Highline Mushrooms, the world’s largest organic mushroom grower, and one of the only commercial mushroom growers in Alberta, needs more water, and lots of it.
The Highline Mushroom facility is just outside of Crossfield. It produces about 10 million lbs. of mushrooms a year and employs 24 people. The 148 acre facility also consumes approximately 53,000 cubic metres of water a year, or about 1,200 cubic metres a week.
Representatives from the company came to Rocky View County's (RVC) Public Presentation Committee April 17 with a request that is vital to the continuation of their business.
The Highline facility was not constructed with a connection to a water main, forcing the company to move six to 10 tanker trucks of water a day.
Highline Mushrooms CEO Jose Cambon, said that when the company was building their facility, they believed some sort of access to water would be made available to them.
“Highline invested $35 million on the understanding, or misunderstanding, that water would be coming at some stage,” said Cambon. Highline presented information to the committee that mentioned they are currently in the process of drilling a test well on their site to check for a potential water well availability.
According to Highline’s presentation, the high-level cost estimate for constructing a water main would cost up to $5.5 million, a number that Cambon said is far too high for Highline to fund easily by itself.
As part of Highline’s ask to RVC, which included help in getting the company an access to water, Cambon outlined the economic and agricultural benefits that Highline adds to the County.
“We harvest almost three million mushrooms a week by hand,” Cambon said. “We think we can add lots of value to the region.”
Cambon added that Highline uses recycled chicken manure from nearby farms as a part of their compost process.
“We feel this type of agriculture is going to be fundamental for communities to be involved in,” he said.
Since 2020, Highline has partnered with a robotics company that manufactures fully autonomous, vision-guided mushroom harvesting robots. In 2024, the robots took to the Highline farms for the first time, making the company the first grower in the world to utilize robotic mushroom pickers.
Cambon claimed that the robots greatly reduced the time it takes to train a human mushroom picker, which according to Cambon takes three months due to the highly technical orientation of commercial mushroom picking.
Cambon said that the work the company has put in to get water to their facility has included consultations with the Alberta Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, the Mountain View Regional Water Service Commission, and the Consulate General of Japan in Calgary, all of which led to the company presenting to the County’s Public Presentation Committee on April 17.
The committee members seemed interested in hearing out Highline’s request for water access, but no official direction was given.
It may return to a future council meeting for additional dialogue between Highline and County officials.