Phyte Farmer

A significant portion of the population of Toliman Prime works as phyte  farmers, supplying all of Alpha Centauri with their favorite foodstuff. The system has a neverending appetite for the algae-like organism, and they are happy to provide.
In the 80 or so years of civilization on Toliman Prime, the techniques used to farm phytes have changed greatly. Early settlers indiscriminantly scraped phytes off the rocks, just hoping to by luck end up with a tasty collection of microbes. With time, however, more and more species were catalogued. People learned more about their properties, both biologically and culinarily speaking. Today, phyte farming is a deliberate process, building on years of data and experience.
The work of a phyte farmer has many aspects. Firstly, there is the physical one. Fields need to be seeded with phyte strains and eventually harvested. Much of this process has been mechanized, large harvesting machines are capable of scraping strips of rock up to 15 meters wide at a time.
Everything a farmer does needs to be informed by a solid understanding of microbiology. Phyte species are extremely hard, if not impossible, to distinguish by eye. Instead, to check that the right organisms are growing on a field, samples are taken and analyzed with microscopes and chemical methods. Only an understanding of the conditions under which certain species do or do not flourish allows farmers to encourage the growth of desired and supress the growth of undesired species.
Lastly, phyte farming has a large culinary component. Knowing how to control the growth of phytes is well and good, but pointless without knowing which species to grow. Farmers carefully curate the species composition of their phyte colonies to control the wide range of complex flavors the organism is so well known for. Often the initial processing of the harvested slime is also on the farms themselves. The exact process with which it is dried also impacts the flavor and texture of the product and so adds another layer of complication.

See Also

Type

Agricultural / Fishing / Forestry