Progress 09/01/19 to 02/28/22
Outputs
Target Audience:The US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), published in fall of 2015, focuses on preventing contamination and has a tiered compliance timeline. Very small producers with between $25,000 and $250,000 in annual revenue must comply with portions of these new regulations beginning in 2020. Beginning farmers may have difficulty acquiring required food safety training to be compliant with FSMA, especially considering that many small farmers farm only part-time in addition to other employment, may farm at a different location than their home address, or may face sociocultural or language barriers to joining established networks of producers and food safety professionals. While helpful to a degree, existing food safety training media (such as videos) sometimes used by producers to train employees have three main drawbacks regarding their relevance to small farmers in Iowa: 1) They often depict advanced produce washing technology that many small farm operations may lack; 2) They are disconnected from the local food system and thus might not reference relevant local institutions, organizations, regulations, and examples; 3) They may not be up to date with the FSMA regulations with which farmers need to be compliant. Even after adequate food safety training in compliance with FSMA has been completed by small farmers, the costs of implementing some corrective measures may be prohibitive for those producers and thus prevent them from expanding or developing their operations within the local economy. Additionally, the food safety record keeping required by FSMA asks farmers to add daily management tasks to their already-busy schedules. This suggests the need for efficient, effective, and streamlined digital record management tools accessible to beginning small farmers so that they are able to interpret and utilize their data to make smart in-season decisions. While this data is undoubtedly useful to an individual farmer, there valuable potential for more systematic aggregation of individual farm data to the institutional level that would allow food safety professionals at the state level (such as the Iowa Food Safety Professionals Network) to track trends, ultimately enabling more focused and directed outreach and education efforts. Changes/Problems:The largest challenge of the project was the delay in funds being released for the project. Iowa Valley RC&D received word that the award was made in September 2019 but Iowa Valley RC&D was delayed in starting the project because USDA NIFA didn't release funding in order to be reimbursed for work completed on the project until March 2020. Our understanding was the change of NIFA Staff and change of office locations to Kansas City creating an administrative bottleneck for new projects at NIFA during this time. The delay in funding greatly impacted the timeline of the project. Iowa Valley RC&D was going to hire a new Food Safety Associate position and recruit the first group of participants in the Clean Start Food Safety Coaching Program in fall 2019. The goal was to start the first Coaching program in the off season during the winter of 2020. Iowa Valley RC&D wasn't able to hire the Food Safety Associate position and thus did not start the coaching program without the ability to draw down funds. This delay hindered the project and required project staff to start the first round of the coaching program during the winter of 2020 and 2021. This required the project team to complete two rounds of the coaching program in 2021. The first round was at the beginning of 2021 and the second was the fall of 2021 at the end of the growing season. The project was dependent on the Iowa growing season to provide on-farm technical assistance and content creation with real world examples during the growing season. The second challenge of the project was the COVID-19 pandemic. When funds were available to be drawn down in March of 2020 is when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Iowa Valley RC&D stalled all the organization's projects and began to work remotely. The organization also decided to put a hold on all new hires during this time. In May Iowa Valley RC&D accessed funding through the Payroll Protection Program to sustain staffing and adapt projects to virtual activities. In August 2020 after the Payroll Protection Program had ended and Iowa Valley RC&D staff had adapted programming to the pandemic Claire Zabel was hired as the Food and Farm Specialist to fill the Food Safety Associate position in our FSOP project. Zabel's first day was August 12th when a historic derecho storm hit Iowa. Eastern Iowa farms and communities in Iowa Valley's service area were hit by straight line winds that had a peak speed of 120 MPH. In the fall of 2020, after Claire Zabel had been hired to fill the food safety associate role in the project, staff wrapped up the design and creation of materials for the Clean Start Coaching program and began recruiting the first round of participants. The Clean Start program was divided into two sessions held during 2021. This maximized the amount of personal attention coaches could provide for each participant farm. The first group of Clean Start participants completed the program from January through May. The second group of Clean Start farmer participants completed the program from August through December. Each time frame had its own challenges, but as coaches we felt we were able to spend more quality coaching time with each participant in the January to May session and that the farmers were able to dedicate more of their time and energy to writing their food safety plan. In the August through December session, coaches were able to visit farms right away as COVID-19 spread had slowed, but it was a difficult time to schedule coaching sessions and for farmers to be able to dedicate time to writing their food safety plans. Despite the challenges, all participants successfully completed the requirements of the program. