Rochester Microgreens has mounted a response to large-scale farming through controlled environment agriculture.
“The produce you buy at Walmart is coming from California or other countries,” explains Michael Temperato, owner of Rochester Microgreens. “It’s coming from thousands of miles away and was harvested days ago.” That means preservatives are necessary, and, of course, it’s not truly fresh.
Temperato’s aeroponic approach enables harvest-day delivery of fresh greens without using herbicides, pesticides, or preservatives. The small business, which operates out of a 165-square-foot room in his apartment on Maplewood Avenue, would look right at home in a scene from a Stanley Kubrick film from the ’70s.
Temperato’s day job is in marketing with his own company, Admagent. He provides social media services as well as photography and videography. He likes that work but had been looking for something that felt like more of a mission.
“Indoor farming,” he says, “solves a problem and makes a difference.”
Though a tiny operation, there is high technology at work. Temperato sprouts his greens from seeds in Rockwool cubes, a sterile growing medium made from spun fibers of molten basalt. When the plants reach the right size, he transfers them to tower gardens, originally developed by NASA as a possible way to grow food in space. As the name suggests, tower gardens are vertical tubes with many holes for plants. Water cycles from the base to the top, dripping down through the plants’ roots.
The system is stunningly efficient. Temperato must change the water after each growing cycle (30 to 45 days) and clean the towers thoroughly half as often. He has 144 growing spaces in his towers, and if he’s fully utilizing them, he can grow about 300 pounds of food per cycle, using only about $300 of energy. The whole system has a kind of clean-line beauty, and the greens are outrageously healthy-looking, with all sorts of vibrant colors like the rich purple of the red cabbage greens (which Temperato claims have 40 times the nutrients by weight of a cabbage).
Rochester Microgreens grows many lettuces, microgreens, herbs, flowers, and grasses, and what’s available at any time can vary. Just the names of some of these cry out to be tried, like bulls, blood beets, and Rambo radish. Other microgreens include sunflower, sweet pea, broccoli, basil, and red cabbage. Some mixes let you try several greens, like the confetti box that includes sunflower, sweet pea, broccoli, and Rambo radish. Some of the microgreens echo the flavors of their namesakes (broccoli and radish greens). Consumers can choose a monthly subscription for their microgreens.
Microgreens can be used in various ways. The confetti box, for instance, can be used in salads, for adding crunch to sandwiches, and as a final flourish on a stir fry. Because the greens are so fresh, their firm crunch holds up far better than expected. When the Rochester Beacon met him, Temperato was finishing his morning banana, honey, and sunflower greens shake.
It’s a labor of love at this point. Temperato sells packages directly to consumers who pick them up at his Maplewood neighborhood farm. He has many restaurant customers, including The Classic Kitchen & Cocktails on Park Avenue and Chick Magnet Fried Chicken in Penfield. If he could count on selling 300 pounds each cycle, he’d grow that much, and the economics would be excellent.
“The margins,” Temperato says, “are great.”
The trick is to make only what he can sell and find customers. His experience in online marketing helps him reach his customers directly through his website and paid ads.
Temperato doesn’t wish for a huge operation with hundreds of towers as far as the eye can see. Rather, he imagines a future where this controlled environment agriculture is repeatable in many small instances.
When he can get the funding, he hopes to have a storefront where he can sell the greens. For Temperato, the beauty is in the small scale, the low impact on the environment, and the cleaner, more nutritious product.
Would he leave his day job for this?
“I really like my marketing customers,” he says. “They’ve been very good to me, and I’d probably always want to take care of them.”
But Rochester Microgreens is more of a mission for Temperato, something he believes in for himself, his family, and all of us.
Maybe we’ll all have an indoor farm room some day?
Adam A. Wilcox is a cook, poet and musician in Rochester. The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. Submissions to the Letters page should be sent to Letters@RochesterBeacon.com.