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Beginning and Organic Farmers
21 Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Produce Safety Technicians Morgan Anderson and Allissa Conley sit down with Katie Brandt, leader of the Michigan State University Organic Farmer Training Program. They give helpful advice for beginning farmers, talk through some of the challenges beginning farmers may face when first getting started, and discuss where to begin when it comes to food safety on the farm.
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Funding for this podcast was made possible in part by the Food and Drug Administration through grant PAR-16-137. The views expressed in the posted materials do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services, nor does any mention of trade names, commercial practices or organization imply endorsement by the United States Government.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Agri-Food Safety Produce Bites podcast, where we discuss all things produce safety and dive into the rules and regulations surrounding the Food Safety Modernization Act Produce Safety Rule. Hello, everyone. I am Katie Brandt and I lead the Michigan State University Organic Farmer Training Program, which is from March until November, beginning and aspiring farmers get together to
00:00:30
Speaker
kind of clarify their vision for what they want to do on their farms, learn hands-on skills, and visit about 20 farms around the state. I also help to promote the resources and grants provided by USDA SARE. That's the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. And I'm working on some other beginning farmer projects.
Connecting Farmers with Mentors
00:00:54
Speaker
The new one is Transition to Organic Partnership Program, which is going to be connecting
00:01:00
Speaker
people who want to transition to organic with mentors who are organic farmers.
00:01:06
Speaker
Thank you, Katie. It sounds like you kind of do it all. And I'm Morgan Anderson. I'm the Produce Safety Technician based here in the Ottawa Conservation District. And what that means is that I help farmers determine what produce safety looks like for them in their operation. And I actually service Ottawa and Kent and Barry Ionia and all these other little counties until the Lansing area. And that's about far as east as my area goes.
Roles of Produce Safety Technicians
00:01:32
Speaker
And I am Alyssa Conley. I am also a produce safety technician like Morgan. I'm actually located just above her, so I also service the West Central area. I am out of the Newaygo Conservation District and my main area would be Newaygo, Muskegon, Mason Lake, Oceana, and Midland County.
Katie Brandt's Journey in Farming and Education
00:01:51
Speaker
Well, thank you all for joining today. I kind of wanted to start out a little bit and Katie, you kind of answered this a little bit in your intro, but can you just tell us a little bit about your own farming experience and what kind of got you into organic farming at MSU? Yeah, I started out as a farm worker and I just very quickly
00:02:11
Speaker
knew that this was this was something I really wanted to dive into and I just kind of fell in love with farming. So I was a farm worker on quite a few different farms over about six seasons. And then I started my own farm
00:02:28
Speaker
Ground Swell Community Farm. I started that with a business partner over in the Zealand area. So we were growing organic vegetables and selling through, I think at our peak we were selling to about 180 CSA members for farmers markets. I think four or five health food stores and I was selling garlic seed to Seed Savers Exchange.
00:02:52
Speaker
And then I wanted to shift back into doing education and outreach sort of work, and this opportunity arrived. That sounds like a cool art. You began in Ottawa County in my area, so that's nice. Yes, I was in a very agricultural valley. I was down in the Hudsonville Muck, and there were vegetable farms in every direction.
00:03:15
Speaker
So it seems like you started out organic farming and as the facilitator for the organic farmer training program, what are students learning once they get into that?
Hybrid Training Program and Collaborations
00:03:26
Speaker
So in terms of learning, the program this year in 2023 is hybrid. So 17 of the days are online and a lot of that is looking at what crops do you want to grow? How do you want to grow them?
00:03:41
Speaker
Where do you want to grow them? What's your site plan? What's your soil management plan? And then kind of shifting into what are the financials and either business or nonprofit strategies you're going to do to reach those goals for your farm. In addition to the online days, we have hands-on learning days. And this is the first year that we have a partnership with Keep Growing Detroit. So a little more than half of the cohort is learning hands-on
00:04:10
Speaker
at Keep Growing Detroit, which is an awesome nonprofit that's providing transplants and seeds to 2,000 gardens and farms in the city of Detroit, Highland Park, and Hamtramck. And then we also have a cohort learning at the MSU Student Organic Farm, which I'm leading. In addition to that, we do field trips to about 20 farms.
