the effects of energy costs on mushroom farms in the area. Chris Alonzo of Pietro Industries is quoted as saying: “My heating bills are up 50 percent over last year and up 100 percent over two years ago.”… Well, folks, we're facing increasing energy costs. There are many things we can complain about and even a few things we can DO about it. For example, if you are cultivating in a setting that allows you to pre-heat the water input to your system, perhaps with something as simple as locating a heliophilic water tank on your roof and gravity feeding to your boiler system, you will have increased energy costs if you need to pump the water to the unit, but reduced costs in heating the water for the boiler system. These nuances must be adapted based on custom calculations for your particular system design. If you live in Colorado or Nevada, where water is scarce and sunshine is bountiful, both factors will influence your system, in addition to the resources you have for infrastructure development, equipment, call it what you will...

Balancing scientific skepticism and entrepreneurial optimism is not easy. This challenge is manifest both in my representation/framing of the status of Mana Mushrooms and in my decisions about how and whether to continue.

Before these get lost in the update, I’d like to quickly cover a few bases for dedicated followers:

1) Equipment needs (autoclave):

In the interest of developing the model I have described here, I wish to stress the implications of the model on equipment needs. If CIP pasteurization can be replicated, we can eliminate the need for expensive equipment, specifically autoclaves or retorts, large, pressurized vessels that serve as pressure cookers, sterilizing massive amounts of substrate. The most exciting implication is for decentralized agriculture. By reducing barriers to entry, small regional cultivators could enter the market for fresh mushrooms. Farmers could supplement their income without significant investment in infrastructure. Depending on who you are, this is either exciting or disruptive / scary.

2) Photo issues; flickr now open.

Despite inclinations otherwise, I have decide to open the licensing and permissions of my Mana Mushrooms photo sets on flickr to the public. This represents a total of 1,641 photos at this writing, with probably a few hundred left to upload. Although these photos do not do justice to the lessons of the past 18 months to two years, they at least provide some insight and transparency for anyone attempting to replicate or learn from the research I have done.

All of the sets are now freely available to the public: lab notebooks, lab photos (both labs), miscellaneous, bag records, Petri dish records, pH methodology records, jar records, and location selection sets are included, explicitly. Searching for the tag “Mana Mushrooms” will reveal most photos, from whence patterns can be determined (chronology) hand appropriate research / learning can take place. I encourage you to contact me with any questions or to clarify anything about the processes and/or theory. I have not done as much with these photos as I had originally intended. I look forward to continually developing this resource, which shows a great deal of my research and processes, as well as innovations in great detail. Consistent with my behavior in other circles, I will publish these photos under an appropriate creative commons license.

There will be a meeting of the Board soon pursuant to this entry, to touch base with those Members who may not happen by the site on a regular basis or who have been interrupted from their regular participation due to travel and/or unforeseen circumstances.

Having just begun reading “Valuing Ecosystem Services,” a publication by the National Research Council, I have not yet built my own understanding and informed methodology for evaluating ecosystem service values. I know enough to understand there is a fair amount of subjectivity involved in the process of arriving at monetary values. I have long considered it an interesting proposition to measure the value of carbon sequestration in forests, currently being unsustainably logged, add these and other measurable values, and construct REITs to exploit economic opportunity more accurately determined through what I recently heard William McDonough describe as Triple Top Line analysis. This could conceivably also take the form of carbon offset nonprofit(s) that purchased lands from the selling entities for the cost of timber rights. I have developed a model on the website, www.thepoint.com, a site designed to facilitate collaborative action, to the end of establishing such a REIT. Please visit the site and join the campaign!

The lands mentioned in a recent article (“Let’s Face the Real Costs of Logging” The Register-Guard Monday January 28, 2008 by Bill Barton) include 600,000 acres of Pacific Northwest in Lane county owned by big timber interests and taxed at an average rate of $3.40 per acre. This means that the ongoing costs must be offset by income from the land if the venture is to be thrivable, to use a term coined by a friend: Jean Russell, in favor of something more hopeful than the now cliché ‘sustainable’. Annual revenues or non-profit input must be $2,040,000 (just to pay the taxes on the land, unless we can also petition for a tax break of some sort). By the time this venture is constructed, I anticipate that $1,020,000 is a more reasonable goal:

. Much of what remains is likely to have been logged by the time we ‘get there’

. From a real estate economics perspective, I imagine that there will be push-back as the goal is neared, and that acquiring more than 50% of the current parcels would attract undue attention and invite unwelcome pricing implications as big timber began to perceive a market shift. It seems to me that it would be wise to acquire large, contiguous parcels from major shareowners for this purpose.

Back to Mana Mushrooms and the state of affairs…

I will be discontinuing my professional approach and continuing research as a hobby, without any commitment to release further information to the public or pursue the business opportunities represented throughout this site or those discussed during Board meetings. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars of my own money to approach this green business opportunity in a serious and professional manner.

Dedicated research efforts and significant investment in professional grade equipment, training, and facilities has not been enough to replicate the opportunity alluded to by ZERI founder Gunter Pauli. Neither is it my conclusion that any of the breweries purported to have implemented a CIP methodology have ever succeeded in implementation. This is of particular interest to any would-be mushroom cultivators aspiring to zero emissions and a reduced footprint for agriculture. It is also of interest to anyone interested in implementing an Integrated Farming and Waste Management System that includes a mushroom cultivation component.

