As part of the Local Food Safety Collaborative (LFSC), the National Young Farmers Coalition staff worked with farmers and partners to bring produce safety trainings to small, diversified farmers around the country. In that process, we’ve been lucky to see so many of your innovative food safety farm hacks, hear your struggles with prioritizing food safety while managing a growing farm, been humbled by your dedication, and felt called to find solutions that work for the farms you run. We hope that we–and this website–can serve as a resource for you as you grow your businesses and find ways to improve food safety on your farms.
Food Safety Fellowship
Young Farmers is launching the Food Safety Fellowship to train farmers in on-farm food safety and support them as they develop resources and educational opportunities for their community of growers.
The Guidebook
This guidebook is intended for small-scale, direct marketing non-sprout produce farmers who mostly sell locally and want to improve their produce safety practices. Because this is a group of growers that are usually considered “not covered” or “qualified exempt” from the Produce Safety Rule, they were struggling to find applicable and clear resources specifically geared toward their farms. We wanted to make sure they had the information and tools for interpreting the Rule and implementing changes on their operations.
ONLINE RESOURCE LIBRARY
This online resource library is filled with supporting resources to accompany our guidebook, but will be expanded to include other resources as well. We hope these resources equip growers with the basics to improve food safety on their farm: training agendas, template standard operating procedures (SOPs), specific options for wildlife management, suggestions for how to set up a washing station, and much more.
For COVID-19 food safety resources, click here.
FOOD SAFETY TRAININGS
We conduct produce safety trainings around the country. Additionally, there are many other organizations that provide trainings to meet compliance or just improve your food safety know-how.
Interested in joining our 2020 Food Safety Farmer Focus Groups?