Bigger produce isn’t necessarily better, if you ask David Sasuga. By growing the tiniest edible plants possible at the highest attainable quality, Sasuga has grown his company, Fresh Origins, into the leading producer of microgreens in the United States.

Based in San Marcos, Calif., with a total of 80 acres including 1.4 million square feet of covered production space, Fresh Origins ships an average of 2,500 pounds of miniature greens and produce every day. In addition to MicroGreens and slightly larger PetiteGreens, the farm also produces a colorful spectrum of edible flowers, tiny veggies, and other flavorfully innovative products to serve professional chefs nationwide.

In fact, a chef gave Sasuga the idea to focus on microgreens back in 1995. Before then, Sasuga had spent 20 years producing bedding plants through his first company, Sunrise Growers, which ultimately spun off a plug-growing operation called The Plug Connection in 1987 with partner Tim Wada.

Throughout his growing experience, Sasuga’s interests led him toward edibles.

“I always wanted to grow edibles rather than ornamentals, and that led to growing more herb and vegetable plants for garden centers and nurseries,” Sasuga says. “We were growing some tomato transplants for a special order, and when the man came to pick them up, he was intrigued by the basil seedlings we had. He had never seen basil in that form. He revealed that he was a chef in a fine dining restaurant and wanted to use these tiny basils there.”

Initially, Sasuga was “perplexed” why anyone would want herbs that tiny, but the chef was onto something big. Sasuga worked with a restaurant consultant to test the idea in other kitchens, and soon, the culinary world craved the unique colors, tastes, textures and pizzazz that microgreens added to a dish.

“I began to look at seedlings in a whole different way,” says Sasuga, who began experimenting with earlier harvests of edible crops — starting with “basic herbs like basil,” and gradually adding vegetables over time.

Tiny trials

Discovering which plants can be harvested after a couple of weeks — when they’re only an inch to an inch-and-a-half tall — requires research, trial and error. Factors like seed cost, availability and germination rates determine which plants might work as microgreens.

“It’s pretty much the same [process] on a shorter time span — just younger versions of what we were already growing,” Sasuga says. “It’s interesting because I started with bedding plants that had a fairly short timespan compared to other ornamentals; then went to plugs, which had an even shorter time span; and then microgreens, which have an even shorter time span. My experience as a plug grower went a long way toward helping me transition into microgreens.”

As one of the earliest growers to focus on this niche, Sasuga didn’t have best practices or even definitions to follow. So he developed his own.

“There was a steep learning curve since there weren’t any viable resources on how to do this — including seed selection, harvesting, packaging, sales and marketing,” says Sasuga, admitting that marketing was the biggest challenge in debuting MicroGreens. “Everyone thought they were sprouts. I worked hard to establish a dialogue to educate my customers and the internet in general on the definition of how and why microgreens are different than sprouts.” (For a more detailed comparison of microgreens and sprouts, visit freshorigins.com/microgreen-facts)

Fresh Origins grows microgreen seedlings in 10x20 trays filled with peat moss inside of gutter-connected hoop houses. Through experimentation, the company keeps learning more to improve its operations and plant selection.

“Over the years, we’ve gotten more organized and generally more efficient as we’ve gotten better at understanding this crop cycle,” Sasuga says. “It’s just a lot of small improvements, like what kind of greenhouses we need and how to lay them out properly for a nice traffic flow. We’ve changed from growing on the ground to growing on tables, and we’ve changed from wooden to steel tables — just naturally evolving.”

Major micro-innovation

Fresh Origins continually introduces new varieties, both in response to specific customer requests, and through its own in-house experimentation. Today, the farm produces more than 400 varieties of edible plants and flowers, including Micro Basil Nutmeg, Micro Tangerine Lace, Petite Lucky Shamrock and Petite Pumpkin Green.

The company trademarks the names of individual plants and product categories because: “We work hard to develop our products and want to protect that investment,” Sasuga says. “We believe this is a competitive advantage.”

The farm’s most recent innovations include Herb Crystals, Flower Crystals, and Fruit Crystals, which combine fresh produce with pure cane sugar to create crystals that add a colorful punch of crunchy flavor to dishes, drinks and desserts. Fresh Origins introduced its first crystals about five years ago after nearly five years of research and development.

“Microgreens are highly perishable,” Sasuga says. “I wanted to find a way to provide shelf-stable flavors, so I experimented with ways to preserve the delicate flavors of the greens. The result is that we have authentic flavors in a product that lasts months, without the use of added flavorings or colorants.”

While crystals have helped extend the shelf-life of some produce, the short crop cycles and even shorter windows of salability are constant challenges. Most crops are harvested within two weeks, and in most cases, must be sold within two or three days. Fresh Origins’ team hand-harvests produce at peak freshness, then ships through distributors to chefs who receive their orders the next day.

