Selling microgreens, state by state

Alabama publishes no microgreens license at all. Two agencies split the job, there is a $50 permit that is not yours, and the cottage food sales cap was removed and still does not apply to you.

Alaska is the only state whose food code says the word microgreens. It exempts them by name, and it answers the cut-greens question every other state leaves hanging.

Arizona's food code excludes a produce stand selling only whole uncut vegetables, your own crop is exempt from transaction privilege tax, and the free on-farm review has a prerequisite nobody mentions.

No, if they have true leaves and you cut them once. Arkansas is the only state in this series that draws the line at the root: sell a tray with roots attached and the Health Department treats it as a sprout, which needs a permit.

California is the one state where the answer is usually yes, and it comes from your county rather than the state. You need a Certified Producer's Certificate, and the label elements are written into statute.

No, if you sell them unwashed for the customer to wash. Colorado is the mirror image of Florida: there washing sits inside the exemption, here the exemption is written around greens intended to be washed by the consumer.

Not a license, a registration, and only once the federal rule covers you. Connecticut also names fresh vegetables as prohibited cottage food, which settles that question outright.

Yes, and Delaware is the strictest in this series about it. Every produce farm registers annually, exempt or not, and there is an April 30 deadline with penalties attached.

No, and Florida is the only state in this series that says washing is fine. The food establishment definition excludes packing produce in its raw state, including produce washed or otherwise treated in its natural form.

Yes. Georgia defines a fruit and vegetable store or roadside stand as a food sales establishment, so the license comes from the Department of Agriculture. Georgia also licenses sprout processors at $300, which makes the microgreens and sprouts distinction worth real money here.

Yes. Hawaii's food establishment definition reaches any place used for packaging, transporting or otherwise handling food, and it carries no farm or produce exemption at all.

No, if your greens need no temperature control. Idaho is the state where the test is TCS status rather than cutting, washing or who buys, and the license, when you need one, comes from one of seven public health districts rather than from the state.

Not a license, a registration, and Illinois keeps it in the cottage food law. The statute names microgreens, defines them, and lifts them out of the leafy greens category the same section prohibits when cut.

No, if you sell direct to the eater. Indiana passed a new law five weeks ago that names produce explicitly and exempts direct sales up to $1.5 million. Sell to a restaurant instead and the exemption ends entirely.

Yes, once you cut them. Iowa exempts a stand selling only whole, uncut produce, so a living tray is the exemption and a clamshell is not. Which license you then need turns on whether you own the outlet you sell to.

No, and Kansas does not ask who buys. The exemption turns on keeping the crop uncut and in your own hands until the sale, so a restaurant order is fine and a consignment table is not.

No, if you run a market that offers only fresh fruits and vegetables. Kentucky puts the exclusion and the trigger in the same statute, and the word that moves you between them is packaged.

No, and Louisiana is the only state in this series that says so to the parish and the city as well as to itself. A statute bars every level of government from charging a farmer a permit fee for direct sales. It bars the fee, not the inspection.

No, for greens that leave your farm essentially unchanged. Maine also lets a town switch off state food law enforcement by ordinance, but for raw microgreens the state had already said no.

No, for your own raw uncut greens. Maryland writes the farmers market exclusion into the statute itself. The trap is the sales tax rule, where a produce-only stand may not qualify for the food exemption at all.

Yes, and Massachusetts sorts you by who buys rather than by what you did to the crop. Sell to the eater and your town permits you. Sell to a restaurant and the state permits you as a manufacturer.

Whole uncut produce sold direct to consumers is exempt from Michigan food licensing. Cut microgreens are a fact specific MDARD determination, and the $25,000 you keep reading about is not the federal number.

No, if you grew them on land you occupy and cultivate. Minnesota's exclusion follows the product rather than the buyer, so unlike Indiana or Oregon it survives a sale to a restaurant or a grocer.

No, if nothing is prepared or served. Mississippi's food rule reaches establishments charging for food prepared or served, and raw greens are neither. Then the market you stand in decides your tax.

Missouri does not answer this. The state issues no microgreens license and your county public health agency decides, can be stricter, and sets its own fees. The one hard number is a $25,000 farmers market sales tax threshold.

Yes, once your Montana retail produce sales pass $25,000. It is a $50 Produce Dealer License from the Department of Agriculture, and that $25,000 is a fixed state figure, not the federal one.

