Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience was small and beginning farmers, producers, processors, and wholesalers statewide.We planned to provide 5 trainings at various locations on O'ahu, and 3 other trainings on outer islands - Maui, Lana'i and Hawai'i Island. The goal of our outer island visits was to include rural sites and small farmers that are not usually reached by mainstream presentations and workshops.This issue is especially significant for areas on neighboring islands that are often overlooked. Our hope was to reach 600 individuals and 15 local organizations.Unfortunately, we were unable to complete all our in-person trainings due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We were able to complete one in-person training on Lana'i and then pivoted to an online format to provide educational content and trainings. Changes/Problems:The COVID-19 pandemic created a significant barrier to completion of our project as initially designed, due to restrictions on both travel and group gatherings. A critical success factor in how we connect with the community is the hosting of in-person gatherings for sharing of stories, food, and information. In order to complete the project, we utilized time afforded by a no-cost extenstion to find ways to limit our in-person interactions.The project addressed this challenge by creating videos to help bring our farmers' voices into the larger community, holding Zoom trainings, and making our booklet publicly accessible. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The focus of this project was the provision of training and educational content for food system partners. Educational opportunities were available at our one in-person training and two live Zoom trainings, and our booklet and educational videos are publicly available on our website. FSMA: Food Safety Through a Cultural Lens - https://www.rootskalihi.com/fsma-food-safety 2021 Booklet Download - https://www.rootskalihi.com/fsma-guide-for-hawaii-growers 2017 Booklet Download - https://www.rootskalihi.com/fsma-through-a-cultural-lens How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?As described above, dissemination has occured directly through in-person and virtual trainings and via our website, and indirectly along partner stakeholder networks. Content has reached our network of food systems, growers, producers, processors, educators and those inspired by the connection they feel to the work they do and the '?ina (land) they cultivate. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Through this project we have strengthened our connection to our community of local farmers and producers, as well as increased our broader reach through online platforms. We expanded our FSMA guide to include place-based content and five cultural concepts based in Native Hawaiian values to enhance local relevance and comprehensibility.We created educational videos to accompany the five cultural concepts, featuring important stories of the past and the voices of our farmers to help educate and inspire students, beginning farmers and a larger community of producers, distributors and consumers. Conduct a process evaluation with pilot program workshop participants to determine workshop series and delivery methodology improvements in addressing the needs of Hawaii`s small and beginning farmers, processors, and wholesalers. To evaluate our prior workshops and educational content, we conducted a survey of prior FSMA traning participants, including what new or additional FSMA-related content to include in our updated curriculum. In total, we reached out to 79 participants from our prior trainings, representing a diveristy of farmers and partner organizations, as well as to 10 new individuals/organizations would could provide insight that would be valuable to our project, such as the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, local farmers, educators, and food system partners.Participants expressed a lot of interest regarding local water rights and regulations, kalo and poi regulations, and growing practices that were specific to the landscapes and the places where they are cultivating produce. Update current community-based curriculum to reflect new FSMA regulations relevant to target community During the project period, we amended our original FSMA curriculum to include updated deadlines related to water usage, and tailored existing content to convey information in more culturally-relevant ways through association with Native Hawaiian concepts (described below). Develop a minimum of 5 specific, locally relevant food commodities or safety issues/practices addressed in the new curriculum based upon feedback provided during the Food Safety Curriculum Development pilot project Our modified curriculum conveys FSMA content using a framework of five Native Hawaiian values: Mo'olelo - Story, tale, myth, history, tradition, literature, legend, journal. This module provides a history of food safety regulation in the United States, an overview of current FSMA regulations, examples of significant food safety cases, and our cultural connections to a safe food system. Maiau - neat and careful in work; skillful, ingenious, expert; correct, careful; thorough, tidy This module utilizes a community voice approach to enhance content delivery, providing food safety best practices from local agricultural leaders today on topics including recordkeeping, storage and equipment, and packing areas, and also articulates the Hawaiian cultural best practices for "safe food." Kuleana - Right, privilege, concern, responsibility, title, business, property, estate, portion, jurisdiction, authority, liability, interest, claim, ownership, tenure, affair, province; reason, cause, function, justification; small piece of property, as within an ahupua'a. This module describes the different roles, responsibilities, and expectations that stakeholders have in the realm of food safety in Hawaii today, and also provides a comparison to the food system structure of early Hawaii. Waiwai - Goods, property, assets, valuables, value, worth, wealth, importance, benefit, estate, use; useful, valuable, rich, costly, financial The module covers FSMA agricultural water information, changes to water quality regulations, tools for testing, regulations for the state of Hawaii, and a brief history at our long fight for water in our islands for over 100 years. Hanauna - Generation; relative whose relationship was established several generations previously; ancestry, birth. This module is a case study of the crop kalo (taro), and describes current federal food safety regulations for kalo (taro) and state regulations for poi production. Disseminate updated curriculum to at least 150 individuals through on-site trainings; 15 local stakeholder organizations; and 600 individuals through broader implementation throughout Hawaii We were able to disseminate our curriculum to our intended target audience, but not in the way we initially intended.The