“All of our crops are planted on speculation,” Sasuga says. “Every seed we plant is with the hope that we’ll sell it, but it’s not pre-ordered. This can mean lots of dumping and losses, so you’ve got to have a market for it. We try to stay close to it so we’re watching production, sales and dumps on a daily basis.”

Sustainable by nature

Fresh Origins’ operations are inherently sustainable, but Sasuga is reluctant to greenwash it. He believes that, “Farming, by nature, is sustainable” — especially the way he does it in sunny Southern California, without any supplemental lighting.

“San Marcos has the best climate for growing microgreens year-round, because we have one of the highest light levels in the country,” Sasuga says. “Other areas with high light levels, like Florida, have too much humidity to properly grow high-quality microgreens. Most of our product goes outside California, because we can provide better quality than what’s grown in other parts of the country (with artificial lighting).”

Using free sunshine drastically reduces the farm’s energy costs compared to greenhouses in colder climates. Fresh Origins also makes the most of other natural resources like water by carefully hand-watering more than 120,000 trays of greens every day. An intricate drainage system captures excess water and rainwater, and stores it in a reservoir on-site.

For pest and disease control, Fresh Origins is careful about its approach to avoid wasting valuable resources, Sasuga says. As a first line of defense, all greenhouses are screened and flanked with miles of sticky tape insect traps to minimize the need for spraying. When spraying is necessary, Sasuga opts for the safest materials, such as garlic, clove and rosemary oils.

Scouting is also a key piece of Fresh Origins’ pest and disease control efforts. “When you have a crop time that fast, you have to watch it very closely because things can happen in hours and days, rather than weeks and months,” says Sasuga, whose team scouts by “walking around the old-fashioned way.”

Though quick crop turnaround has challenges, it makes pest and disease control a little easier. “For the most part,” Sasuga says, “the crops are pretty fast, so insects don’t have a lot of time to get established.”

Not-so-local growth

Culinary demands continue to drive growth for Fresh Origins, as chefs and mixologists search for ingredients that add crispy, colorful panache to upscale dishes, desserts and drinks. Although the company only sells through produce distributors that supply restaurants and food retailers, it stays in close contact with the chefs who use its products.

“We’ve maintained relationships and communication with chefs we’ve met over the years,” Sasuga says, and as a result, chefs regularly contribute recipes, photos, videos and other content that Fresh Origins uses on its website and social media to show its products in action.

Sasuga’s daughter, Kelly, is key to these culinary relationships, through her dual role in Fresh Origins’ marketing department and as R&D chef. (Several other family members are also involved in the family-owned company, which has 375 employees — including Sasuga’s brother, who’s head grower.)

By staying focused on this culinary niche, Sasuga predicts steady growth as Fresh Origins continues to innovate and improve. Because his location in an ideal growing climate has been key to producing the quality his customers demand, Sasuga’s advice for other growers is simple:

“Find out what grows best in your area, then focus on quality and being the best,” he says. “You can grow a pineapple in Chicago, but should you? It will not be sustainable, it will take a lot more resources, and it will be poor quality compared to what’s grown in the right climate. I wouldn’t sacrifice quality for being able to say that it was locally grown.”

Brooke is a freelance writer living in Cleveland.

Now more than ever, consumers have seemingly limitless choices across the grocery store. As a result, produce companies are tasked with upping their packaging and branding game to catch consumers’ eye as they walk through the store. It’s a problem Pure Flavor, a Leamington, Ontario, Canada-based grower, is trying to solve.

“You really have to re-educate the end consumer,” Sarah Pau, Pure Flavor’s director of marketing, says.

At June’s United Fresh event in Chicago, Pure Flavor’s Leafy Fresh lettuce line was a finalist for the Best New Vegetable Product Award, while its Mini Munchies — which include mini peppers and cucumbers — on-the-go snack pack for kids was a finalist for the Best New Packaging Award. At United Fresh, Pure Flavor also debuted the Cloud 9 tomato, the newest addition to the company’s organic produce line.

Pure Flavor holds weekly meetings to discuss design strategies, and all of its products’ packaging are designed in-house. Reaching consumers is just as important as growing high-quality produce.

Below, Pau explains to Produce Grower what Pure Flavor does to ensure consumers will choose Pure Flavor’s produce over the competition’s at the grocery store.

Produce Grower: Why is it so challenging to reach the end consumer in the grocery store?

Sarah Pau: If you go to a grocery store, and you have two or three or four different grape tomato varieties from all of these different companies with similar packaging, how would you know which tomato is the best? If all of the packaging is the same clamshell, how are you going to draw attention to your produce?

PG: Cloud 9 is one the tomato varieties Pure Flavor showcased at United Fresh 2017. What message are you trying to send to the consumer with it?

