Recently, these unassuming spaces are cultivating a new trend in home-grown businesses. Armed with little more than ingenuity and entrepreneurial drive, microgreen growers are transforming the unused corners of their dwellings into profitable farming operations.

Using minimal inputs and resources such as water, energy and land, microgreens can offer a consistent and hyperlocal source of fresh, nutrient-dense produce, especially in urban settings. And done right, they allow farmers to reap a meaningful livelihood—an important consideration in a profession known for grueling demands and razor-thin margins.

“It’s a great gateway crop,” says Don DiLillo, owner of Finest Foods in Huntington, New York, for ushering in a new breed of novice farmers. After finishing college seven years ago, the “video game-playing, beer-drinking kid” dusted off a section of his parents’ Long Island cellar to launch his micro farm. With $3,000 allocated for equipment and many hours spent watching YouTube tutorials, he built a steady farmers market following, selling tender, week-old pea, sunflower, radish and broccoli sprouts.

Now 27, DiLillo has seen his business blossom. After expanding to a vacant neighborhood deli in 2019, he’s since set up shop in his grandparents’ former home, which he shares with his girlfriend and fellow farmer, Alissa Yasinsky. The 800-square-foot basement and garage provide ample space for germination, cultivation and packaging, he says, with the vertical shelf configuration leaving plenty of room to grow. “I could triple [production] and still be able to operate it from my home,” says DiLillo.

Given the cost of Long Island real estate, the space efficiency is “one of the great benefits of [farming] microgreens,” says DiLillo. Plus, he adds, “I can do farm chores in my pajamas.”

Photography submitted by Don DiLillo, Finest Foods.

Small footprint, big potential

“Microgreens” is a term used to describe the tender, edible seedlings of various herbs, vegetables and grains typically seeded in shallow, soil-filled trays, grown under natural or artificial light, then harvested within two weeks of germination. Packed with vivid colors, a fresh crunch and intense flavors that can range from sweet to peppery, San Francisco chefs popularized them in the 1980s to liven up fancy dishes.

Although the specialty greens have maintained their trendy reputation, research has also shed light on their health benefits, finding that the nutrient density of sprouts is often higher than that of mature plants. And because they grow quickly with minimal resources—and without herbicides or pesticides—scientists point to their potential to help bolster nutritional security, hedge against disruptions in the food supply chain and even generate fresh produce on long-term space missions.

Retired army veteran Gerry Mateo started farming microgreens in the garage of his Bakersfield, California home as a way to combat anxiety and depression. It’s proven to be a calming and grounding endeavor, he says, and it has also helped improve his diet. 

When he launched FilAm Vets Hydroponics Farm in 2021, Mateo was overweight and suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes, he says. But a daily dose of his own fresh produce has made him much healthier and lowered his cholesterol. “You can only eat lettuce in a salad or sandwich,” he says. Microgreens are highly versatile, pairing well with—but not overpowering—various dishes and blending easily into smoothies.

Mateo, who also farms leafy vegetables such as basil, kale and arugula hydroponically, was surprised to find high demand for his produce—especially given his Central Valley location. Yet with California’s agricultural hub dominated by large-scale farms and commodity crops, he’s found a comfortable niche at his local farmers market.

Customers now include nearby restaurants, and with business booming, he’s put a 10-by-20-foot greenhouse in the backyard and hopes to upgrade to a larger vertical farming structure in the near future. With arable land at a premium—urban sprawl is a growing threat to the farming region—“I’m lucky to have a big yard,” says Mateo. 

Over the last decade, the appeal of consistent and efficient crop production—made increasingly so by precision technology, AI platforms and data analytics—has spurred a boom in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). By regulating temperature, humidity and light in an enclosed space, CEA structures, which can include everything from tunnel houses to warehouses, can pump out a reliable stream of fresh produce regardless of season, weather or location, often using far less water, soil and inputs than traditional farming.

Despite promises of fortifying and climate-proofing local food production, however, not everybody is convinced about the sustainability of CEA, particularly at scale. Critics equate large ventures to indoor agribusiness: Often backed by companies and private investors with little experience in commercial agriculture, some factory-like facilities can span multiple acres and consume vast amounts of energy. Opponents also question the taste, nutritional value and long-term health implications of crops grown in this artificial setting.

Photography submitted by Don DiLillo, Finest Foods.

But for micro producers, their environmental impacts match their minimal footprint, says DiLillo, of Finest Foods. His energy costs, for instance, are nominal: Although New York ranks among the most expensive states for electricity, his monthly bill, which covers both home and farm, hovers around $300 in the winter and doubles in the summer with air conditioning—in line with the national household average of $430 a month. And with weekly deliveries contained in a 20-mile radius, his transport footprint is super light, he notes.

