Inside the people and products that call the USDA’s Western Research Center home
Bill Orts fetches me from inside the marble-clad lobby where I’ve been waiting. The room has high ceilings and a reception desk that’s behind a glass pane, reminiscent of an old decorated train station. Orts, the acting director of the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif., is going to give me a tour of the facility, an archetypal government complex that overlooks Interstate 80 just north of Berkeley. He’s dressed more like a San Francisco hipster at an indie concert than a 27-year veteran of the research center: frayed dark jeans and an oversize knit sweater worn over an undershirt, topped by a mop of now-gray hair.
As soon as he greets me, Orts begins pointing. Frozen foods, he tells me matter-of-factly as he motions toward a commemorative plaque, were invented in the basement. Food flavor compounds were discovered down the hall. As I’ll learn during my visit, more world-changing inventions have escaped this bland government building than the average incubator house in Silicon Valley. They just might change how I think about waste.
Scientific posters line the hallways at the USDA building in Albany, Calif. Xavier Martinez
Driven by results: the USDA’s strategic plan
As we exit the lobby, the marbled walls fade away into a wide hallway draped in white. Orts’ shoes clack on the cold linoleum. We enter a narrow stairwell and wind our way to his office on the second floor. The East Bay sun shines through a window into the sparsely-decorated room, eventually settling on a large conference table. Orts picks up a litany of items from a shelf and, one-by-one, places them on the table.
“Have you seen the sliced apples you can get when you go to McDonald’s?” he asks as he sets down a package of fine powder. “That [technology] came out of our building. The fourth door on the left.” Dominic Wong, a long-time USDA scientist, runs that lab down the corner. He created an enzyme that helps preserve sliced apples and other fruit.
Next up is a small plastic cup with green lettering, the same kind that I often drink out of at hip fast food restaurants in California. It’s the original biodegradable cup, Orts says, created at the USDA’s lab using plant starch.
Products made from organic material sit on a table. They were all produced at the USDA building. Xavier Martinez
These innovations come from a healthy mix of in-house USDA researchers and external groups (think private companies and UC Berkeley students). As the long-time research leader in the center’s bioproducts division, Orts has shepherded along much of these projects. He says that his goal is ultimately to ensure that scientific discoveries are delivered to the world in a way that maximizes influence.
“We're supposed to answer the question: what is the best route to actually have the biggest impact,” Orts explains. “You can always publish [an academic paper] and it's going to reach the widest audience. But is that going to have the highest impact?”
Evidently not. Over the next two hours, we’ll see three laboratories who have their sights set on taking their scientific discoveries out of the office and into the hands of everyday people.
Where the rubber meets the laboratory
We leave Orts’ office and walk down another wide corridor. Along the way, he points out the scientific publications that decorate the hallway like concert posters in a college dormitory. While the publications have been impactful, he says, the best research will make its way off the paper or poster board.
“We publish our failures. Publishing is only one-third or one-half of our day,” Orts says.
The first scientist we speak with exemplifies this mindset. Orts barges into the laboratory of Colleen McMahan, a longtime USDA scientist who is working to produce rubber from alternative sources.
I got to the USDA facility on tires made of rubber, McMahan is quick to remind me. “Rubber is vital, strategic, and irreplaceable,” she says.
But natural rubber is almost always imported from Southeast Asia, where rubber trees are native. This has forced producers to use more synthetic rubber, which is frequently made of petroleum byproducts. This supply issue, coupled with the fact that US law requires that all tires be made of some natural rubber, has led scientists to research ways to naturally produce the material in the US.
Guayule grows in a greenhouse on top of the USDA building in Albany, Calif. Xavier Martinez
Enter guayule, a small shrub native to the southwestern US that happens to contain high amounts of rubber. McMahan and her team have been tasked with maximizing the rubber that can be produced by the guayule plant. To do so, they manipulated the DNA of the plant – the first time scientists had been able to do so. McMahan says that this technology pays dividends when it comes to helping people who use rubber, along with farmers who produce guayule for large-scale use.
“The main thing that we’re doing here that nobody else is doing is plant biotech,” she says. “We're trying to help make farmers more profitable by ensuring that the [guayule] plants have higher yield.”
Since the vast majority of the world’s rubber is used to produce tires, the project’s end goal has always been to create a tire made of guayule-sourced rubber. A partnership between McMahan’s lab and Cooper Tire company has taken years of work and upwards of 10 different prototypes. But recently, the tire company was able to produce a tire made entirely out of rubber sourced from the high-yield guayule that McMahan’s lab created. The results aren’t confined to the laboratory: the tire company will likely be able to sell a tire with 75% of the rubber derived from guayule within the next five years.
Colleen McMahan crouches next to a tire made with rubber sourced from the guayule plant. Xavier Martinez
“It's green design coming from a couple of places: one from computation and then the other one just from the principles of green chemistry,” McMahan says.
Horse hooves and Fauci posters
Orts leads me up some stairs and down the hall to the lab of William Hart-Cooper, a research chemist who Orts describes as one of the brightest young scientists in the building. Immediately, my nose is pummeled by the acidic smell of a spice that I can’t quite put a name to. In the corner, behind a large hood from which the smell seems to be emanating, Hart-Cooper mixes a pale yellow liquid.
“He’s creating antibiotics that fall apart,” Orts says matter of factly as he introduces me to Hart-Cooper, who in 2021 was a finalist for the USDA’s Service to America medal.
William Hart-Cooper holds a bottle of cumin seed oil. Xavier Martinez
The scientist himself provides a more in-depth explanation about his research, telling me that the liquid he is mixing– which uses cumin seed oil, the origin of the strong scent – is used to remove ulcer-causing bacteria from the hooves of cows.