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the first Clean Start coaching sessions were primarily held virtually until a social-distanced farm visit was more acceptable in May 2021. Farm visits early on would have made individualized food safety improvement suggestions easier, but project staff asked participants to lead them on a virtual tour of their farms in the meantime using videos and pictures. The pandemic impacted all organizations and thus impacted the availability of professional development for project staff and value chain coordinators. The Produce Safety Alliance halted all in person FSMA training as virtual training materials and modules were created. Project staff were not able to secure a space in the limited quality of virtual FSMA Train the Trainer workshops until fall 2021. The United Fresh Produce Association was also impacted by the pandemic and had to transition their training from an in person format to virtual in 2020. Project staff and valve chain coordinators were able to attend virtual Harmonized GAP auditor training in October 2020 through the United Fresh Produce Association. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Originally, this project was written to pursue Group GAP auditor training to expand food safety certification in Iowa. However, Harmonized GAPs certification is more inclusive and desirable to Iowa farmers since FSMA requirements apply to small-scale farmers. In October 2020, two project staff and one value chain coordinator completed Harmonized GAPs auditor training virtually through United Fresh Produce Association and Quality Fresh LLC. Working with Quality Fresh, an established and respected agency, allowed project staff to offer more overall HGAPs audits at a lower cost in the summer of 2021, including many Amish growers. This change from Group GAPs improved the reach and effectiveness of this project. Three auditors were able to complete 23 HGAP audits across Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri. In November 2021, two project staff completed Produce Safety Alliance Train-the-Trainer Training, becoming certified to provide PSA Grower Trainings, expanding the capacity for hosting Grower Trainings in Iowa. During the project timeline, Teresa Wiemerslage and Claire Zabel were able to hold an in-person Grower Training held in Vinton, IA on January 27th, 2022. Project Staff plan to participate as instructors at future PSA Grower trainings held in Iowa in partnership with Iowa State Extension. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?All Clean Start participants will retain access to a collection of food safety resources through a Google Drive folder. These resources include all educational materials, food safety plan and log sheet templates, regulatory information, and other supplemental materials. Participants may also use this shared folder to share resources of their own for all other participants to see. Educational materials created for this project are available at Iowa Valley RC&D's website - www.iowavalleyrcd.org and have been shared on social media with hashtags (#CleanStartFarm and #OhForFoodSafety). The website hosts three food safety handouts (and all translations) as well as five short educational videos. The videos are also available through Iowa Valley's YouTube page. Additionally, the handouts, videos, FarmTabs software and user guide, and the Packshed Handbook are available on the Food Safety Clearinghouse. This database makes food safety training materials searchable to other food safety professionals. Educational materials were shared during monthly virtual meetings held by the North Central Center for FSMA Training. Meetings are open to all food safety professionals within the North Central region (Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, Kansas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan). NECAFs, the manager of the Food Safety Clearinghouse featured the handouts, videos, etc in their weekly announcements of new additions to the Clearinghouse. University of Vermont's Ag Engineering program also feathering the Packshed Handbook in their social media. The food safety metrics software FarmTabs that was publicly released during the project was featured by FDA and in the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering Journal. FarmTabs received recognition in 2021 as a finalist in the FDA Low-or No-Cost Food Traceability Challenge and has seen wide interest internationally. Project staff are proud to offer this tool not only to local small farms but also to farm businesses across the world. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal A: Iowa Valley established the Clean Start Food Safety Coaching Program in December 2020 to provide new resources and specialized training for small, beginning produce farmers in Eastern Iowa. Through the project's duration, Iowa Valley RC&D staff were able to assist 14 farms to complete a written food safety plan and determine highest priorities for improving food safety practices. Staff developed a 6 month program including a syllabus and presentations for one-on-one meetings that focused on food safety regulations and best practices, on-farm recordkeeping, food safety plan structure, and principles of traceability. All participants were given label printers and tablets pre-installed with FarmTabs, Iowa Valley's Excel-based food safety recordkeeping software. All participants were trained how to use these tools to improve their on-farm traceability. Program staff held two sessions of Clean Start (Spring and Fall). Although both sessions overlapped with the farming season, the early spring timeframe seemed more manageable for participants and allowed more quality coaching time. In the future, we would operate the program during the January - May period. For the Fall 2021 session, staff compressed the program into four months instead of six. Participants were expected to attend 12-16 hours of coaching sessions, complete a farm walk-through with coaches, fully write a draft of their farm's food safety plan, and purchase food safety improvements. Project staff completed Mock HGAP Audits with all Clean Start participants and two farms successfully completed Harmonized GAPs certification during the summer of 