SP: As end consumers, we’ve always thought the ruby red tomatoes to be the best. But the [Cloud 9] is specifically bred to not turn like that. Even though the tomato is red, it’s not the red associated with ripeness. So, for that item, we had to do a special packaging. Taste is very difficult to explain, so we had to market that tomato differently. It was originally a popular variety in Europe, and it’s just starting to become popular in North America. The name actually came as a direct result of our own taste tests.

PG: How does Pure Flavor go about finding new varieties that you think consumers will like?

SP: We’re constantly looking for new options and doing taste tests internally and externally to make sure our flavor profile is always consistent. The No. 1 greenhouse development area in the world is Holland. We go to Europe at least once or twice a year to meet with greenhouses and seed companies to see what’s out there and what are the best new varieties. Sometimes, even when you already have the best, you have to look out for what consumers will like next.

About 10 years ago, Ohioans Doug Sharp and his wife Julie Sharp decided to begin a nonprofit operation to train and employ young adults with autism to prepare them for the workforce.

Adults with autism often have difficulty finding and maintaining work, Doug Sharp says. “They struggle getting past the interview, and once they do get a job, they have difficulty maintaining it because of the social skills and communication skills that they haven’t developed,” he says.

In the United States, 55.1 percent of people with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) worked at all in the six years following high school, according to a 2012 study published in the American Academy of Pediatrics. In 2016, the unemployment rate for people with a disability in the United States was 10.5 percent, more than double the unemployment rate for people without a disability that year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2007, Doug, who works as vice president of sales effectiveness and operations at Grange Insurance Companies, and Julie, who works as a teacher at Oakstone Academy, a private school specializing in ASD, began drafting the concept of what would become Lettuce Work, a nonprofit that teaches high school students and young adults with autism to grow, harvest, wash, package and label lettuce. Doug is executive director of Lettuce Work, handling much of the business operations, and Julie is the program director and works alongside the employees.

After drafting a business plan, securing funding, buying property and constructing facilities, Lettuce Work built its New Albany greenhouse in 2014, Doug says. It subsequently set up operations with retailers Kroger, Giant Eagle and independent grocery stores around the Columbus area. After testing out different lettuce varieties, including romaine production for manatees to consume at the Columbus Zoo, Lettuce Work found success with its salad blend. Its biggest success, though, has been seeing the young adults it employs adjust to, and progress in, a work environment.

Photo courtesy of Doug Sharp

Creating the calm

Living in a rural area outside of Columbus, Doug knew wanted to create a project that would support this demographic by getting adults with autism involved in agriculture in some form, so he reached out to Ohio State University Extension for guidance. The extension service suggested he include hydroponics in his operation and mentioned CropKing, a company that provides an option to purchase greenhouse structures and hydroponic equipment in a single package.

Lettuce Work purchased six gutter-connected greenhouse bays and hydroponic systems from CropKing — clean, quiet environments that Doug says create a therapeutic, calming effect for high schoolers and young adults who are sensitive to certain textures and sounds. “What we’ve seen in the greenhouse especially, where you have that white noise from the fans, is that they really respond well,” he says.

On a given day, Lettuce Work oversees the work of about six to 12 people on the autism spectrum, Doug says. The organization has hired a few staff members work in the greenhouse, including an experienced grower, as well as volunteers and a couple young men with autism who previously trained onsite during high school.

The work that the employees perform in the greenhouse varies depending on their abilities and interests, Doug says. Some of them stay for six months and then move onto another job, while others have been there several years.

Across the board, improvements are quantifiable, Doug says. “I’m just thinking of one young lady we’ve worked with for a couple years now — in labeling, for example, the clamshell containers,” Doug says. “When she was first brought in to us, she wasn’t able to complete any of those steps without prompting, and now she comes in, she works independently, and it’s an eight-step procedure that she can do on her own.” Other employees have teachers who have often seen them with their hands in their pockets, but at Lettuce Work, they are working as well as interacting with others.

A window into retail

Lettuce Work has plans to add on to its greenhouse and offer annual and perennial plants, and possibly add nursery stock outside as well, Doug says. It will add a flower shop on the property to allow its employees a work experience where they can interact with customers.

As it adds ornamental offerings, Lettuce Work won’t leave behind its namesake produce, Doug says. The operation has also had such a positive experience working with CropKing that it will use its gutter-connected greenhouses for the new areas, although they won’t be fitted with any hydroponic systems.

The plan is to become more financially self-sufficient, Doug says. Lettuce Work currently gets about a third of its revenue from its growing operation, and the other two-thirds comes from grants and donations from the state, foundations such as the Columbus Foundation and individual donors. In the future, he hopes to produce about 80 percent of revenue from the operation.

There’s a stigma that some people with autism might not be capable of working, but Doug says they make great workers and he would like to help change misperceptions. When he retires, he plans to dedicate more time to Lettuce Work. “It’s a labor of love,” he says.