DiLillo has also focused on eliminating the sore spot of retail microgreens: plastic packaging. He dropped single-use clamshell boxes for a biodegradable and compostable, plant-based alternative, and he even closed his health food store accounts, which require water-resistant adhesive labels. His subscription-based residential customers and chefs don’t miss the vinyl stickers, he says, because “they know exactly what they’re getting every week.”

As for the artificial environment, “I’m not here to tell you that [LED] lights are better than the sun,” says DiLillo. Yet, “the beauty of microgreens comes from the seeds,” he adds, noting that the just-germinated sprouts retain much of their seminal nutrients, thriving under artificial light in the short duration before harvest.

Microgreens at Kupu Place. Photography by author.

The local edge

Hawaii’s year-round temperate climate, however, is ideal for farming microgreens outdoors. Cousins Anthony Mau and Steven Yee established Kupu Place in 2017 as a side gig in the backyard of their family home in Honolulu. (Kupu is Hawaiian for sprout; the property is located on Kupu Place.) Given the sliver of land—about a 16th of an acre—the duo initially had doubts about the business’ profitability. But armed with advanced degrees in agricultural sciences, they started with aquaponics, growing leafy vegetables in tilapia tanks, adding hydroponically grown edible flowers before expanding to microgreens.

“Per square foot, it’s obvious which one is more profitable,” says Mau.

As Kupu’s revenues moved into the black, the space limitations became more apparent. Two years ago, after a grueling search in Oahu’s tight real estate market, the cousins landed on a residential property in Kahaluu, on the island’s windward coast. Once home to orchid farms, the neighborhood, which lies about half an hour from downtown Honolulu, still retains a rural air, complete with roaming chickens, despite an influx of residential development. Because the sellers wanted to keep the land productive, Mau thinks it made their offer attractive.

The 1.5-acre lot has ample space for the growing business. Along with the home that Mau and his wife share with Yee (luckily, “it wasn’t a tear-down,” says Mau), there’s a storage room with refrigerators, sinks and germination shelves, while the yard has two 20-by-40-foot shade houses with room for another. Naturally vented and sunlit, the wooden structures display a colorful patchwork of microgreens in local flavors such as red shiso, lemon balm and tatsoi.

Although Kupu’s competition comes from California, on-island production gives the business a tremendous edge, says Mau. Along with lead times of hours instead of weeks, they’re able to accommodate last-minute orders and high levels of customization. And with nearly 90 percent of Hawaii’s food consumption reliant on imports, any boost in homegrown crops for the local market benefits the state’s food security, says Mau.

Since the move, Kupu has become Mau’s full-time endeavor (Yee still runs his landscaping company), and, at 32, he’s in it for the long haul. Microgreen farming is particularly suited to career longevity, he says, as farming at waist height is simply more manageable.

Kaʻinapu Cavasso agrees. One of Kupu’s two employees, she started orchard farming at 16. But the constant repetition of bending down to plant, weed and set up irrigation and looking up to prune trees and harvest fruit became taxing, she says. Now 20, her new job is “a lot more mellow, ergonomic and efficient,” she says. “I love farming…so I hope to [continue] this for a long time.”

The post Cultivating Profits in a Compact Crop appeared first on Modern Farmer.

It has to be flavorful. It should become gooey and stringy when melted. It needs to perfectly balance an acidic tomato sauce.

But does it have to be made from animal dairy?

The cheese innovators over at New Culture would say no. Their first product, a mozzarella cheese created with casein protein made through precision fermentation—that is to say, not from a cow—is launching in Nancy Silverton’s Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles in 2024. Silverton and Pizzeria Mozza have received numerous accolades over the years, including the 2014 James Beard Foundation Award for Outstanding Chef. 

Precision fermentation is the process of engineering microbes to make something specific during fermentation. Inja Radman, co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of New Culture, says its microbes are experts at making casein, a protein found in mammalian milk that’s full of nutrients for animal offspring. It also happens to be the protein that gives cheese, well, its cheesiness. The melt, chew, crumble and ooze of cheese are all thanks to casein.

“Everything we know and love about cheese really comes from casein,” says Radman. By making milk protein without milk, Radman and the others at New Culture are making “cow cheese without the cow.”

New Culture is part of a wave of scientists and innovators asking how the future of cheese will look. Some, like New Culture, aim to reduce or eliminate the dairy component altogether, while others seek to improve the dairy cheese process overall using unexpected allies. 

Microbe-made casein protein. (Image courtesy of New Culture)

Sea cheese

One day, you might be able to buy cheese made with help from an unlikely source: seaweed.

