PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Standing in the middle of a barren farm field in northern Maine, Greg Porter walks the rows of dirt here with brown paper bags in one hand and white wooden stakes wrapped around his other.

Meticulously, he paces across this farm field, opening each numbered bag as he goes, marking down its location on a spreadsheet so that come harvest time in the fall, he knows exactly what he’s looking at.

Porter is part farmer and part researcher. He studies agriculture at the University of Maine in Presque Isle, a small rural community home to about 8,000 people that once was one of the nation’s largest producers of potatoes. They still produce plenty of spuds here, but Greg Porter isn’t farming potatoes for the money. He’s farming them for the future.

“We’re planting 45,000 different individual varieties of potatoes in this field. 45,000!” he remarked as he pulled out another handful of brown bags from his old GMC pickup truck.

Each brown bag Porter opens is filled with about 50 tubers; they’re essentially tiny potatoes. He and his research team have spent two years raising them in a greenhouse, combining thousands of different variations of potato parents to make potato offspring. Essentially, they’re trying to create the most efficient, most delicious potato out there.

These days though, the work in these fields is taking on new importance. With farmers across the country increasingly facing tougher growing conditions because of climate change, the hope is that somewhere in this field they harvest a new kind of potato that’s more resistant to climate change. Some may be able to tolerate higher temperatures and others may be able to handle more moisture.

“We’re developing DNA-based tools to stack the deck in our favor as we select them,” Porter added.

Last year, the potatoes industry in the United States was worth about $4 billion. All the more reason people like Don Flannery with the Maine Potato Board are paying close attention to the work Greg Porter and his team are doing.

“Potatoes are a high-input crop. It takes a lot of money to raise an acre of potatoes,” Flannery said sitting in his office surrounded by various pieces of potato memorabilia.

Aside from more extreme droughts and rain events, many of the varieties of potatoes being cultivated here need less fertilizer. With inflation and rising fertilizer prices, reducing any kind of costs for farmers could mean the difference between losing money and breaking even.

“If you’re not looking ahead and being proactive you’re usually behind in being reactive. Those that are gonna be successful in our business are the ones looking ahead,” Flannery added.

Back in the field, Porter and his team have started sending their potatoes to farms across the country to see how they hold up to growing conditions in states like Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. The hope is to help potato farmers across this country produce the best tasting, most lucrative crops possible.

“The hope is we produce a few out of our 45,000 that have enough good characteristics that they’re worthy of commercial investment.”

The federal government is making it easier for farmers to grow food as the nation faces record inflation and supply chain issues.

The USDA is allowing farmers to insure a second crop planted and harvested on the same piece of land — a practice known as double or relay cropping.

One farmer in Iowa started planting a second crop back in 2016.

Until this week, it was illegal to insure his second crop — soybeans.

"That's why we have these meetings to help other farms understand what we're doing. That's why we push so hard with the insurance program. I went on my own without insurance. I could handle that, but I know for other farmers to transition they need that crutch," Loran Steinlage said.

The USDA said the goal is to help avoid a food shortage.

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From lettuce to basil, where some of your food comes from could be changing. Indoor vertical farming is gaining traction in the food industry.

“Today we’re at our research and development facility,” Henry Sztul, the chief science officer at Bowery Farming, said.

From seed… "we’re constantly experimenting with different types of seeds,” he said. To germination flats put in a chamber for a few days, to their final home for growing. “What we look for are the leaves starting to be more fully developed.”

The process takes about a month.

“It’s a 25, 30-day grow cycle for the plant, from seed to shelf,” Katie Seawell, the chief commercial officer at Bowery Farming, said.

It’s an efficient process and this facility only shows a small portion of what they are growing

“We are building local indoor smart farms close to the cities that we operate,” Seawell said. She said they are re-imagining agriculture, and controlling every aspect of the growing process.

“We are not susceptible to some of the external variables or factors that can disrupt the supply chain or the growing process for crops,” she explained. “The ability for the current food system to pivot with agility to meet market demand based on market disruption is very, very limited.”

It’s a problem we saw during the pandemic. Disruptions in the food supply chain and transportation, leasing to rotting piles of unsold produce in some states and food shortages in others.

“What kind of opportunities did the pandemic present, I think one of those is food security,” Joshua Craver, an assistant professor of controlled environment horticulture at Colorado State University, said.

However, Craver said this indoor vertical farming isn’t an ideal solution for every crop.

“There are some crops that just don't make a lot of sense in a controlled environment setting...those range from grain crops or orchard crops,” he said.

Another downfall is the lighting needed. “We typically use a lot more energy to grow our crops in vertical farms that we do compared to fields, or even greenhouse production,” AJ Both, a professor at Rutgers University School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, said. Both does research in plant lighting.

“I think that's an area where we still need to do a lot of work, to try to help the vertical farming industry become even more efficient,” he said.

However, control of lighting does have benefits as well, as it gives growers more control over crop growth, all while taking up less space.

“The benefits of that, of course, are that you can grow a lot more plants on the same footprint,” Both said.

“We are taking non-arable land and transforming it into highly productive farms,” Seawell said.

While it may not be the ideal solution for every crop right now, Craver said it’s a valuable addition to the food industry.

“A lot of the ways I like to describe controlled environments and vertical farming is being another tool in our toolbox,” he said.

Back at Bowery, they are continuing to experiment with new crops and provide fresh food for those at a cost comparable to organic foods.

“As we scale…we will want to compete not only at a premium price point but against traditional agriculture prices as well,” Seawell said.

They currently have 13 products in the marketplace, and the capability to grow 365 days a year.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time to be in this space and I think there's real recognition that we have to think differently about how we build resilience and strengthen our local and regional food supply systems. We don't believe we’re the only answer to that, but we believe we are a part, a critical part of that answer.”