Is a Microgreen Grower Covered by the Food Traceability Rule?

Yes, unless an exemption applies, and for most readers of this site an exemption does.

Microgreens are not named on FDA's Food Traceability List. Leafy greens are, and that is what settles it. The list reads "Leafy greens (fresh): Includes all types of fresh leafy greens," gives baby leaf as an example, and excludes only whole-head cabbages, banana and grape leaves, and leaves grown on trees. A separate entry covers sprouts, "all varieties of fresh sprouts, irrespective of seed source."

So a conventional edible microgreen is an FTL leafy green and not an FTL sprout. That matters, because this site's Subpart M page covers the same fork under a different rule and the answer runs the same way.

The threshold that looks familiar and is not

This is the part most likely to cost somebody real money, and it is a trap this site set for itself.

Two rules, the same $25,000 in the text, two different baseline years. The Produce Safety Rule adjusts from 2011 and FDA publishes the result, which is $34,324 for 2026. The Food Traceability Rule adjusts from 2020, and FDA has not published an inflation-adjusted figure for it in any material opened for this page.

So do not carry $34,324 across. It is the right number on the other page and the wrong number here, because it is adjusted from a baseline nine years earlier. Until FDA publishes a table for section 1.1305(a)(1)(ii), the honest position is that the written figure is $25,000, it is expressly inflation adjusted from 2020, and the operative dollar amount is not established.

And the two thresholds do not measure the same thing. The Produce Safety Rule's cutoff is a three-year rolling average of produce sales. The Food Traceability Rule's is a three-year rolling average of produce sales plus the market value of produce manufactured, processed, packed or held without sale, for example held for a fee. A grower who holds product for somebody else can clear one and not the other.

One more figure not to import. The Produce Safety Rule's separate qualified exemption uses average annual food sales below $500,000 adjusted for inflation, which this site publishes as $686,476. That is not an exemption from this rule and has no effect here.

The date has moved, and how it moved matters

The date to work to today is July 20, 2028. It is not an FDA rule change.

• January 20, 2026 was the uniform compliance date set by the final rule of November 21, 2022.
• August 7, 2025, FDA proposed a 30-month extension to July 20, 2028. That document is still labeled a proposed rule.
• July 20, 2028 is now the operative date because Congress directed FDA not to enforce the rule before it, in the 2026 continuing appropriations and extensions act, and FDA says it intends to comply.

Read the difference precisely. A congressional no-enforcement direction is not an amendment to the Code of Federal Regulations. The CFR text still carries the original date, the FDA extension is still a proposal, and what has changed is enforcement rather than the regulation. Anyone telling you FDA moved the date to 2028 has compressed three different instruments into one sentence.

The exemptions, which are the answer for most readers here

Section 1.1305 carries a long list. Four are realistic for a microgreen farm.

The direct-to-consumer exemption is the one that decides most small operations, and it is also the one that ends the moment your business grows. A farmers market table is a direct sale to a consumer. A grocery store or a restaurant buyer is not, and the day you take that first wholesale order, the exemption stops covering that product.

An exemption from the law is not an exemption from your buyer. A grocer running its own traceability program can require lot codes and records by contract regardless of what FDA requires of you, and that is how most exempt growers actually meet this rule. That commercial side belongs with selling to grocery and wholesale rather than here.

What a covered grower actually has to do

This is a records rule. It is not a labeling rule, and it is not the same thing as the label requirements this site publishes separately.

Critical tracking events are the moments that generate records. Key data elements are the fields. For a farm that harvests its own crop, packs it and ships it to a grocer, three events apply:

• Harvesting, section 1.1325. The subsequent recipient's location, commodity and variety, quantity and unit, farm location, the named growing area, the harvest date and a reference document type and number. The farm passes its business name and phone plus those harvest fields to whoever does the initial packing.
• Initial packing, section 1.1330. What was received and when and how much, the farm and growing-area locations, the harvester's name and phone and the harvest date, any cooling location and date, the assigned traceability lot code, the packed product description and quantity, the packing date and a reference document.
• Shipping, section 1.1340. The lot code, quantity, product description, the next non-transporter recipient, where it shipped from, the date, the lot code source location and a reference document. The recipient gets that information in writing.

