Three of the four members of my household are a little bit obsessed with Clarkson’s Farm on Amazon. For those who are unfamiliar with the show, it follows the exploits of British media personality Jeremy Clarkson—formerly of such programs as Top Gear, which I also watched—as he tries his palm-on-face hand at farming. While we laugh at his general ineptitude, we do appreciate that he wants to do things “the right way” with ecological approaches like regenerative farming and wild farming. We also like that he attempts to use every bit of property at his disposal, such as an old WWII bunker to grow mushrooms. And while an old bunker might make for great reality TV, California-based M2 Ingredients felt it needed something a little more advanced for its mushrooms.
Founded in 2010, M2 Ingredients is a producer of certified organic, whole food mushroom powders with the full spectrum of bioactive compounds to support daily health, sports performance, recovery and cognition. Its growing and production operations are carried out at the company’s headquarters along the California coast in Vista, where a recent expansion allows M2 Ingredients to put all of its indoor farming and post-production processes under one roof—enabling true vertical integration and full chain of custody from spore to finished product.
M2 Ingredients' 155,000-sq.-ft. facility was designed to provide the ideal conditions for mushroom growth and for the company’s proprietary solid-state fermentation process. In this process, mushrooms are grown on organic oats—a healthy and clean food that is particularly suited to mushrooms. The oats are hydrated and conveyed into a specialty growing bag which is sealed after sterilization and planting. The mushroom mycelium enzymatically digests and converts the oats into mushroom tissue, and the entire bag is then dehydrated and milled into a powder, with the only waste being the growing bag.
The facility more than doubles M2 Ingredients’ existing capacity to meet the increasing consumer demand for functional mushrooms. This was achieved while reducing water consumption by 50% compared to the previous process by utilizing new hydration equipment. The hydration process is also now more consistent and allows for as-needed modifications to the growing substrate which could have an impact on the finished product. A steam system has been incorporated to provide heat for the autoclave and dehydrators.
Automation has been incorporated in a number of areas. For example, the loading, dicing, dehydrating and milling of grown mushrooms is completely automated, and the bulk bag-filling line is semi-automated. All of the processes have specific SOPs and “recipes” developed for each of the 10 different mushroom species grown in order to optimize the final product and to provide consistency from one batch to another.
Attention to Detail
“One of the most important benefits of this facility is the increased number of growing rooms for our mushrooms and our ability to change the growing conditions in each,” says Sandra Carter, founder and CEO of M2 Ingredients and Om Mushroom Superfood. “Our Park Center facility houses multiple growing rooms where the temperature, humidity, light and other environmental attributes can be dialed in to meet the specific needs of each mushroom species. Our in-house mycology team worked closely with our contractors and engineers to help develop the blue-print and approve the designs and equipment. The result is a facility that produces a large number of different species with an improved ability to monitor and control the important actives that contribute to the efficacy of our finished product.”
Carter says that harvest takes place once the yield and product composition requirements are met. M2 Ingredients’ proprietary dehydration process is designed to retain the natural bioactive compounds responsible for functionality in the finished product. Once that is completed, milling takes place to reduce the product particle size. Final product testing for both QA/QC attributes and active constituents specific to the various species of fungi is completed prior to packaging.
“Our DNA-identified mushroom strains are maintained in cryogenic storage and handled in our in-house mycology lab for expansion into production,” says Carter. “Our quality team manages environmental swabbing, moisture meters, CO2 testing in grow rooms, temperature controls and utilizes special instrumentation to measure particle size and moisture to ensure that we continue to meet our stringent quality standards. In addition, our team manages all organoleoptic evaluations and gluten testing in-house. We utilize third-party labs for specific testing of heavy metals, pathogens, yeast and mold, and other raw material measurements such as pesticides.”
Fungi are unique in the world of botanicals and other plant-based ingredients because they are bio-accumulators, which means they absorb what’s in their environment. This fact is why M2 Ingredients places such high standards on its environmental and quality controls.
“This is partly what makes fungi so amazing, but also why you must be careful consuming mushrooms without knowing where they are sourced and how they are grown,” Carter says. “Our state-of-the-art facility is BRCGS AA-rated—a global food safety standard which meets and exceeds the FDA requirements. We are also certified by the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Public Health and are 100% Organic Certified, Gluten Free and Kosher. Our controlled growing environment and clean substrate ensures no pollutants, pesticides or heavy metals will compromise the final product.”
Future Planning
The company has a longstanding relationship with a group of farmers in Canada from which the certified organic oat-growing substrate is sourced, and testing is done to ensure that the oats are free of pesticides and gluten with a low concentration of heavy metals.
Those suppliers are met with each year to go over forecasts for the following year, but M2 Ingredients keeps both key raw materials and finished product in stock at all times to respond quickly to customer needs. Since all of the company’s storage and shipping is done from the Vista location, an extensive amount of warehouse space was necessary.
Carter says that the floor plan and design of the facility allow for a future increase in both farming and production capacity. “Our major pieces of processing equipment are able to more than quadruple our output. Additional growing capacity can be added to meet capacity increases in a relatively short period of time.”