2021. During the program, staff developed Food Safety Improvement Plans with each farm, utilizing the several food safety plan templates that are freely available for use by farms. Clean Start included a $2000 stipend for each participant to purchase food safety tools and equipment that would help them implement their newly written food safety plans. Clean Start "graduates" are now better equipped to identify and address food safety risks on their own farms as well as raise awareness among their peers. To expand the food safety educational outreach, program staff created handouts, videos, and a social media campaign. Three educational one-page handouts use plain language and custom diagrams to explain the topics of on-farm first aid, traceability, and food safe surfaces. These handouts are available in four languages (English, Spanish, Swahili, and French). In addition, five short videos were created during the farming season. Video topics filmed included: handwashing practices, harvest bin considerations, dropped produce, and winterizing an AZS produce washer. One video was filmed at a Clean Start participants' farm (Middleway Farm in Grinnell) and featured a tour of their new wash/pack space and a "field harvest kit." All handouts and videos are available at https://iowavalleyrcd.org/cleanstart/. The social media campaign was an optional activity for Clean Start participants intended to increase information sharing among the group as well as broaden the discussion of food safety topics among area vegetable farmers. Using #CleanStartFarm and #OhForFoodSafety on Facebook or Instagram, participants were asked to post about the food safety improvements they were making through the program. Iowa Valley also used the hashtags to report the progress and successes of the program, as well as food safety news and best practices. An additional outcome of the project was the creation of a handbook for building a low cost, temporary packshed for small-scale farmers. This project, funded by a mini-grant of the North Central Region Center for FSMA Training, involved building a temporary packshed at one of the Clean Start farms as a demonstration site, and using the experience and photos of the process to create a full assembly guide. The packshed is a simple, low-cost option for beginning and tenant farmers in need of a food-safe space to wash and pack vegetables. This resource is also freely available on Iowa Valley's website at https://iowavalleyrcd.org/clean-start-pack-shed-handbook/. Clean Start participants' food safety knowledge was evaluated before and after the program through a Google Survey. Each farmer rated their knowledge of food safety topics on a scale from 1 to 5. The Spring 2021 group showed an average 94% improvement in their knowledge after Clean Start coaching and the Fall 2021 group indicated 123% improvement. Overall satisfaction with the program had an average rating of 4.5 (out of 5). Areas showing the most improvement included: understanding GAPs requirements, traceability, wild and domesticated animals, and effective post-harvest procedures. Goal B: To build the network of food safety professionals in Iowa, project staff secured training and new certifications for Iowa practitioners. Staff and other professionals attended new training to increase the number of FSMA Grower Trainers and new GAP auditors in the state of Iowa. A new partnership was formed with Quality Fresh, LLC, a Midwest Harmonized GAP Auditing Consultant. Project staff decided to increase the number of Harmonized GAP auditors in Iowa and to provide contract services to Quality Fresh to expand their service area into Iowa. Two Iowa Valley RC&D staff and value chain coordinator Teresa Wiemerslage attended virtual Harmonized GAP Auditor training with the United Fresh Produce Association and received auditor training from Quality Fresh as well. Project staff determined that the cost of maintaining a USDA Group GAP program in Iowa was too expensive because of the large overhead cost to maintain the program in addition to the cost of individual farm audits and the Groups external USDA audits. By working with Quality Fresh, Iowa partners were able to reduce the cost of an individual farm audit from $650 to $500 or $350/year if farms scheduled their audits the same day. By transitioning Iowa's auditing services from USDA GAP to Harmonized GAP project partners were able to triple the number of farms in Iowa who are GAP certified. Prior to the project 6 farms were participating in the Iowa Group GAP program; in one year project staff conducted 23 Harmonized GAP audits between Iowa and SW Wisconsin. In addition to training for Harmonized GAP auditors, Jason Grimm and Claire Zabel attended training to become an instructor for FSMA Grower Trainings. Project staff attended virtual training through the Produce Safety Alliance. Following the training project staff served as a member of the training team at FSMA Grower Training in Vinton, IA on January 27th, 2022. Goal C: To improve Iowa's Food Safety Professional Network's knowledge of small produce farms in Iowa, project staff worked with other food safety professionals at the NCR FSMA Regional Training Center. Project staff participated in monthly NCR regional food safety network calls to share project activities. Project staff presented on the Clean Start Coaching Program, the Food Safety Metrics software FarmTabs and a new Temporary Packshed Assembly Handbook all developed by Iowa Valley RC&D. Project staff disseminated the project's Clean Start handout and video series with NCR regional food safety practitioners through email and by posting them on the Northeast Center to Advance Food Safety's Food Safety Clearinghouse. To aggregate data about the small farms using the Food Safety Metrics software FarmTabs project staff aggregated data from the small farms who downloaded the open source software. Since the software was made public, 43 farms have downloaded the software from 10 countries and 19 states in the US. Before downloading FarmTabs every farm was using paper logs or spreadsheets if they were collecting any type of food safety records at the time.