A critical first step in making cheese is coagulating milk. In traditional cheese-making, this happens thanks to rennet, an enzyme derived from calf stomachs. But there’s not enough rennet to meet the global demand for cheese, so most cheeses in US commercial markets are made using alternatives. These alternatives have their own shortcomings, says Jian Zhao, associate professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at the University of New South Wales and one of the researchers looking for rennet alternatives. For example, the taste doesn’t quite hold up to traditional cheese. 

 “There is a continued need for the industry to explore new alternatives,” says Zhao.

In a recent research project, Zhao and his team turned to the ocean to look for an enzyme that could interact with milk similarly to rennet—coagulating it within an efficient timeline. They weren’t the first to consider the ocean as a potential provenance for this enzyme, but they took the research furthest, isolating a particular species of seaweed called Gracilaria edulis and actually using it to make cheese.

Gracilaria. (Photo: pokku/Shutterstock)

Of the seven seaweed species they tested, G. edulis was the only one to quickly coagulate cheese. The researchers used it to make two cheeses, an aged cheese similar to cheddar and a fresh one more like ricotta, and they were given to a taste-testing panel.

The cheddar was too bitter, says Zhao. But the ricotta? “The quality is quite good,” he says.

You won’t see seaweed ricotta in stores just yet. More research needs to be done to show that seaweed enzyme cheese can produce a product on par with other cheeses. Then, says Zhao, they’d need adventurous cheesemakers to start trying it out.

When it comes to making “sea cheese,” as Zhao calls it, it’s more than likely there are other enzymes in the ocean waiting to be identified. 

“I’m pretty confident there are more species which will have the ability to coagulate milk,” says Zhao. “And they potentially can do a better job than Gracilaria.”

Hybrid cheeses split the difference

Clara Talens, senior researcher at AZTI, a Spanish research center that focuses in part on food innovation, sees a future for hybrid cheese.

Hybrid cheese—a milk-based cheese supplemented with plant-based ingredients—can help ease the transition toward more plant-based products, says Talens. The presence of milk makes the cheese’s taste and texture familiar to consumers, but the environmental impact is lower because it uses less dairy. Cheese has a hefty environmental footprint, due to the land use and greenhouse gas emissions associated with dairy farming. 

“If we keep feeding our world with animal-derived proteins at the pace we are now, it’s not possible to feed us all,” says Talens. That doesn’t mean eating animal protein is inherently bad, she says, just that the rate is unsustainable. 

Added proteins can come from sources such as insects or pulses such as chickpeas. In a recent study, Talens and her team used insect flour made of mealworm larvae and flour made of faba beans (also sometimes called fava or broad beans). These ingredients were chosen because they are high in protein but are not as resource-intensive to cultivate.

“It’s a matter of the resources needed to produce a kilogram of protein,” says Talens.

Faba beans. (Photography by @boulham/Shutterstock.)

Talens analyzed different ratios of milk protein to faba bean protein to insect protein. The researchers looked to both dairy cheese and plant-based cheese as reference points, analyzing the resulting mixtures for their nutritional value, taste and texture. 

The researchers found that the texture of the faba bean was good, especially when combined with the milk protein. The insect protein did not contribute well to structure, but it gave the cheese an umami-like taste similar to certain aged cheeses.

Another group of researchers from Denmark also looked at the potential for incorporating plant proteins to make hybrid cheeses, and concluded that this area shows great potential—once cheeses are developed that offer satisfactory taste and texture. And in the US in 2021, cheese company The Laughing Cow tried out the concept by releasing hybrid spreadable cheeses that included lentils, red beans and chickpeas.

Still, says Talens, instead of striving to create direct imitations of traditional cheese, maybe another mindset shift is in order.

“We should open our minds and accept all the flavors and other tastes that are produced by using other raw materials,” says Talens. “But still, that’s the most difficult part. With the hybrids, maybe we are a bit closer to acceptance.”

Cheese for everyone

Once the microbes at New Culture make casein, it’s combined with plant-based fats and other ingredients and made into cheese using a similar process to standard cheesemaking, thanks to the fact that the microbially made casein performs the same as casein from cow milk.

“It’s identical to casein we would get from milk,” says Radman. There just wasn’t an animal involved. 

New Culture mozzarella. (Image courtesy of New Culture)

Radman says there was a reason they chose to make mozzarella as their first product. Pizza is everywhere in the US, and pizza is made with mozzarella. New Culture doesn’t just want to market to vegans. 

“This is a cheese for everyone,” says Radman. 

And since it’s a pizza cheese, she adds that it’s something that people can share without anyone in a group compromising on values or taste. “That means this is a cheese that brings people together.”

