Produce Farmers Are Food Handlers

Produce Farmers Are Food Handlers! Let’s do it safely and effectively.

Whether your primary goal is to establish or improve produce safety practices on your farm or to pass a food safety audit, a written food safety plan is a critical and helpful business tool. A food safety plan, written specifically for your farm, provides a valuable road map to guide and reinforce practices effectively. It also serves as an effective training tool for employees and reduces workload by identifying risk and focusing food safety practices where they are specifically needed. This hands-on, produce safety class is spread over a 6-week period. Farmers are guided step-by-step through the process of writing a food safety plan. Class time includes practical discussion on scale-appropriate and cost-effective strategies for implementation of food safety practices. Utilizing FamilyFarmed’s food safety plan templates and free online materials, participants create farm maps and perform risk assessments, establish food safety practices and standard operating policies specific to their farm, and create logs and record keeping/traceability systems. Specific training is included to integrate co-management of the farm’s natural resources into the design of the food safety system. Following each week’s session, participants work on writing a section of their food safety plan. The next week’s session will include discussion of the participant’s work and an interactive training on the next section of the plan. The final session includes discussion of participant’s next steps. For some participants this might be a gradual process of implementing food safety, for others it may be fully implementing their plan and operating an audit-ready farm, or the goal might be to pursue a food safety audit or an on-farm readiness review.

Who Will Benefit from Attending?

Fruit and vegetable growers and others interested in learning about on-farm produce safety, the FSMA Produce Safety Rule, Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), and co-management of natural resources with food safety. No previous knowledge or experience is necessary.

The Training Will Cover: 

• Introduction to Produce Safety 
• Land Use, Co-Management, and Animals – Risk Assessments 
• Worker Qualifications and Training –
• Human Health/Hygiene
• Agricultural Chemicals and Soil Amendments
• Agricultural Water
• Animal Control
• Postharvest Handling and Sanitation
• Recordkeeping and Traceability 

Training Schedule:

Tuesday, January 18, 6-8 p.m.

Tuesday, January 25, 6-8 p.m. 

Tuesday, February 1, 6-8 p.m.

Tuesday, February 8, 6-8 p.m.

Tuesday, February 15, 6-8 p.m.

Tuesday, February 22, 6-8 p.m.

Materials to gather before the first class:

3 ring binder 

3 ring hole punch

16 / 3 ring binder separator tabs 

Your Farm Map

REGISTER HERE