No, and Nebraska publishes the answer as a list rather than leaving you to reason it out. The trap is the exclusion next door: the private-home route in the same statute adds duties you do not owe.

Yes, and it is a $50 farm certificate rather than a food license. Nevada's Producer Certificate covers crops grown here in their natural and unprocessed state. Whether you also need a health permit is your county's call.

No, for your own raw greens at a genuine farm stand. New Hampshire publishes no produce exemption at all. It publishes a definition that leaves farm stands out, and fifteen towns license instead of the state.

Yes for cut greens, from your local health authority. The live tray is the one genuinely open question in this whole series, and New Jersey's own nursery definition appears to exclude microgreens without anyone having ruled on it.

No, for your own whole raw greens sold direct. The catch is the desk: New Mexico keeps food safety in the Environment Department, and that department has no jurisdiction over Albuquerque.

Probably yes, and the trigger is earlier than you think. New York counts packing and repacking as processing, so an Article 20-C license is in play the moment you cut and clamshell, even though the farm exclusion covers harvesting and distributing.

No, for a farmer selling their own unprocessed crop. But North Carolina's no comes from departmental guidance rather than from a statute, and the statute that does apply to you is a duty rather than an exemption.

No, for your own whole, uncut raw greens, and the answer sits in the adopted Food Code rather than the cottage food law. The desk is the state, unless one of eight local health units licenses instead.

Ohio's produce exemption is written into statute, and it is narrower than it looks: it applies only if you sell nothing outside the listed items. Sourced to the Revised Code, not to a summary.

No, for greens harvested above the soil line. Oklahoma's agriculture department answers the microgreens question by name in its own guide and calls them produce, not sprouts, covering cut leaves and live trays alike.

No, and Oregon is the only state in this series with a law written for exactly this seller. Farm Direct Marketing exempts a grower selling their own raw crop to the eater, with no dollar cap at all.

Two different instruments, and most growers need one of them. A stand selling only raw agricultural commodities is exempt from the retail license, but the site where you pack and hold must register as a food establishment for $35 a year, with no sales threshold.

Probably yes. The licencia sanitaria hooks on establecimiento publico, a definition that never names farms, while the adopted Food Code excludes a whole uncut produce stand. Nobody has reconciled them.

Not a license, a registration, and it has a deadline. Every Rhode Island produce farm registers with RIDEM between 1 January and 28 February, and no health department page will tell you that.

No, while they stay an intact raw crop sold to the person who eats them. Both doors out of that are SCDA's, and the agency itself changed on 1 July 2024 when food safety left DHEC.

No, and South Dakota names microgreens in the Health Department's own market table, in the no license, no label row. But that row belongs to a venue. Sell wholesale or online and the answer flips.

It depends on your building, not your sales. Tennessee licenses the facility where food is packed or held, and prices it by risk and square footage rather than revenue, so growing bigger does not cost you more.

Texas devolves this. DSHS exempts whole intact unprocessed produce at markets it covers, then tells you to ask your city or county, and their answer is the one that governs.

No, if the crop leaves your hands whole. Utah says greens harvested by cutting through the stalk are still whole, uncut raw produce, even if rinsed. Remove a leaf or cut again and it is processing.

No for a raw crop, and Vermont says so plainly. But the Health Department's rule excludes trimming and rinsing from processing while including packaging, and nobody has ruled on the clamshell.

Yes, for cut and packed greens, and the permit is not a form you file. Virginia makes it unlawful to operate until the Commissioner has inspected the establishment and issued one, so the inspection is the gate.

No for a whole, uncut crop. D.C. excludes a produce stand from its food establishment definition. Cut the greens and the same code's leafy greens definition may make them temperature controlled.

Yes, once you cut them. WSDA calls microgreens a salad green and calls cutting processing, so the living tray is the way out, and it costs you a written assurance that the buyer cuts above the soil line.

Yes, because they are cut. West Virginia writes the word uncut into both of its exemptions, so one word closes both doors. Which permit you then need turns on where you stand to sell.

No, while they stay raw and intact. Wisconsin exempts a product category, raw intact fruits and vegetables excluding sprouts, and that category holds all the way through the grocery store door.

No, and the famous law is not the one that does it. The Food Freedom Act is capped and built around a home kitchen. The exemption that carries a microgreens crop sits in the licensing statute and has no cap at all.