The post Microbes, Mealworms and Seaweed Could Inform the Future of Cheese appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Beyond the fields of berries, grass seed, and wheat at Jacque Duyck Jones’s farm in Oregon, she can see distant plumes of exhaust spewing from factories in Hillsboro, just outside Portland. Years ago, Jones and her family didn’t worry much about industry creeping closer to their land. A 50-year-old state law that restricts urban growth, rare in the United States, kept smokestacks and strip malls away.

But a national push to make semiconductors — the microchips that help power modern electronics, from dishwashers to electric vehicles — has prompted Oregon lawmakers to lift some of those restrictions. Keen to tap into $52 billion that Congress earmarked last year in the CHIPS and Science Act, Oregon legislators last week passed a bipartisan bill aimed at enticing chip manufacturers to set up shop in the state, in part by allowing them to convert some of the country’s richest farmland into factories. The bill gives Governor Tina Kotek, a Democrat, authority through the end of next year to extend urban development boundaries, a process currently subject to appeals that can be drawn out for years.

“That’s like granting divine power,” said Ben Williams, president of Friends of French Prairie, a rural land advocacy group. Under the bill, the governor can select two rural sites of more than 500 acres and six smaller ones for development related to the semiconductor industry. That revision to the state’s rigid land-use system has drawn pushback from farmers and conservation organizations. They say the legislation endangers farms, soil health, and carbon sequestration efforts. One potential site for a factory would pave over rural land within a mile of the Duyck family’s land.

“I am worried,” Jones said. “When [the CHIPS Act] was passed at the federal level, here in Oregon we never imagined it would result in basically a choice. I would have never imagined it to have been a threat to farmland in Oregon,” she added, noting that she doesn’t oppose the industry, only building factories on agricultural lands.

With bipartisan support, President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Act last year intending to jumpstart semiconductor manufacturing in the United States, where 37 percent of the world’s chips were made in 1990, compared to only 12 percent in 2020, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. Politicians from across the political spectrum lauded the CHIPS Act as a job creator and a way to shore up the semiconductor supply chain during a global shortage.

Semiconductors are in microwaves and smartphones, but they are also essential for renewable energy technology. They’re key to solar panels, wind energy systems, heat pumps, microgrids, electric vehicles, and more. In a report published last year, the U.S. Department of Energy called semiconductors “a cornerstone technology of the overall decarbonization strategy” and said a lower-carbon future requires “explosive growth” of both conventional and more advanced chips.

In Oregon, cashing in on the federal bill won’t necessarily mean bolstering a domestic supply of wind turbines or solar panels, which are mostly manufactured in China. In large part, the chips made in the state, which is already a hub for the industry, are used in computers and high-tech products like electronic gaming and artificial intelligence, according to Arief Budiman, director of the Oregon Renewable Energy Center.

Supporters of the Oregon bill say capturing the CHIPS Act windfall could create tens of thousands of jobs and more than $1.5 billion in local and state tax revenue.

“Imagine electric and autonomous vehicles, biotech, clean tech, and others doing research and advanced manufacturing here,” the Oregon Semiconductor Competitiveness Task Force said in a report last August. “In short, acting now could spark a boom that lasts another 30 years.”

To stay attractive to industry giants like Intel, which already has an Oregon campus but recently chose to build a $20 billion mega-factory in Ohio (to the dismay of Oregon’s elected officials), the state needs to make more industrial land available, the task force said. It described “no development ready sites of the size needed to attract a major semiconductor investment, or to support larger size suppliers.”

Rural land-use advocates largely reject that argument. One group — 1,000 Friends of Oregon — has listed several existing industrially zoned sites that could be used for chip factories. The Oregon Farm Bureau, which opposes the land-use provisions in the state bill, also argues there’s already enough available land within urban growth areas to build new factories, said Lauren Poor, the bureau’s vice president of government and legal affairs. “We’re not opposed to the chips bill, generally speaking,” Poor said. But “once we develop these sites, we can’t get that soil back.”

Wet winters and dry, warm summers help the state’s growers produce some 200 crops, ranging from hops to hay. Oregon dominates other states in blackberry, crimson clover, and rhubarb production, and almost all of the country’s hazelnuts are grown there. “We owe that to the diversity of our climate and our soils, which is one of the reasons we’re very protective of our very unique land-use system,” Poor added.

The state’s land-use restrictions are rooted in the country’s first law establishing urban growth boundaries, which former Governor Tom McCall, a Republican, signed in 1973. The law, aimed at limiting urban sprawl, allows cities to expand only with approval from a state commission. A decision to move boundaries can be appealed multiple times at both the county and state levels, Williams said. Under the new bill, challenges to the governor’s chip-factory designations will be considered only by the state supreme court.

