COMMUNITY ACCREDITATION FOR PRODUCE SAFETY TO MEET THE NEEDS OF SMALL AND MID-SIZE FARMS

The goal of this project is to develop education materials, deliver in-person and online trainings, and provide individual technical assistance to farms with limited financial and management resources to support their adoption of low-cost, scale-appropriate produce safety and employee management practices.Specifically this project will:Provide training and technical assistance on use of the CAPS platform to small farms in Vermont, New Hampshire, and New York with less than ten acres in production (a proxy for limited resources).Design and deliver eight educational events per year on produce safety best practices for small and mid-size farms. There will be four webinars and four on-farm workshops annually; there will be no fee for attendance.Provide individual, intensive technical assistance to 150 farms, 75% of which have less than 10 acres in production. This assistance will be ongoing, typically over multiple months per farm, delivered using a combination of on-site visits, phone, text, and email.Develop a dozen new educational resources (fact sheets, guides, standard operating procedure (SOP) templates, and farm case studies that describe the implementation of low-cost, effective practices tailored to small farms.