00:04:32
Speaker
just got back in last night from visiting nine farms up in the Traverse City, Northwest Michigan region. But we go to vegetable farms and urban farms and orchards, livestock grazing facilities in six regions around the state. Wow. I've known some firms that
00:04:53
Speaker
have done the organic farmer training program. But I didn't realize that is the hybrid option. I think that's nice to be flexible with farmer schedules and just people's schedules in general, and also having that hand on component. So that sounds really cool.
Resources for Organic and Beginning Farmers
00:05:08
Speaker
And then Katie, my next question for you is, you talked a little bit about the resources within the organic farmer training program itself, but other resources out there in Michigan for beginning farmers and organic farmers as well.
00:05:21
Speaker
Oh, definitely. There's so many great people and organizations working on helping farmers get started. One that I was able to be involved in was funded through SARE, Sustainable Ag Research and Education. And that one is the map of Michigan beginning farmer resources.
00:05:42
Speaker
So if you Google that, you should be able to find it. And it has local and regional resources listed within the map of Michigan. But then if you look, there's a lot of organizations in Lake Michigan. I have not pushed them out into the lake. It's kind of just an alphabetical index of things that are statewide. And then I would just do a shout out to
00:06:10
Speaker
MSU Extension has a web page of great resources and links for beginning farmers. I'd say that Myths Michigan Food and Farming Systems is a great organization with tons of farmer networks around the state, reaching out to veterans and women farmers.
00:06:34
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Spanish-speaking producers, et cetera. And then there's similar things around the state. So like, I got my start in West Michigan Growers Group. There's MidMichigan Farmer Meetup here in the Lansing area. Crosshatch is doing the Farmer Guild. So just connecting farmers with other farmers is a lot of times a good way to find a mentor and answer questions you have as a new and beginning farmer.
00:07:01
Speaker
There's also federal resources, so a lot of the sorts of farmers that I work with are using EQIP grants, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program through USDA, Natural Resource Conservation Service, and that's paying for part of their high tunnels or maybe for a pollinator border. Less common, I would say, but a really good opportunity
00:07:29
Speaker
is getting loans through the Farm Service Agency. It's the best interest rate around, as long as you can qualify for those loans and they're a good fit for your goals. Thank you for those resources. I like how you mentioned both governmental, institutional, but also non-institutional resources, like mentors and things, because I think sometimes jumping through the hoops of certain agencies and whatnot is really intimidating as a beginning farmer.
00:07:59
Speaker
Oh, and that reminds me. Thanks, Morgan.
Advice for Aspiring Farmers
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah. One of the things I really wanted to point out is if you're an aspiring farmer, or even if you do have land and you're getting your start, I would say working for or volunteering for a farm, especially if there's a farm that you can gain experience at that's similar to what you want to do on your own farm is
00:08:27
Speaker
one of the very best ways to skip some of the mistakes that you might make. Not all of them, but some of them through getting that hands-on experience. For sure. And that mentor piece as well was learning from your cohort and being in community with other farmers. So for sure. Yeah, that's great, Katie. So you're kind of saying to maybe
00:08:50
Speaker
kind of stop some of those problems you might run into by mentoring with other people. Are there certain challenges that you see more than others when it comes to organic farming or vegan or farmers in general? Yeah, I'd say that the challenges are many. Unfortunately,
Challenges for New Farmers
00:09:09
Speaker
we don't have a lot of good ways for
00:09:14
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beginning and aspiring farmers to be able to access land affordably. Leasing is a good option and that's how I got started on my own farm, but it doesn't work for everyone and it doesn't always work out. So I think there's a lot of grassroots work being done to try and address that issue, but I'd love to see lots more on that front for sure. Accessing urban land does seem to be a little more accessible for a lot of folks through land banks and things.
00:09:45
Speaker
So land is a big one. I know National Young Farmers Coalition has done a great job of getting the word out about the challenges for beginning and aspiring farmers and student loan debt is a huge one. Access to health insurance, child care are all challenges that beginning farmers face.
00:10:08
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gaining skills is one of the things that we do have good supports for. Certainly everything can always be improved, but that's kind of the first step is getting the skills and then unfortunately there's those many barriers.