Hart-Cooper’s chemical solution is cheap: a kilogram costs as little as $10 to produce. To protect their cattle, farmers combine a nearly insignificant amount of the chemical with water, which produces a medicine that Hart-Cooper says is as strong as synthetic antibiotics.
His solution is a better alternative to those antibiotics, which he says often lose their effect as bacteria develop drug resistance. As a result, many farmers have taken to using a solution of copper to prevent cow hoof ulcers– but copper has its own downsides.
“Copper is a heavy metal that ends up in the soil. It pollutes the land. It doesn't go anywhere and can cause a lot of other [environmental and health] issues,” Hart-Cooper tells me. “This product is an alternative to that.”
The magic of Hart-Cooper’s invention is what happens after the medicine is applied to the cows hooves. Hart-Cooper’s studies have revealed that the molecules of medicine break themselves apart after a short time, leaving no trace.
In his lab, William Hart-Cooper pours cumin seed oil into a mixture to create an antibiotic. Xavier Martinez
His work extends outside of the bovine world: Hart-Cooper works with UC Berkeley’s botanical garden to help test other plant-based materials for Method, which makes soaps and other household cleaning products. And he has high hopes for his work in the future, aiming to apply his chemical expertise to crop protection and other types of veterinary medicine.
While Orts has nothing but good things to say about his research, he jokes that Hart-Cooper’s greatest contribution to the research center is the fact that he was once featured on a poster with Dr. Anthony Fauci.
From the kitchen, to the closet, to the government’s basement: Mango Materials
Orts leads me to yet another stairwell, where we descend two sets of stairs into the basement. Along the way, he tells me more about the USDA’s partnership strategy.
Many projects are a team effort between a company and government scientists. But sometimes, a company just needs a space to work and access to machinery. At any given time, the organization houses about 10 private companies or external researchers who are pursuing work that is in line with the USDA’s values.
Mango Materials, founded in 2010 by three female PhD students, is a shining example. The company, which creates an eco-friendly plastic, was operating out of an apartment kitchen when co-founder Molly Morse approached Orts at a meeting in 2012.
“We said ‘Our house is your house.’ Anything in this building you can use, as long as you have the grant money to stay here.” Orts said.
The team, at that time less than ten people strong, quickly moved into a closet-turned-office at the USDA building. Orts jokingly describes the small room as the company’s first corporate headquarters.
Over a decade later, the team is still in the building (albeit in a real laboratory, and with some of the 40 company employees housed at different offices). We enter into a motley arrangement of decorations, experiments, and computers. Employees sit at lab counters, using them as makeshift cubicles. Massive checks decorate the walls, a testament to the multitude of grants and awards the company has received since it was founded.
Maria Ponce displays a $630,000 prize that Mango Materials won in 2012. This prize, in part, allowed the company to set up shop at the USDA. Xavier Martinez
I’m introduced to Joe Lampe, the company’s fermentation director. He explains that the company takes methane, a greenhouse gas that is more destructive to the environment than carbon dioxide, from human waste at sewage plants. Through a complex fermentation process, the company produces a biodegradable rubber. Lampe tells me about the multiple environmental benefits of Mango Material’s products.
“We’re diverting a greenhouse gas from going into our atmosphere. That’s one major benefit. The other is the life of [the plastic],” Lampe says, referring to the fact that the plastic is then biodegradable.
Lampe motions to my right, where a picture of a sewage plant, the one in Redwood City, Calif. where the company receives their methane, decorates a cork board which is otherwise dotted with inside jokes and messages of encouragement.
Joe Lampe and Maria Ponce display sunglass frames and plastic thread produced with methane emissions. Xavier Martinez
These plastics can be used in place of ones that are derived from petroleum byproducts, Lampe tells me as he models a fashionable pair of bioplastic-framed sunglasses. But what’s most exciting is the possibility of using this type of material in place of micro plastics that are found in many clothes and fishing lines; these often end up in the ocean and take decades to decompose, whereas the plastic made by Mango Materials does so much faster.
“Plastic bottles look scary in pictures, but it’s actually the microfiber that’s more dangerous,” Lampe says.
Company co-founder Anne Schafer-Giminez sits inside her office tucked inside the lab. She has only positive things to say about the company’s partnership with the USDA.
“Our relationship has been great. It’s helped us maintain a lean atmosphere while still getting a lot of work done,” Schauer-Gimenez says.
The relaxed atmosphere is evident. Schauer-Gimenez playfully thanks Orts for “crashing the party” and we go on our way.
Strategic investment, strategic consumption
Before I know it, three hours have passed and Orts has to get to another meeting. He walks me toward the door, telling me more about the economics of choosing projects to fund.
Even when made in an eco-friendly fashion, products still have trade offs. Sustainability, biodegradability, and durability are all factors that are constantly at flux. Orts gives the example that single-use plastic cups that are produced locally may require less carbon for someone to use than a reusable cup made on the other side of the world.
It’s evident that these considerations play a large role in which products the USDA decides to support. Rubber from plants native to the US, plastics from local greenhouse gas emissions, medicine made from organic, low-cost materials— the list goes on.
Orts believes that everyone can benefit from a mindset that weighs these trade-offs. After all, it’s everyday people who are the consumers of the products that the USDA sends out to the world.
“If anyone thinks they know the answers then they haven’t asked all the questions,” Orts says.
Bill Orts walks through a laboratory at the USDA building in Albany, Calif. Xavier Martinez
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Xavier Martinez is a senior at Stanford who is passionate about incorporating big data into everyday journalism. Originally from Wenatchee, Washington, he enjoys learning about and reporting on issues like agricultural labor, immigration, and rural governance. Outside of the classroom, Xavier likes to try new restaurants in the Bay Area and explore the Santa Cruz mountains.
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