While studying in the brewmaster program at Olds College in 2015, Alex Villeneuve noticed an overlooked opportunity: spent barley, a byproduct of the brewing process, which was being routinely discarded in significant quantities.
Alex began cultivating mushrooms in a campus closet, using Ziplock bags and spent barley as a growing medium. What started as an experiment soon demonstrated considerable success. Over time, he refined his process, founded Ceres Solutions, and developed a plan to transform agricultural waste into high-value, high-demand products.
“When I saw all this really high-quality grain just being shovelled into bins and taken off to the landfill, it really seemed like we were leaving a lot of value on the table,” Villeneuve said. “There’s still a lot of proteins and sugars and minerals in that grain, and it seemed like a shame to just be throwing it away.”
With a $460,000 investment through ERA’s Food, Farming, and Forestry Challenge in 2021, Ceres piloted a system to repurpose these byproducts into a substrate for growing specialty mushrooms. They discovered that the longer the mushroom roots used the spent grain, the higher the protein content became. This enriched byproduct could then be transformed into high-quality cattle feed, providing a sustainable alternative for local ranchers.
The first commercial demonstration of Ceres’ system was achieved by project completion in 2024, with plans to further increase mushroom production for export. Ceres was able to supply the Alberta market with high-quality, affordable specialty mushrooms and add value to local biomass byproducts.
“It’s very similar to high-quality silage. It really lends itself well to either replacing the silage or a lower-quality forage in a diet,” said Villeneuve. “The protein is quite good, and since it’s a byproduct of our farm that runs 365 days of the year, we’re going to have a very consistent high-quality output every year.”
Following the completion of its ERA-funded project in 2024, Ceres plans to expand its operations by exploring new value-added products while scaling its substrate-processing technology for international exports. The company’s 6,000-foot facility, known as Crossfield Farm near Calgary, currently produces 4,000 pounds of gourmet mushrooms weekly but aims to boost production to more than 10,000 pounds.
“We started out looking for a way to upcycle the waste, and now we’ve got a few steps more in our process,” Villeneuve said. “We’re going to keep looking at ways to take the things that aren’t being used efficiently and create another stream of value for the company and for the region.”