Despite generous participation of businesses, in particular Goose Island Brewing and PMOR, here in Chicago, as well as cooperation and assistance from John Harvard’s Brewery and Buzzard’s Bay Brewery, I have been unable to cultivate mushrooms with a high enough biological efficiency and consistency to make it a fiscally responsible investment opportunity.

My goal was to create a profitable business at the intersection of sustainable agriculture and industrial symbiosis. I have not reached the goal in a timeframe that is suitable for my risk tolerance as a bootstrapped entrepreneur and will therefore discontinue my aggressive pursuit of this goal at this time. I hereby formally thank all those who have been a part of my life over the past two years. I know that my decisions have been heavily influenced by Mana Mushrooms and that this has not always been easy. Thank you all for your support, in its various forms.

The obligatory "tear sheet"...

In the face of upload challenges, I've copied and pasted the text here. I'll let this slide down the weight-list, so as not to occupy the page space inefficiently until such time as I can resolve the upload issues, which also extend to not yet being able to upload tif files, as those may be more universally platform-friendly...

Mana Mushrooms (pronounced “mahna”, a term that means "vital life force" among many other things) embodies cutting edge systems design. The dominant market players in the US domestic mushroom business produce mostly white button mushrooms (90%+ of the market) and other agaric varieties such as crimini and portabello. We do not intend to compete with these giant “big five” firms, but to attack the niche market of exotic edible mushrooms including king oyster, shiitake, enoki, and others, perhaps including reishi in the medicinal space.

Further insulating Mana Mushrooms from direct competition from better capitalized market players is the enormous sunk infrastructure cost for cultivating agaric varieties of mushrooms: huge concrete bunkers, windrow turners, and manure cultivation, which we’re not too fond of, either.
Using a ZERI (Zero Emissions Research and Initiatives) - inspired model of systems design, Mana Mushrooms will use byproducts of production from eco-industrial partners as inputs. One such example is Westport Rivers Winery and Buzzard’s Bay Brewery, near New Bedford, MA. In addition to using the spent grain from the brewing process, we will re-use the CIP or Cleaning-In-Process, food grade chemicals used in the brewing process to sterilize our mushroom substrate. By doing so, we will reduce costs of production; in traditional models, sterilization of substrate is achieved through the use of fossil fuel inputs to heat-sterilize material inputs. Another input is grass clippings from the Marion Institute, who will also serve as a strategic partner. These clippings have been grown without chemicals or pesticides.

Mana Mushrooms intends to generate no deleterious byproducts. When this is not possible, we will innovate to develop new best practices. We are pursuing opportunities to increase our competitive advantages by considering such issues as extended producer responsibility. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is part of our business mantra.

We do not seek to be proprietary in all of our processes and innovations, in particular those that provide for the spread of sustainable agriculture. We believe that widespread adoption of such processes is not something to be protected from would-be infringers; it is important that these methods be adopted, uncompromised. The founders of Mana Mushrooms draw inspiration from thought leaders in this space, as well as well-established scientists with a firm understanding of the canonical literature Limits to Growth and Natural Capitalism, as well as Let My People Go Surfing and Cradle to Cradle are good examples of inspirational literature.

Mana Mushrooms is also pursuing opportunities to provide services to industry, large and small. For more details, including sources of information and inspiration, please visit our website at manamushrooms.com

This summary provides a relatively complete description of what I am trying to do with this site and the business.

While I do this series of entries on Grant sources and funding, I'd like to mention WHY I haven't gone on to pursue most of these funding resources: In order to get funding in this way, one has to subject themself to the whims of the funding organization. For grants, this may be as innocuous as waiting...* For Venture Capital,
it may be more sinister; if a VC wants someone on your Board and that someone is neither a team player nor has any idea of what you're trying to do, it may present a very challenging situation. This does not even consider, in the realm of social entrepreneurs, whether the person shares your social mission. If, to use an extreme example, your funder is pro-choice and you are pro-life, how will you reconcile if you mission is to bring traditional
Catholic values to rural peoples and the funder sees contraception as a more effective path?

Moving away from that hot button issue...

I had a conversation with Mary, who works with Goose Island. Here are my notes (roughly) from our call.
I take responsibility for any inaccuracy / misrepresentation.

Brewers add water to malt to reduce the pH. Acid loving / tolerant microorganisms are still present in the brewers grains at this point.

She suggested that drying the grains or heating them would be the best way to sterilize them. To her credit and
to the credibility of the conversation, she acknowledged that sterilization was not really the correct term,
since some microorganisms will be present no matter what precautions are taken, but that most people don't
like to think about that. Alternatively, she offered a conversation with their malt chemist regarding the theory of raising the pH to make a hostile environment for any remaining microorganisms. The timing is tough, since it is the holiday season, but I will take her up on this in the new year.

She also suggested trying the paracetic acid, which has a pH of about 2.5, especially since it breaks down to H2O and CO2 and even qualifies for organic food standards.

I tried to piece together which fluids I have already tested and am not certain. They have paracetic, caustic, and phosphoric.

I will run tests with each to see what I can learn. She also offered some test plates that I might use to help the testing process, which would be helpful in determining which organisms might be surviving the sterilization, regardless of which process is being used.