Mana Mushrooms

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.

Of significant importance in our approach is the holistic, system methodology that differentiates us from conventional growers. Rather than the traditional linear model, which encourages consumption of “resources” and generation of “wastes”, we ask the innovative question, inspired by nature: “For what are inputs and outputs of any given system useful?” In nature, there is no waste. All natural outputs are inputs for another system. Humankind is unique in our generation of wastes that do not fit into natural systems. Part of our business model integrates this approach into industrial partnerships to reveal opportunities, reducing waste and providing us with inputs. This model reduces our costs of production and is an example of differentiation and competitive advantage.

Spent mushroom substrate (a byproduct/output) can be sold to cattle and hog farms. It is a high protein/nutrient feed with conversion rates of 5:1 for beef and 7:1 for pork (5 pounds of SMS yield 1 pound of beef). Dairy farms seek this source of high protein feed additive, using it as a component for their total mixed ration at up to 18% of dry matter content. It is instructive to contrast with the brewery output of spent grain, which becomes an input for Mana Mushrooms. In the current model, spent grain is sold to farmers or given away in trade for the cost of hauling it. This provides the farmer with a component for their TMR. This component, however, is high in lignocellulose, which is difficult for the cattle to digest. Consequently, there is an undesirable increase in greenhouse gas (methane) emissions indicative of system imbalance. By inserting Mana Mushrooms’ process between the brewers and the farmers, everyone wins. The brewers still get their byproduct removed, the farmers get a higher protein and more easily digested component for the TMR, and Mana Mushrooms gets a material to use in its cultivation process. The environment gets a “win” as well: reduced greenhouse gas emissions. These represent yet another revenue stream in the form carbon credits. On the local scale, carbon offsets may not be a significant revenue source. Mana Mushrooms is actively engaged with a firm that produces 600 million tons of spent grain per year to develop improved systems to recapture value through creative partnerships. The downstream implications for emissions reductions and associated revenues are promising.

It is critically important to remember that breweries are only one example of industrial partnerships that can yield mutual benefits for all involved parties.

Mana Mushrooms grows edible mushrooms using predominantly waste byproducts from existing business and municipal entities. We take a novel approach, using materials like woodchips from municipal chipping and wood milling operations, spent brewer’s grain, coffee grounds, and other organic materials with valuable biomass like organically grown grass. We extract our valuable crop before passing on the remaining SMS (spent mushroom substrate), which becomes another source of revenue. We are actively developing industrial partnerships to recapture wastes from industrial processes, safely recapturing value that was previously discarded or unavailable for exploitation. Our goal with industrial ecological systems design is to generate profit and reduce the footprint of our industrial partners.

Our substrates (mushroom food) are abundant and omnipresent in the form of spent grain from breweries, wood chips and other byproducts from industrial processes, other wood wastes (chipped, cleared brush and trees), coffee grounds, etc. Similar models have been implemented in Belgium, Tanzania, and South Africa using brewery waste and water hyacinth (an invasive plant species).

We convert 'wastes' into revenue streams. This is consistent with the ecosystemic niche of Fungi - one of the five kingdoms of life on earth: agricultural recyclers. Transportation of materials is reduced (removed) as a cost (and market externality) by co-location with industrial partners. For example, we grow mushrooms on spent brewer’s grains at Buzzard’s Bay Brewery in Westport, MA. We then take the spent mushroom substrate and generate more revenue with it as cattle feed, vermicompost, soil amendments, and environmental restoration services and other ecosystem services. These and other revenue streams will have thereby been generated from what was originally a greenhouse gas producing cattle feed. Consequently, the cattle get a higher protein and nutrient TMR (Total Mixed Ration).

Another significant revenue opportunity is the sale of dried mushrooms. Dried mushrooms have a host of benefits including reduced shipping and packaging costs and greatly increased shelf life. We have a design in mind (Intellectual property) to enter this market which will mitigate the risk to investors while maintaining our model of reduced environmental footprint coinciding with competitive advantage. Members of the development team have experience with appropriate technology and are knowledgeable and familiar enough to implement modified design structures for this use immediately.