Recipient Organization
THIRD SECTOR NEW ENGLAND, INC.
89 S ST STE 700
BOSTON,MA 02111
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Many wholesale buyers are requiring FSMA [Food Safety Modernization Act] compliance even for Exempt and Qualified Exempt producers. This creates a barrier to entry into the wholesale marketplace for new and beginning producers and small-scale producers as they work to expand their businesses. Through this proposal, New Entry staff will provide a pathway to FSMA compliance for small and mid-sized specialty crop producers. This proposal supports equity for small and mid-sized socially disadvantaged, limited resource and beginning farmers' ability to access markets by providing both education and certification of training opportunities to FSMA Exempt and Qualified Exempt specialty crop producers who are interested in scaling up their operations. New Entry's core farmer training staff have recently completed FSMA/PSA Produce Safety Alliance trainer status and are qualified to teach FSMA Produce Safety Rule Grower Training to farmers in unconventional educational settings. This project will increase accessibility for underserved producers to receive appropriately tailored food safety learning opportunities using novel adult-learner pedagogical approaches.Our proposal will support the growth and expansion of existing food safety education and outreach programs already offered locally by New Entry to our 400+ graduates and incubator farmers. FSOP support will allow New Entry to revise and create new curriculum that promotes FSMA PSR compliance and enable our existing programs to reach a broader target audience with our enhanced FSMA food safety products including case studies, which will be developed by and provided as technical assistance to our National Incubator Farm Training Initiative (NIFTI) Network of approximately 200 training sites and our National Agricultural Apprenticeship Learning Network (AgALN) of 70 participants allowing us to expand our food safety training to new audiences nationally. Funding will enable us to continue existing technical assistance activities with local farmers and existing education and training curricula to be modified to ensure they are consistent with new FSMA rules and ensure they meet the needs of expanded audiences. Funding will also allow us to partner with the Conservation Law Foundation to build regional legal resources and train regional attorneys to support farmers working to meet FSMA PSR compliance standards. All these activities will allow us to expand FSOP Pilot activities.New Entry's mission is to improve our local and regional food systems by training the next generation of farmers to produce food that is sustainable, nutritious, safe, and culturally-appropriate and make this food accessible to individuals regardless of age, mobility, ethnicity, or socio-economic status. In doing this work, we provide critical training, career development, and economic opportunity to new farmers. In 1998, New Entry formed to assist immigrants and refugees with farm backgrounds to transition their home country knowledge to begin farming in the US. We were the first Massachusetts farm service provider to offer training to socially disadvantaged farmers. In 2007, we expanded our target audience to all interested individuals who wanted to enter commercial agriculture and New Entry now operates one of the most comprehensive multi-year land-based training programs in the country that takes beginning farmers from start-up through to establishing independent operations, with an average of 67% of farmers still farming after 5 years. Our geographic target area for state-wide training is Eastern Massachusetts. We leverage on-the-ground local land-based programming and expertise to share best practices with national training programs. New Entry was awarded a National Glynwood Harvest Award in 2006, received a Why Hunger Harry Chapin Year award in 2008, a Harvard Pilgrim Foundation "Community Hero" Award and a USDA FSA Collaboration Award in 2013.Each year, New Entry serves over 400 producers through our core training programs which we infuse with food safety curriculum and over 2,000 families through our Food Hub produce distribution program. New Entry staff also provide over 300 hours of annual one-on-one direct technical assistance. Our New Entry Food Hub supplies a 300-member CSA and serves low-income families and seniors with access to fresh, healthy, locally produced fruits and vegetables. It also provides post-harvest and aggregation TA to producers. We also provide individual technical assistance in farm financial/business analysis; access to capital, equipment, and facilities; leadership development; and planning for farm ownership. These programs help reduce the barriers to starting a farm business and address the skills needed in enterprise production and business management, access to land, labor, capital and markets, and the ongoing support systems as they launch their farms.New Entry's farmer participants are from all over the world (Cambodia, Cameroon, Haiti, Ukraine, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Somalia, Vietnam, India, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the USA) and include socially disadvantaged, underserved, and limited resource producers. New Entry's target audience are primarily aspiring and prospective farmers, start-up and beginning farmers, and establishing farmers. Most are farming or want to farm on small acreage near peri-urban or suburban communities. On average, approximately 50% of beginning farmers participating in our programs are economically disadvantaged; 52% of participants are women and 38% are immigrants and refugees. Many are veterans. Most meet priority target areas for 2014 NAREEAB. All are small scale: our specialty crop producers mostly farm less than 5 acres and our livestock producers generally manage fewer than 30 acres of pasture and forage. Most producers are leasing, licensing, or renting small acreage close to communities of Greater Boston and Middlesex County where farmland is rare and costly, making it imperative to have strong, direct market connections and a solid farm business strategy to succeed.New Entry also manages several national beginning farmer networks and capacity building programs for the sustainable agriculture sector.New Entry employs rigorous methods for involvement of farmer stakeholders in ongoing curriculum development and programming. These methods include ongoing surveys through our annual farmer survey and post-evaluation activities after any education or outreach activity, collection of ongoing requests from farmers during our 300 annual hours of direct technical assistance and through farmers who serve in an advisory capacity during focus groups and listening sessions. Partners also serve to provide outreach support.
Animal Health Component
(N/A)
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
(N/A)
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
•Objective 1: Develop new and enhance existing New Entry food safety curriculum modules to include FSMA/PSR-compliant education and training materials.•Objective 2: Support new and beginning producers to complete 8-hr FSMA Produce Safety Rule grower training testing new and innovative educational delivery methods.•Objective 3: Implement outreach activities that enhance FSMA/PSR understanding and compliance for new and beginning specialty crop producers across Massachusetts and through our National Team's efforts with the National Incubator Farm Training Initiative Network and the National Ag Apprenticeship Learning Network. Outreach activities will include translation services as required.•Objective 4: Implement direct technical assistance for new and beginning farmers on our incubator farms, on our graduates' farms, and at the New Entry Food Hub. Direct technical assistance activities will include but not be limited to: farm site visits to assess compliance and support compliance remediation; technical assistance with quality control, bookkeeping including invoicing systems for traceability, and other communication around food safety during produce delivery windows at the New Entry Food Hub; one-on-one support for creation of individual food safety plans. Direct technical assistance will include translation services as required to ensure that socially disadvantaged farmers are not left behind by the Produce Safety Rule.•Objective 5: Create, implement and document the steps of a FSMA/PSR Compliant Food Hub Safety Plan for our New Entry Food Hub in a case study.•Objective 6: Create, implement and document the steps of a FSMA/PSR Compliant Food Safety Plan for our New Entry incubator farm training sites in a case study.•Objective 7: Improve the training capacity of New Entry staff through ongoing FSMA training and participation in NECAFS regional learning groups for key New Entry staff to increase our organizational capacity to teach the FSMA Produce Rule and Preventative Controls to new and beginning specialty crop producers across Massachusetts.•Objective 8: Conservation Law Foundation will improve legal understanding by New England farmers and local food aggregators of FSMA Produce Safety Rule (PSR) and Preventative Controls Rule (PCR) as FSMA regulations are implemented in New England over the next year. The target audience for educational activities will be small farmers who are exempt and qualified exempt but interested in scaling up their production, and needing answers to basic questions about how to create and implement food safety systems that meet or exceed FSMA PSR, as well as local food aggregators who will no longer be exempt as they implement FSMA PCR.•Objective 9: Conservation Law Foundation will also improve legal understanding of FSMA PSR and PCR regulations by New England attorneys interested in supporting the target audience of exempt and qualified exempt farmers who will require guidance in scaling up their operations, to prepare for operations that will no longer be FSMA PSR exempt/qualified exempt and support aggregator compliance with PCR as well.