“It’s very detrimental to expand outside the urban growth boundaries,” said Jones, the farmer. She worries building chip factories on farmland could increase nearby property values, making arable land harder for farmers to buy or rent, and could supplant not only rows of crops but essential farm infrastructure like seed-cleaning sites.

Aside from tweaking Oregon’s special land-use laws, state legislators are considering a bill that would fund nature-based climate solutions, like storing carbon in agricultural soil. Poor said the two bills seem to run counter to each other. “What do you want from us? Do you want us to sequester your carbon, or do you want to pave over our farmlands?”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

The post In Oregon, a Microchip Gold Rush Could Pave Over Long-Protected Farmland appeared first on Modern Farmer.

But now, a group of researchers from the U.K. has built a roadmap that quantifies the source of emissions and outlines what reduction methods are possible. The study, published in Nature Food, found that two-thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions take place after fertilizers are applied onto cropland, while one-third of emissions result from fertilizer production. A combination of technical, agricultural and policy interventions in both areas, however, could reduce emissions by as much as 80 percent by 2050, the study found.

Researchers say increasing the efficiency of fertilizer use is the single most effective strategy to reduce emissions. Precision agriculture, the timing of application, using improved plant breeds that better utilize fertilizer and adopting improved irrigation methods are outlined as ways to reduce emissions by nearly 50 percent. 

They suggest that replacing some of the fertilizers with the highest emissions, such as urea with ammonium nitrate, could reduce emissions by anywhere between 20 percent and 30 percent. Fertilizers could be mixed with chemicals called nitrification inhibitors, which prevent bacteria from forming nitrous oxide, resulting in an emission reduction between 42 percent and 55 percent. 

The research is the first of its kind to make the calculations from petrochemical production to farm application. Notably, findings also revealed that manure and synthetic fertilizers emit the equivalent of 2.6 gigatonnes of carbon per year—more than emitted by global aviation and shipping combined. 

“I see this opening the door to a lot of other important questions of how we can best reduce the amount of fertilizer as much as we can, without any loss in productivity of crops,” says André Cabrera Serrenho, a co-author of the paper and assistant professor for Cambridge University’s Department of Engineering. “This is what matters at the end of the day, and we have started to paint a clearer picture of it all.”  

Both the production and use of fertilizers, particularly nitrogen fertilizer,  release carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. Natural gas, coal and oil are used as feedstock and fuels for the production of ammonia, a crucial ingredient in fertilizer.  These gases are also released from the extraction and combustion of these fuels as well as the product of chemical reactions. Additional emissions result from the generation of electricity used to drive the compressors and pumps. 

When fertilizers are used on cropland, nitrous oxide is generated through a chemical reaction between soil bacteria and the fertilizer via nitrification and denitrification. Carbon dioxide is also produced as urea and ammonium bicarbonate break down in the soil.

The paper states that its recommendations will only be worthwhile if the fertilizer industry takes steps to decarbonize—a specific area where public and private investment could also be beneficial. Electrolysis could be used to supply hydrogen in replacing ammonia synthesis, where up to 27 percent of total emissions could see a reduction. Electrifying the production process using electric heating also has the potential to reduce 21 percent of total emissions by avoiding fuel combustion. Carbon capture and storage was also outlined as having the potential to reduce current emissions by 25 percent by 2050. 

Cabrera Serrenho says he hopes the research helps facilitate better public policy towards emission reductions. 

“Farming is an incredibly tough business at the moment,” he says. “There are very few incentives right now for both farmers and fertilizer companies to care about emissions or to tackle fertilizer use because it’s largely driven by costs. I believe our research highlights some need for incentives to facilitate behavior. ”  

The study’s findings come against a backdrop of widespread global inflation, and countries such as Holland, New Zealand and Canada face political tensions with farmers who fear agriculture emission reduction policies will curtail food production and, in turn, their profits. But for the U.S., where the Biden administration has been clear that net-zero emissions will require adjusting agricultural systems, the study’s recommendations present a possible way forward.  

Cabrera Serrenho says the new study only scratches the surface of what’s possible. Right now, he’s keen on exploring the impact of specific dietary changes on fertilizer use and emissions. 

“It’s worth pointing out that we still have 20 percent of emissions that haven’t been accounted for, that we don’t know how we could possibly eliminate [them],” he says. “This is important and yet concerning as we set out to make food systems more sustainable.”

The post It’s Possible to Reduce Fertilizer Emissions by 80 Percent Before 2050 appeared first on Modern Farmer.