00:10:26
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Hopefully, as we continue on, there's more and more resources available and with the interest in local food that'll just keep getting better. So to kind of advice for the farmers, once they kind of know the challenges, but they want to keep pushing through it and know what's a good thing to be doing, maybe what's going to be coming next for them.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah, I would say just really focusing on the values you want to uplift through your farm, focusing on your goals and focusing on the needs for your community that you're trying to meet. Just coming back to that again and again with the big decisions and the little day-to-day decisions that are constant on any farm is the biggest piece of advice that I can offer. And then, you know,
Aligning Farm Decisions with Values
00:11:19
Speaker
leaning on people you respect in your community when you're when you're having trouble making those decisions on your own, you don't have to be completely independent. There's definitely opportunities to reach out to family, friends, other farmers, people in nonprofits and extension, if it's more of a technical question. Yeah, I think that's great advice.
00:11:45
Speaker
Thank you, Kitty, for that. Yeah, I talked to, there's so many farmers that have reached out to me who are just beginning, like they're in their brainstorming.
00:11:53
Speaker
stage and they're like, what, and of course we're talking about produce safety for produce
Food Safety Practices in Training Program
00:11:58
Speaker
safety texts. And they're like, where do I begin? And so that's a good piece of advice that I'll be sharing with them. So thank you. And then also pivoting a little bit to more produce safety. I'm curious what food safety training you do with your farmers and the organic farmer training program. And does that differ from training you've done with farmers in your previous experiences and basically what produce safety looks like and means to beginning farmers?
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah, so in the Organic Farmer Training Program, usually their first intro to food safety issues is the first time that we are harvesting or working in the wash pack. Usually that first activity will be a harvest activity. And so we'll go through kind of the top five food safety things to watch out for, you know, hand washing, making sure that everyone harvesting is not
00:12:53
Speaker
sick in a way that would endanger food safety, keeping clean food clean. So just thinking about where you're setting down harvest totes that have holes in the bottom and things like that, and sanitizing in the wash pack and keeping the
00:13:11
Speaker
cold chain as cold as it can be. And you know, that all happens before the first time they harvest and I just really try and keep it experiential. So I'll often in that first harvest, just demonstrate what not to do. So I'll pull out my phone and take a picture and then I'll be like, Oh, I need to go wash my hands. I just pulled out my phone or, you know, time issue, whatever.
00:13:41
Speaker
so that I can just demonstrate myself what the right decision is. I think it's easy on a farm to, well, economic forces are pushing everyone toward working as fast as they can. And so sometimes it's easy to not make that decision. But if you've seen people make the food safe choice again and again, it's easier to do so yourself.
00:14:10
Speaker
Right. Like you can have that policy in place, you know, of X, Y, and Z for produce safety, food safety. But then you also have to set that example and create that culture of produce safety on your farm. So that's kind of cool that you kind of demonstrate the both good and bad examples. I think that's fun. Yeah. And then we actually have a theme day that's focused on wash pack.
00:14:33
Speaker
post-harvest handling and food safety. And often we'll have Phil Tocco out for that, and we'll do the hand washing with the glow in the dark powder. We'll do, if I can find a problem area in the field that we can flag off, we'll do that. Just really walking through a wash pack and looking for the potential danger zones. As a group, thinking that through themselves,
00:15:02
Speaker
and then having an expert on site who can help them learn how to see those issues. Yeah, like really understanding why you're doing what you're doing for produce safety will just integrate that more into their everyday practice for sure. Yeah. One thing I would tell farmers too, a lot of farm workers have a background in food service, whether it's restaurants or something else.
00:15:29
Speaker
They've often already developed that skill of how to look for food safety risks. So if you hire someone or if you yourself have that background, you just need to take that onto the farm. For sure, yeah, just molding it to a different environment. Yeah. What are some, what do you think are some challenges or barriers to
00:15:50
Speaker
adopting a food safety culture on operation, especially as a beginning farmer, you're trying to figure out what works for you as a business. So what do you think are some challenging barriers around that?
00:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I just to go back to my farm, you have to as you're starting out your farm, all of a sudden, I needed to be an electrician and a builder and a farmer and a jack of all trades were and a food safety person. And really, at that time, I started my farm in 2006. The produce food safety culture was not very developed.
00:16:31
Speaker
When my farm flooded, I spent, gosh, I spent hours calling around to try and find someone who could tell me what I needed to plow in and what would be okay. So that would not be the case now. There's food safety texts all around the state that someone could call if they had a question like that.
