Mana Mushrooms

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.