UMES Extension and New Mexico State University will play vital roles in a half million dollar U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant to provide small farmers of fresh produce the training tools to help their workers ensure safe food practices for Maryland consumers.
Food Safety Specialist Dr. Melinda Schwarz, Environmental and Agricultural Faculty Legal Specialist Nicole Cook and Small Farm Program Coordinator Berran Rogers will serve as co-principal directors on the project, “TRAIN: Targeted Resources Addressing Identified Needs in Maryland worker food safety training via on-farm piloting of a mixed media toolkit.”
The USDA-NIFA grant was awarded to University of Maryland Extension faculty, Drs. Shauna Henley and Angela Ferelli, to provide small- and medium-sized farms that grow, harvest, pack and hold fresh produce with training and tools to “enhance and sustain an operational culture that champions food safety.”
They, along with the project team, found that there was “a gap between intention and reality.” Surveys of farm managers showed high confidence in present worker training programs; however, On Farm Readiness Reviews and Produce Safety Rule inspections consistently reported a disconnect between supervisor training and worker training for actual performance of duties related to pre-harvest, hygiene and sanitation, Schwarz said.
“What we have seen through some of our observations is that producers get to the first level, the basics like handwashing, but haven’t progressed further into the deeper training required in the FSMA Produce Safety Rule,” explains Henley. “There is a regulation…that workers should be trained on specific duties. For example, if you have workers who are packing food, they should receive training specific to packing so they can understand and conduct risk assessments on the fly. If they see something, they should say something.”
Best practices for how farm workers are trained under the Food Safety Modernization Act’s Produce Safety Rule are now required in order to establish science-based minimum standards to feed the nation with safe, nutritious food. The TRAIN project will support activities to realize compliance requirements that can be confusing to farm managers and workers.
“To achieve this, the team will first advance the Maryland collaborative focused on supporting the food safety needs of producers. Then, with New Mexico State University, a mixed media toolkit for farm worker supervisors that is informed by the agriculture community will be created as well as the development of a train-the-trainer workshop for effective toolkit utilization,” Schwarz said. “The toolkit will be piloted on several farms, including ones on the Lower Shore, over the course of a season and evaluated for its effectiveness to change worker behavior. Lastly, the tool will be disseminated to the farming community.”
The benefits of the research, she said, will be that small- and medium-sized farms that may lack training resources will be better equipped to train workers to meet FSMA-PSR compliance.
“Effective worker training on safe food handling behaviors will reduce the risk of infectious diseases and improve the food safety culture that could help reduce worker turnover resulting in the necessity to retrain workers that small- and medium-sized farms may not have the budget to support.”
Nicole Cook 
Berran Rogers 
Dr. Melinda Schwarz
Henley’s quote was taken from a UMD College of Agriculture & Natural Sciences press release.
Gail Stephens, agricultural communications and media associate, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences, UMES Extension, gcstephens@umes.edu, 410-621-3850.
Photos by Todd Dudek, agricultural communications, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences, UMES Extension, tdudek@umes.edu.