00:16:54
Speaker
So I think just making this as approachable as possible for beginning farmers who really want to do the right thing, especially with organic farms, a lot of times people are becoming customers of local organic farms because they were told to by their doctor because they have cancer or because they have another immune compromised situation where they really need that food to be as safe as possible.
Katie's Early Food Safety Challenges
00:17:24
Speaker
So just thinking about food that way has really helped me. Does that answer your question? Yeah, yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think that was great hearing what you were saying, Katie. It definitely sounds like you've been around a long time. You kind of know what a good food safety culture looks like. And from there, I was kind of wondering, Morgan, Katie kind of told us about
00:17:47
Speaker
how she's helping being her farmers and what she suggests. What do you, when you approach your farmers, do you have a different way to approach a beginning farmer versus a more seasoned farmer or an organic farmer? What does that look like for you in your tech role? Well, I feel like I'm so relatively new in this role in figuring out what is the best way to communicate with farmers. Like every interaction is like a trial and error per se. There's a lot of learning, which I love. And I'm finding that,
00:18:17
Speaker
especially for beginning farmers, but also farmers that have like 500 different food safety audits they go through. There's different language and terms in between like the produce safety rule or a gap, which is a good agricultural practice audit. So I really just start out by defining jargon and explaining
00:18:40
Speaker
what that means and then also why I'm explaining that to them and why we're talking about hand washing and why that's important for public health and produce safety. So really going back to the roots of like thinking about when I started this role, what made me understand produce safety and trying to communicate that with the farmer. Yeah, I agree with everything you said. For beginner farmer, more seasoned farmer, either way I want to approach it.
00:19:07
Speaker
I am new to them. I want to be friendly. I know that it's a big deal and maybe an intimidating topic to talk about or learn about. So I just treat every farmer the same way. Just give them a rundown of what I do, how I'm there to help, what the produce safety role is. And then from there, I can kind of gauge an attitude and maybe see what they're looking for of my help or what is going to be most beneficial to them now.
00:19:35
Speaker
maybe down the line we can talk about other things but just that first time just kind of get a feel of how things are going and maybe what they're most looking for. For sure I think reading engaging where farmers are at and going from there or if there's something that they're really interested in too I kind of let them start with that and like pivoting off that route so I learned so much from you Alyssa when whenever I talk to you about strategy so thank you for sharing and then for
00:20:03
Speaker
Farmers just starting out, and this can be for both Katie and Alyssa, who don't know a lot about food safety. Where do you recommend they should start?
Starting with Produce Safety
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, so first of all, you can contact one of us. There are six of us throughout the state, so we go everywhere. We're really just there as your resource. Our main priority is to help farmers with produce safety in any way that they see fit.
00:20:29
Speaker
So I would say start by reaching out to us and then from there we can point you to maybe more county specific resources or specific resources in the state that can also help. I would say that's the first thing. And then as far as implementing food safety on farm, you can start really simple. I would say just kind of what Katie was talking about earlier with hand washing and just keeping equipment in a clean and sanitary condition that can be a really
00:20:57
Speaker
Easy first start to food safety that won't be too intimidating. What about you, Katie? Yeah, I think my start with food safety, I became really aware of this because of the footing that I experienced on my farm. And then there was a food safety plan template that was put together that I used. I thought it was pretty early on. I don't think a lot of people had food safety plans at that time.
00:21:26
Speaker
at least at the scale I was farming. So I would recommend reaching out to a produce safety tech in your region and then starting to look at your farm to think about where are the risks on my farm related to the farm workers, myself and the equipment. And then maybe put together a food safety plan for the farm
00:21:56
Speaker
If you're if you have employees, maybe after a season of leading that yourself, you can you can select an employee to kind of take up the reins and lead that. Those are the things that come to mind for me.
Conclusion and Available Resources
00:22:13
Speaker
But you guys are really the experts in in advising farmers on this particular issue.
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah, and I like to echo what Alyssa said in that there's a whole team of us throughout the state. Every technician is great. I learn so much from them every time I talk to every other technician. So thank you, Katie and Alyssa for being here today. Links to anything referenced in this episode are provided in our show notes, which can be accessed on the website at canr.msu.edu slash agri-food underscore safety. Thank you to everyone for listening.
00:22:48
Speaker
And don't forget to tune in next month for another episode of our Produce Bites podcast.