Project Methods
Methods:The specialty crop stakeholders who support this project include regional Food Safety TA Partners who have provided opportunities to New Entry staff to become some of the first regional TA providers who are PSA certified FSMA PSR Leader Trainer (Justin Chase) and PSA certified FSMA PSR Trainer (Juliette Enfield) for the Produce Safety Rule, as well as PSA FSMA PSR Grower Trainer (Alex Matthews our Incubator Farm Manager and farm education coach). NECAFS has expressed support for New Entry staff to take a lead role in food safety training for the farming community in eastern MA and MA generally. A number of New Entry graduates and incubator farmers as well as other growers who market food through the New Entry Food Hub are also supportive of the project and are anxiously anticipating the opportunity to receive support from New Entry staff in receiving food safety training to improve their businesses.In order to support socially disadvantaged and limited resource producers gaining equitable access to New Entry FSMA training opportunities proposed in this grant, we are allocating money for translation services for a number of our Khmer speaking Cambodian farmers and we will provide scholarships as needed for students to attend workshops and classes for which New Entry normally charges a nominal fee for participation. Translation services support direct technical assistance during farm visits, office visits, courses and workshops, as well as Food Hub technical assistance for farmers.Other beneficiaries will be the over 150 farmers each year who take one of New Entry's courses, which will be infused with FSMA compliance education. These include Explore Farming, Farm Business Planning Course, Direct Market Education Course, Crop Production Course, and new curriculum that we propose to develop as part of this proposal. Other beneficiaries will include MA farmers who receive necessary training to become FSMA compliant in order to access wholesale markets that require PSA grower training, or some other similar training to be able to sell to their establishment. New Entry is committed to not allowing FSMA compliance become a barrier to expanded market access for MA producers.Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources' Food Safety Chief Regulator Michael Bothelo, has put Massachusetts in front in the race to understand FSMA, and we feel confident that he will point New Entry and others interested in supporting compliance in the Massachusetts farming community in the right direction towards preparing farmers to grow and handle food safely and to access greater markets throughout Massachusetts by becoming FSMA compliant.Techniques to be employed will include outreach and training sessions lead by New Entry Farmer Training Team staff including PSA FSMA PSR trained staff members Justin Chase, Juliette Enfield, and Alex Matthews [Incubator Farm Food Safety Officer]. The farmer training team staff will also provide one on one FSMA food safety technical assistance throughout the year for farmers [classroom, on-farm]. Juliette Enfield is also our Curriculum Development Coordinator and will additionally be focused on development of new and enhancement of existing curriculum. New Entry Food Hub Team staff including Tony Grasso [Food Hub Food Safety Officer] and Danielle West will provide FSMA food safety technical assistance through the New Entry Food Hub to farmers selling to the Food Hub. Lindsay Davies, the National Networks Manager for New Entry will both provide guidance to a national audience of farmers and will direct inquiries to New Entry resource pages, technical assistance providers, and as appropriate Food Hub or Farmer Training Team staff. She will also direct planning and advertising for a NIFTI post-national conference Train of Trainers session by Produce Safety Alliance. Legal Questions will be directed to Conservation Law Foundation. Legal outreach sessions will be led by sub-awardee Conservation Law Foundation. 2-Day Train of Trainers FSMA PSR session at the National Farm Incubator Training Initiative post-conference will be led by sub-awardee Produce Safety Alliance.New Entry seeks to build capacity to develop new educational materials and curriculum to incorporate the new FSMA Produce Rule for exempt and qualified exempt producers to develop a pathway toward compliance as they scale their operations. The development of these training materials is a one-time expense that will require updating as the new FSMA rules are adopted and interpreted. We seek grant funding to initiate the existing regulatory roll-out and we will continue to incorporate new information as needed into the curriculum. While we can charge training or workshop fees to defray some of the costs of the training program once developed, the individual technical assistance provided to small-scale, limited resource, underserved, immigrant or refugee growers who may require additional support to develop food safety plans will likely continue to need external funding. New Entry can seek corporate sponsorships, other philanthropic resources, and explore fee-for-service, to continue to provide business technical assistance to growers in the areas of food safety. The Food Hub's food safety plan can be maintained and updated in a self-sustaining manner once the initial plan and facility upgrades are accomplished through ongoing earned revenues on specialty crop produce sales.