The incidence rate of foodborne outbreak recalls that implicate greenhouse-grown produce is statistically lower than that of field production, but greenhouses are not exempt, and the food safety issues of an outbreak are just as significant no matter where the produce is grown. Take, for example:

Greenhouse growers sometimes have a false sense of security around food safety issues, says Benjamin Chapman, North Carolina State University associate professor and food safety specialist. “The infrastructure gives the sense that they’re working in a protected environment, and there is a sense that it is very clean because it is not exposed to the environment.” However, not only are there openings through which birds and animals could enter, Chapman says, but hands, feet and water can all cause food safety risk.

Chapman is a co-author of the manual, On-Farm Food Safety Guidelines for Greenhouse Vegetables. Although some of the science has changed since its 1998 publication so that “the things we now know may have filled in some of the science,” he says, the tenets of the manual, including many of those discussed herein, continue to provide a viable guide for greenhouse production. (The manual is available here)

Birds and animals can squeeze into structures through very small openings — and doors that are not promptly shut. And once inside, they can easily contaminate produce. In fact, birds can be an even greater risk in greenhouses than in the open field, as they can nest over the plants in greenhouses and contaminate them with their droppings. In the field, there is no infrastructure on which to build nests. “So, it is a risk that isn’t outside,” he says.

The importance of worker hygiene

Personal hygiene and handwashing are significant aspects of risk management no matter where produce is grown. It was in the early 2000s that the industry began to focus on fresh vegetables and viruses, Chapman says. These viruses, such as Hepatitis A and norovirus, can be passed by ill workers not washing their hands before working with food. This is exacerbated by the condition of produce looking so clean at retail that consumers often don’t do anything to the fruit or vegetables before eating it — essentially treating it as a ready-to-eat food.

As such, greenhouses should ensure they reduce barehand contact with produce and/or have a very robust hand sanitizing program, he says. Although consumers should be washing most produce prior to eating it, growers must not rely on them as a final food safety checkpoint. “We don’t want consumers to be the last CCP,” he says, in reference to the hazard control strategies of a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) program.

The movement of pathogens into the greenhouse environment can come through walkways, cart rails, ladders, and any other way that foot or wheeled traffic is moving from the exterior to the interior. While many greenhouses do incorporate footbaths at entrances, “it takes the correct management of the footbath and use by employees,” Chapman says. “People may hop over it, or there may be no one checking the concentration levels.” Additionally, he says, if a footbath is in direct sunlight, it can change the efficacy of the composition.

A look at water

Water safety is a complicated issue no matter where one is growing produce, as evidenced by the complexity of requirements of the Produce Safety Rule of the Food Modernization Act (FSMA) — and FDA’s recent announcement that it is exploring ways to simplify the rule’s agricultural water microbial quality and testing requirements. While irrigation water is a major concern for field production, it is generally low-risk in greenhouses because, for the most part, it is targeted at the roots, so doesn’t touch the edible parts of the plant, Chapman says.

However, the recent increase in the sale of rooted plants to consumers also increases the risk potential — as there is a risk of cross contamination from the roots to the edible parts of the plant, begging the question of whether roots should be treated with the same care as raw chicken — guarding against the risk of contamination to the “ready-to-eat” parts of the plant.

Adding to the complexity is that fact that there is not much data on pathogens in irrigation water, Chapman says. While many greenhouses use only municipal water, some use runoff water, ponds or wells, so the safety of that water needs to be ensured. Wash-water tanks also can be a source of pathogens if the water is not managed correctly and chlorinated regularly to keep it free of contamination, he says.

Other points to consider: processing and contact surfaces

Another area that can be of concern, both for risk management and regulatory compliance, is greenhouses having an understanding of “minimally processed.” For example, if a greenhouse is doing any secondary cutting, slicing, dicing or shredding of the produce for packaging, the produce is now considered to be minimally processed, making the greenhouse subject to FSMA’s Preventive Controls rule.

Additionally, the vast variation in greenhouse operations — both in size and geography, contribute to varying risk. For example, many large greenhouse operations have packing lines that look the same as those of large field growers, he says, so these food contact surfaces become a key factor for consideration in risk management. In the 2011 Listeria outbreak at Jensen Farms, multiple samples were pulled from the packing lines, which ultimately showed these food contact surfaces to be a factor in the outbreak. “It is analogous to what I see in greenhouses: people and lots of contact surfaces,” Chapman says. So, it is critical that these operations consider how to best keep those lines — and employee hands — clean and sanitized.

“To be able to focus risk management steps, you need to be able to be in context with your entire operation,” Chapman says. “The false sense of security around GAPs starts to erode when an incident in the same type of facility you have leads to 84 illnesses.”

Lisa is the editor of sister publication Quality Assurance & Food Safety (QA) magazine. llupo@gie.net