limitations of the pandemic only allowed for one on-site training on the island of Lana?i with 35 farmers in attendance.Our other trainings were held through two Zoom presentations, and our FSMA educational booklet and accompanying videos are publicly available at our website at www.rootskalihi.com.Via direct interaction, we reached 53 individuals through live Zoom trainings, representing a minimum of 21 organizations, and our FSMA website page has been accessed 57 times. Moreover, we provided our educational booklet, Food Safety Modernization Act Guide: A Look at Food Safety Through a Cultural Lens, to multi-sectorial partners statewide, including: food growers including major Oahu farms Kahumana Organic Farms and MA'O Organic Farms; food systems partners such as GoFarm and Farmlink; education sector partners such as the UH Manoa's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) and Department of Urban and Regional Planning, and Leeward Community College; and non-profit partners such as the Oahu Resource Conservation and Development Council and Parents and Children Together (PACT).These partners report distributing our FSMA booklet along their networks, though have not provided specific reach numbers.However, Kahumana Organic Farms works with more than 200 farmers, MA'O Organic Farms trains approximately 200 youth interns per year, and the Oahu Resource Conservation and Development Council works with more than 200 local farmers and ranchers. The curriculum was disseminated to individual farmers, non-profit partners and community stakeholders as follows: Kahumana - 201 farmers MAO - 192 program participants (2020) GoFarm - 100 program participants FarmLink - 80 food system partners CTAHR - 40 staff members DURP - 20 students and faculty LCC - 40 students and faculty RCDC - 225 farmers and ranchers (2019) PACT -30 individuals and families statewide
Publications
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Progress 09/01/18 to 08/31/19
Outputs
Target Audience: The target audience for this project is Hawai`i's small and beginning farmers, processors, and wholesalers. Based on the success of module trainings in the previous project period, the majority of prior participants plan to return for this second round of trainings. Moreover, these participants are utilizing their own personal and professional networks to perform outreach on our behalf, inviting additional small farmers to attend the trainings. Changes/Problems: During our previously-funded FSMA outreach project, we utilized a successful approach to farmer engagement: we held workshops on well-known and -respected farms, utilized locally-grown produce to provide thoughtful food, and created a relaxed and informative evening/afternoon event. This culturally-appropriate and locally normative structure for partner events demonstrates the hosts' care for participants and their time, and signals the depth of the planned conversation and consequently the value of the opportunity. It is a prerequisite to building trust and creating attentiveness and was especially crucial in attracting a hard-to-access target audience of farmers and growers. Although USDA prohibits use of funds of food purchases, we considered this component of the training important enough to its overall success that we have identified alternate funds to support a continuing dinner-and-discussion format. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Module trainings are scheduled to begin in November 2019. This represents a slight delay from our proposed workplan, in which trainings were scheduled to begin in July 2019. However, the priority topics identified by participants, such as water quality and a case study of kalo, required significant additional research to ensure module rigorousness, including archival and primary source research using resources such as the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. Modules will be completed by August 31, 2019. Tentative sites have been identified for upcoming trainings: Oahu (5) - Ho`okua`?ina, University of Hawai`i West Oahu, Kahumana Organic Farm, Mohala Farms, and the Roots Café Lanai (1) - Kipuka Lana`i Farms Molokai (1) - Sust`?inable Moloka`i Hawaii Island (1) - to be determined Outreach is ongoing, and project staff are working with host sites to address logistics. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Modules distribution will begin in November 2019 at in-person trainings, with module content additionally made available for distribution through project partners. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? All trainings will be held during year two of the project. Program participants will complete a post-training quality survey and program staff will modify information delivery as appropriate.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Feedback & Improvement The project steering committee has reviewed feedback from the Pilot Project, and conducted a follow-up survey, to identify best practices for project implementation. These include the following: Continue to host education workshops in a dinner-and-discussion format. Farmers are likelier to attend food safety workshops if they are delivered in a familiar context that evokes equality and camaraderie. Continue to draft modules in digestible sizes and using comprehensible language. Farmers respond favorable to brevity and clarity. Staff will make upcoming workshops more interactive than prior presentations based on many farmers' preferred learning style. Some farmers are resistant or intimidated by federal food safety regulations. Roots staff will emphasize our nonregulatory, third-party capacity to promote farmers' continued engagement with this learning opportunity. Module Modification The project steering committee has reviewed prior modules and determined no updates are necessary. These previously developed modules remain available to local farmers, and relevant content has been incorporated into the introduction and substance of the newly-developed modules. New Modules Project staff have identified five new priority module topics based on participant feedback: History of food safety (honua) Food safety best practices from identified local agricultural leaders (maiau) Our food safety landscape: local buyers, concerns, and regulatory agencies (kuleana) Water quality (waiwai) Kalo as a case study (hanauna) In addition to providing educational content on these topics, staff have increased the cultural relevance of these modules by linking content to indigenous concepts: honua (foundation, fundamental), maiau (meticulousness, tidiness, carefulness in work), kulena (right/responsibility/privilege), waiwai (abundance, as of water), and hanauna (ancestry, birth, relation). This culturally-tailored strategy reinforces and is reinforced by the trust established through our relationship-centered approach to engagement and education, and increases the efficacy of our project.
Publications
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