TRAIN: Targeted Resources Addressing Identified Needs in Maryland worker food safety training via on-farm piloting of a mixed media toolkit

This project aims to provide small and medium sized farms that grow, harvest, pack and hold covered produce with training and tools to enhance and sustain an operational culture that champions food safety while supporting workers to provide Americans access to a safe, nutritious and secure food supply. The findings from the Maryland Food Safety Network grower survey and OFRR observations further support additional education, training and resources around pre-harvest assessments, general hygiene and sanitizing and dropped covered produce are needed. These observations highlight a gap between supervisors attending PSR training and farm worker long-term food safety practice adoption.The objectives of this project will support statewide collaborations among academic, extension, government and non-government organizations to better support SMFs, beginning farmers and socially disadvantaged farmers who are subject to PSR. They are as follows:1. Convene and continue development of a collaboration of food safety focused entities to provide SMFs that grow, harvest, handle, pack and hold covered produce with training and tools that will improve and maintain an operational culture that supports food safety as well as relevant and effective food safety training for all employees.2. Create educational materials including a Train-the-Trainer (TtT) program for farm supervisors and a Toolkit that supports supervisors in building a culture of food safety in the workplace and provides task-specific training for workers that can address farm-specific identified deficiencies in implementation of food safety protocols.3. Recruit farms and pilot educational materials including the Train-the-Trainer program for farm supervisors and Toolkit for supervisors.4. Evaluate the pilot programs, training delivery methods, and the effectiveness of the Toolkit and TtT to improve worker knowledge and behavior change and farm operations food safety culture, effectiveness of the collaboration, and program outcomes.5. Disseminate project learning and deliverables locally, regionally and nationally.