Farmers, sign up for food safety workshop
FamilyFarmed and the Liberty Prairie Foundation will offer a food safety workshop for farmers, "Food Safety is Good Business: Best Practices for Specialty Crop Farmers," from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4, at the Byron Colby Barn in Grayslake.
Workshop registration is $30 per person and $15 per additional person from the same family or farm. The fee includes lunch and the "Wholesale Success: A Farmers Guide to Selling, Postharvest Handling and Packing Produce" manual (retail price of $70). Online registration is in the event section of www.libertyprairie.org.
How produce is handled affects the postharvest quality and safety of food and farmers' relationships with buyers. Integrating food safety systems into postharvest practices and market relationships supports the development of farm systems that are viable, cost-effective, and scale appropriate.
Every farm is different and buyers in all markets increasingly expect farmers to be proactive about food safety.
The workshop is designed for active learning. Participants will do risk assessments and develop action plans that are compliant with the Produce Rule under the Food Safety Modernization Act.
Participants will also develop recordkeeping/traceability systems that align with the farm work, support decision-making and maximize profitability while also meeting food safety requirements.
The Feb. 4 Food Safety is Good Business workshop will be conducted by Atina Diffley, an organic farmer, activist, public speaker and author. She is the lead farmer-trainer in FamilyFarmed's Wholesale Success program, which has provided training in best practices for more than 7,500 farmers nationwide who are selling into wholesale markets.
Diffley wrote the 2012 award-winning memoir "Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works." From 1985 to 2008, she and her husband, Martin, ran the Gardens of Eagan, an urban-edge, organic vegetable farm, which he started in 1973 as one of the first certified organic produce farms in the Midwest.
The Diffleys' on-farm projects now include breeding sweet corn, mentoring beginning farmers, and transitioning nonorganic land to organic.
Atina's areas of expertise include postharvest handling, brand-name marketing, greenhouse management, and organic farming systems. She is a co-author/editor for "Wholesale Success: A Farmers Guide to Selling, Postharvest Handling and Packing Produce," and the editor and designer of Roger Blobaum's Organic History website.
She presently serves on the boards of the Organic Seed Alliance and the Minnesota Institute of Sustainable Agriculture.
The Byron Colby Barn is at 1561 Jones Point Road in Grayslake, inside the Prairie Crossing conservation community. From I-94 north, exit Route 120 west, turn south at Route 45, then right at Jones Point Road. Ample free parking is located in the parking lot adjacent to the Barn.
For information and online registration, visit the event section of www.libertyprairie.org.
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