Cooling is its own event only when active cooling happens before initial packing. Transformation applies if you repack, relabel or commingle in a way that outputs a new FTL food. First land-based receiving is a fishing provision and never applies here.

The lot code is assigned once, by the initial packer. Section 1.1320 says you must assign a traceability lot code when you initially pack a raw agricultural commodity, first receive fish on land, or transform a food. A grower who harvests and packs their own crop is the initial packer and assigns it there. Shipping it later does not create a new one, and a lot code is not the same thing as a date printed on a clamshell.

What to actually do

• Work out whether you are a covered Produce Safety Rule farm first. If you are not, section 1.1305(a)(1)(i) exempts you here as well, and that single question answers most of this page.
• Do not use $34,324 for this rule. It is adjusted from 2011 and this threshold adjusts from 2020, with no published figure.
• If you sell only direct to consumers, you are exempt, and you should write down the date that stops being true.
• Treat the first wholesale order as the trigger. That is the moment the direct-to-consumer exemption stops covering that product.
• Ask your buyer what they require before assuming the law is the ceiling. A grocer's contract can require more than FDA does.
• If you are covered, the lot code goes on at packing, and it travels with everything downstream.
• Work to July 20, 2028, and know that it is an enforcement direction rather than a rule change. The CFR text still says January 20, 2026, so watch for FDA finalizing its proposal.

What is not settled

• The operative dollar figure for the traceability small-producer exemption. FDA has published no inflation-adjusted table for section 1.1305(a)(1)(ii).
• Whether a live tray sold whole is treated the same as cut microgreens. The leafy-green entry carries no "cut" condition, so the cautious reading is that it is covered, but FDA has published no microgreen-specific interpretation and the word microgreen does not appear on the list.
• Whether FDA will finalize its proposed extension, or leave the CFR date standing against a congressional enforcement bar.

Sources

Opened 2026-08-12. The threshold comparison table sets figures this site already publishes on two other federal pages against this rule's own text; the $34,324 and $686,476 come from the produce safety rule page and the $5,000 from the USDA page.

• 21 CFR part 1, subpart S - the operative regulation, including section 1.1305 exemptions, section 1.1310 defining critical tracking events, section 1.1320 requiring a traceability lot code, and sections 1.1325, 1.1330 and 1.1340 listing the harvesting, initial packing and shipping key data elements quoted above.
• FDA, FSMA final rule on additional traceability records - that the rule adds to rather than replaces existing records, that requirements extend to a food containing a listed ingredient that remains in the same form, and the current statement of the July 20, 2028 no-enforcement date and FDA's intention to comply with the congressional direction.
• FDA, Food Traceability List produce farm sheet (PDF), June 2023 - the leafy greens entry covering all types of fresh leafy greens with baby leaf as an example, the exclusions for whole-head cabbages, banana and grape leaves and tree leaves, and the separate sprouts entry covering all varieties irrespective of seed source.
• Federal Register, compliance date extension proposed rule, 90 FR 38084, 7 August 2025 - the proposed 30-month extension to July 20, 2028, still labeled a proposed rule when opened on 2026-08-12, which is why this page distinguishes it from the congressional enforcement direction.
• FDA, regulatory impact analysis for the final rule, 87 FR 70910 - the November 21, 2022 final rule and its economic analysis, and the source of the original January 20, 2026 compliance date.
• FDA, frequently asked questions on FSMA - the qualified exemption's average annual food sales test and its majority-sales-to-qualified-end-users condition, included here to establish that it is not an exemption from this rule.
• FDA, FSMA inflation adjusted cut-offs - the published adjusted figures for the Produce Safety Rule thresholds, which is the table that exists for that rule and does not exist for this one.