Practical Tools For Food Safety On Small Diversified Fruit and Vegetable Farms

Overall Goal: This project will deliver customized training to diverse, small-to-mid-sized fruit and vegetable growers who have limited or no prior experience with food safety, while also increasing the capacity of partner organizations to continue food safety education and outreach through existing staff and programs beyond the grant period.Objectives:Objective 1: Coordination. Planning team from 5 partner organizations will coordinate all project planning and implementation steps, including coordination with the Regional Food Safety Center at the University of Florida.Objective 2: Develop new and adapted materials for consultations, workshops, conference sessions, and online platforms that are specific to small-to-mid size diversified vegetable farms and appropriate for farmers from of various cultural backgrounds, literacy levels, and language groups.Objective 3: Build practical and functional food safety knowledge for operators of small-to-mid size diversified vegetable farms,
with an emphasis on beginning, veteran, socially disadvantaged and refugee farmers.Objective 4: Strengthen the capacity of program staff to train produce growers to meet the regulatory requirements of FSMA and to use appropriate instructional and curricular skills for the target audience.Objective 5: Outreach. Statewide public information campaign will a) educate farmers and consumers on the importance of food safety in local food distribution and b) highlight opportunities and resources for farmers to increase their practical knowledge of food safety.Objective 6: Dissemination. New and adapted resources will be shared through various platforms accessible to farmers and to service providers across a broad landscape of projects around the state, region, and nation.Objective 7: Certification. Farmers seeking certification will receive technical and financial support from the project team.Objective 8: Tracking & Evaluation. Document project outputs and outcomes among participating
projects and farmers.