Latino Immigrant Farm-owner Education on Food Safety (LIFE)

The LIFE goal is to provide food safety information, training and technical assistance to underserved farmers at different stages of development. The objectives correspond to different stages of farm business development, providing training and assistance appropriate to each stage.1. Educate 25 aspiring farmers who are preparing to launch farm businesses at ALBA. These participants participate in the Farmer Education Course, the first step in ALBA's program toward launching a farm business. Designated sessions will be devoted to food safety, including demonstrations and opportunities to apply these practices in the field.2. Facilitate GAPs implementation and food safety certification for 35 start-up farms. Farms will gain knowledge and assistance in complying with ALBA's Food Safety Plan, preparing them for third-party audits to obtain certification. ALBA will ensure ongoing compliance through hands-on supervision and monitoring on record-keeping and in the field.3. Provide training to at 60 more underserved (Latino or small-scale) farms in the region. Be they alumni or other underserved farmers, ALBA will hold 2 off-site bi-lingual FSMA-mandated workshops for regional farms. At these events, ALBA will distribute compliance tools which were developed under previous USDA projects and distribute a questionnaire to gather feedback on challenges and needed assistance. This information will be used it to develop a service strategy in the following years.4. Strengthen capacity of ALBA to provide food safety assistance to underserved farms. ALBA has already hired new staff and called on senior staff to serve on the new Food Safety Management Team. Under LIFE, the team will receive on-site and off-site training and shadow our food safety consultant as they gain familiarity with their new roles. The team will also develop a food safety assistance strategy to expand outreach to underserved farms.