Revision and Expansion of the Florida "Build Your Own Farm Food Safety Manual" Program

Our overall goal is to reach an expandedaudience of small and medium-sized or beginning farmers through an engaging, problem-based, hands-on curriculum to improve food safety practices while also expanding market access and potential for business growth. After developing foundational knowledge, growers will develop the framework of a written food safety plan tailored to the specifics of their own operation. This goal will be accomplished through the following three objectives:1. Revise existing workshop materials and expand audience. We propose to modify the existing "Build Your Own Farm Food Safety Manual" curriculum to (i) be consistent with FSMA PSR requirements and (ii) incorporate new hands-on and problem-based demonstration sites. Demonstration sites will be developed around a problem-based, or case study, approach that utilizes existing UF facilities including the Suwannee Valley Agricultural Extension Center (demonstration and research farm located in North Florida) and the CREC (demonstration and research groves and packinghouse facility located in central Florida). Briefly, outbreak scenarios will be developed that center around specific issues at the demonstration sites and participants will utilize and expand on knowledge gained through the "Build Your Own Farm Food Safety Manual" training to investigate and identify potential food safety issues in the demonstration food safety plans and/or at the demonstration sites. In order to make this training curriculum more widely available across the state and nationally, flip charts will also be made to capture practices and conditions shown at the demonstration sites so that other trainers can offer these workshops at other locations that may not have equivalent demonstration sites.2. Deliver revised training to expanded audience across Florida. We aim to deliver curriculum to new and broader audiences across Florida and are targeting a total of 200 attendees at 20 one-day workshops (~6.5 hours of instruction and demonstration) over two years. To reach an expanded audience, we will target small farms who may be exempt from Produce Safety Rule requirements, small farms legally exempt from PSR compliance but subject to third-party audits or other buyer-mandated food safety requirements, and small- and medium-sized farms covered under the PSR. To expand training capacity, ten additional agents will be selected to attend an In-Service Training on the delivery of this curriculum. Attending a PSA Grower Training will be a prerequisite for participants; attending a PSA Train-the-Trainer will be a prerequisite for agent training.Delivery of the revised training will consist of three parts. First, small groups of participants will be presented with different outbreak scenarios that center around specific food safety issues in the model food safety plans and/or at the demonstration sites. Once participants are able to identify the source or cause of the contamination, they'll teach the other participants how to correct the practice, procedure, or equipment to resolve the food safety issue and document the corrective action in their model food safety plans. Lastly, participants will develop or refine their own food safety plans from their personal farm or packinghouse based on the knowledge and skills acquired from the hands-on investigations and demonstrations. Ten laptop computers will be available for participants unable to supply their own (from our experience, approximately 50% of participants will be unable to bring their own laptop or tablet) in order to develop a written food safety plan.3. Develop evaluation tools and assess short- and medium-term learning and impact. A formal monitoring and evaluation (M&E) strategy is a critical, interwoven component of the proposed project. Evaluation tools will be developed to assess the extent at which the project is meeting its short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes. The evaluation tools and approaches described below will provide meaningful data to guide the implementation of the project as well as accountability information to the sponsoring agency. Placing special emphasis throughout the process in managing the evaluation and meeting the evaluation standards grouped under utility, feasibility, propriety, and accuracy (Yarbrough et al., 2011), the project evaluator, will implement four Tasks: 1) Engage stakeholders to maintain a responsive and focused evaluation program; 2) Collect relevant M&E data of project's activities and products; 3) Analyze and interpret data to establish the quality, effectiveness, and impact of the project; and 4) Report and share evaluation findings and recommendations with key stakeholders. All the evaluation and monitoring activities will be conducted with a focus on the utilization of results (NSF, 2002; Patton, 2008).