Mana Mushrooms

SciZERINM is a group in New Mexico working with ZERI principles to improve their community and restore balance to their ecosystem.

SCIZERINM

Around May I disappeared off the face of the map in Boston and reappeared in Chicago. Since then, I've been busy organizing my life and setting up for the next stage of Mana Mushrooms: more tinkering. Most of this is happening in my garage, which I've retrofitted to be a lab space.

I have had two mushroom cultivators visit and give their stamps of approval and other input: Carmenza Jaramillo and Eric Rose. Carmenza works with a womens' cooperative in Colombia, and seeks markets in the US to distribute their fresh shiitake and oyster mushrooms. She and I discussed the possibilities and have moved a few steps closer to making this a reality for her. My goal is to match her with distributors here in Chicago and manage the relationship during the initial stages, provided the whole process can be carbon neutral or better. Their process is already a leapfrog improvement on traditional cultivation methods: they use spent coffee wastes from an adjacent dehydrated coffee manufacturer.

I work a couple days each week for Eric, who hails from Burlington, WI, where he has a wonderful farm: http://www.rivervalleykitchens.com. Among his other crops, he grows portabellas, cremini, white buttons, oysters, and shiitakes. In additon to the 2 markets I work for him, he maintains a presence at 25 others! In addition to learning about the utilization of other wastes and the closed-loop CIP cultivation process, Eric has also expressed interest in pursuing some of the co-planting strategies outlined in Paul Stamets' Mycelium Running.

Both of these people are doing great things and I look forward to helping their continued success.

Part of that effort will be continuing the research I began in Boston. Goose Island has agreed to provide me with sample waste byproduct fluids and spent grain and we continue to enjoy the support of an established relationship with PMOR - Thanks, David!

I know I've been quiet for a while... that's all changing. I will continue to blog here about Mana Mushrooms-related activity and about other stuff at http://www.2people.org. I also continue to work onhttp://www.lowellbellew.com and dot org. Thanks for your patience to those of you who have been waiting for news!

Last night I finished framing out two cultivation rooms in the garage. I'm excited and making great progress. Come along for the ride!!

CPF&A
Justin

Investigation of the potential use of spent Pleurotus ostreatus (wild type, originated from Picuris Pueblo, New Mexico) substrate in ruminant feed
by Milan Adamovic, PhD and Ivanka Milenkovic, PhD
Belgrade, Serbia

A study on using spent mushroom substrate as ruminant animal feed. SCIZERI New Mexico has a decent amount of information available on their site – take a look around!

Spent_Mushroom_Substrate_as_Cattle_Feed_Study

We will use waste coffee grounds, wood chips, sawdust, and brewer’s waste as substrate to cultivate exotic fresh mushrooms for sale. We will make smart use of our spent substrate, contracting where possible to do environmental restoration for a combination of revenue, tax benefits, and warm fuzzies (“PR”, for the soulless, business-focused individual). We have significant interest in medicinal and research spaces. We recognize the opportunity for revenue, public good, and personnel development in patents and intellectual property. We are excited about providing alternative, natural, affordable health supplements and medicinal mushrooms. Whether via direct consumption or processing by pharmaceutical specialists, we will indirectly serve the existing market for the established anti-tumor and anti-cancer properties of certain mushrooms and fungal derivatives (penicillin might be familiar to the reader). We are teaching ourselves about the opportunities mushroom cultivation offers in the context of sustainable agriculture, particularly when applied using appropriate technologies.

There are many exciting avenues to pursue with fungi. The most straightforward business opportunity is the cultivation of exotic mushrooms. We plan to use our business model to capitalize on this aspect of the mushroom market. Following success in this area, we will continue to innovate to transform more “waste” into material wealth, simultaneously working towards our fiscal as well as philanthropic goals. We are social entrepreneurs working to establish new best practices using cutting edge systems design in harmony with the principles of nature.

• In 1997, 133 farms in Pennsylvania produced $305M worth, or 370M pounds of Mushrooms which would have filled 37M, 10-pound crates at ~$9.96 per crate
• 100 Million year old Cordaceps mushroom was recently found preserved in amber, backdating the prior fossil record by 20 million years
• most of the US market is white button mushrooms
• Paul Stamets' research indicates there are synergies between Fungi and plants that yield improved yields when co-planting is implemented; can you say poly-culture?