Building Foundations of Food Safety for Beginning Produce Growers

The goal of this project is to deliver specialized food safety educational programming to beginning fruit and vegetable producers with special emphasis on Plain (Amish and Old Order Mennonite) and urban producers.Obj. 1: Develop a general introductory food safety curriculum for beginning growers in NYSWe will create a curriculum that may include slide sets, written/pictorial handouts of SOPs, and hands-on activities to use during beginning farmer trainings by us and for county and regional extension educators. With many new/beginning farmer training programs, farm food safety is often left out. Despite the daunting appearance of this topic for people learning about farming, reducing microbial risk is best learned when taught at this stage of farming.Obj. 2: Adapt existing food safety practice educational material to the needs of Plain and urban beginning growers.2.1. Resources for Plain growers. A team of extension educators will reach out to farmers in the target groups and listen to their thoughts on what food safety practices mean and to evaluate their attitudes, understanding of, and barriers for implementation on their farms. A culturally appropriate curriculum will be developed with input from an advisory committee to use for food safety outreach during meetings and on-farm visits to produce farms within the Plain community.2.2. Resources for urban growers. The project team, with feedback from urban growers in the advisory group, will develop urban grower resources at the necessary cultural and literacy level (including translation and the use of diagram/picture-only materials.Obj. 3: Provide technical assistance to support food safety practice adoption on individual farmsWe will conduct farm and produce auction visits with beginning growers, including Plain and urban farmers, to assess food safety needs, provide personalized farm food safety improvement recommendations, and support on-going follow up with standard operating procedures (SOPs) and practices.Obj. 4: Deliver adapted food safety trainings to produce auction farmers in Plain communitiesFollowing our individual outreach with farms (Obj. 3), we will identify Plain communities in which covered farms are in need of formal FSMA PSR trainings. We will offer two trainings, one in Northern NY and another in Western NY, using materials we developed in our previous FSOP grant and the Penn State Plain Sect FSMA resources (see Previous Work) to deliver the training without technology if desired by the community.Obj. 5: Offer food safety workshops to urban growers on subjects of topical interestBased on needs identified by urban growers and extension educators on our advisory committee, we will offer in-person small group and virtual food safety workshops geared toward urban growers. Topics may include irrigation water management and determining quality of post-harvest water for small-scale efficient wash-pack areas, worker and volunteer training, and pest (rat) management. Neighborhood outreach to help reduce pedestrian/pet intrusion and watch/notification of nighttime congregation of individuals.