Publications
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
https://iowavalleyrcd.org/cleanstart/
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Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:Our target audience during this first period of the project has been beginning farmers who started their businesses within the last 10 years or farms who have expanded their businesses to new customers with additional food safety requirements. Changes/Problems:The only major changes that we had to make to our project were connected to the delay of the release of funding by NIFA. This delayed the start of our first Clean Start Food Safety Course. When funding was released in March 2020 it was too late to develop the program and recruit the first set of particpants before the growing season began. We thus delayed our program start to after the 2020 growing season. We had to delay hiring our Food Safety Associate position on the project because of this delay in funding and our organization used Payroll Projection Program funds after the beginnning of the COVID 19 Pandemic. We also had to delay our attendence to PSA train the trainer and GAP Auditor traning courses because of the COVID 19 pandemic. All inperson training was canceled thus we have had to wait until online options are created. We will be requesting an extension to our project to the spring of 2022 to ensure we can meet our training goals of the project. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Activities of the project thus far have been reported during monthly calls of the North Central Regional Training Center. Recruitment of program participants were marketed through Iowa farmer list servs, Practical Farmers of Iowa, Iowa Regional Food Systems Working Group and organization's own farm networks. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Goal A: Provide resources and specialized food safety outreach for Iowa small, beginning produce farmers. Train and coach 10 participants of the Clean Start Food Safety Program. Develop in partnership with the Clean Start participants their own farm's food safety improvement plan. Provide mini-grant's to each Clean Start participant after satisfactory completion. Train each paricipate on how to use the FarmTabs software to collect and manage their farm's food safey records. Develop 5 short videos on low cost food safety best practices. Create, design and publish 3 food safey handouts (Basic First Aid on Your Farm, Cleaning and Properly Setting Your Produce Washer, Farm Surfaces: The Good and the Ugly) Implement and market the use of the food safety social media campaign with the creation of the hashtag "OhForFoodSake" where farmers can share the successes and failures of improving food safety practices on their own farms. Goal B: Expand the network of Iowa's certified Food Safety Professionals with training and certification to meet the needs of small, beginning produce farmers in Iowa. Register 4 Iowa value chain coordinators in United Fresh's Harmonized GAP Auditor training. Iowa Valley RC&D's Jason Grimm and Food and Farm Specialist will attend Produce Safety Alliance Train the Trainer course. Partner with Harmonzed GAP auditing organization Quality Fresh to conduct Harmonized GAP audits in Wisconsin, Iowa and Missouri. Goal C: Improve the Iowa Food Safety Professional Network's access to small, produce farm food safety data through engagement with the North Central Region Center for FSMA Training, Extension, and Technical Assistance (NCR). Partner with North Central Regional Training Center's staff to review and assist in marketing food safety handouts, videos and the social media campaign. Pilot the use of FarmTabs to collect and analize GAP audit results from users of the software. Report common audit standards that farmers are not in compliance with and make possible training and technical assistance recommendations to other practioners.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal A: Provide resources and specialized food safety outreach for Iowa small, beginning produce farmers. Developed program syllubus for Clean Start Food Safety Program. Recruited first class of program participants. Goal B: Expand the network of Iowa's certified Food Safety Professionals with training and certification to meet the needs of small, beginning produce farmers in Iowa. Developed position description for Food Safety Associate position called Food and Farm Specialist. Recruited, interviewed and hired employee in August 2020. Registered for United Fresh Harmonized GAP Auditor training in October 2020 for project director, food and farm specialist and one value chain coordinator. Goal C: Improve the Iowa Food Safety Professional Network's access to small, produce farm food safety data through engagement with the North Central Region Center for FSMA Training, Extension, and Technical Assistance (NCR). Participated in North Central Regional Center's monthy meetings to give project updates to other FSOP grantees and the Regional Center's staff. Researched and made necessary updates to Food Safety Metric's software, called FarmTabs, so that farmers using the software can enter and review their annual audit results. These updates will allow project staff to collect anonymous audit results from users of FarmTabs to improve technical resources to help farmers meet all of the Harmonzed GAP standards.
Publications
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