Transcript
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. I'm Allison Work and I'm the digital media designer for MSU Extension. Our episode today is about food safety on urban farms.
Speaker: My name is Erin Poirel and I'm a farmer in Flint, Michigan. I own a grocery store called The Local Grocer and our farm is a nine and a half acre farm just outside of the city of Flint limits. And then we also sell our product at the Flint Farmer's Market and we have a CSA that is cooperatively run with two other farms.
Speaker: I'm Micah Hutchison and I'm the produce safety technician housed at the Genesee Conservation District. I work with fruit and vegetable growers in Genesee, Lapeer, Livingston, Saginaw, Shiawassee, Oakland, and Tuscola counties on best practices and ways to reduce possible microbial contamination of fresh produce on their farm. So what would you guys say distinguishes urban farming from farming in a more rural environment?
Speaker: I think that some of the differences or what makes urban agriculture kind of unique is that you're often growing on smaller plots of land that you would want to get your soil tested, your water tested, because those are things that really have not been in your control.
Speaker: maybe been, you don't know the history of the site. So it's not like a generational farm type of scenario where you would be coming in and knowing how the soil has been treated or knowing what has happened to the water. There's also not only contamination in the soil, but there may have been dumping on your site. There may be trees that need to be removed. There may also be neighbors that
Speaker: aren't supportive of what you're doing. Yeah, I agree. I think that one of the biggest things I've seen and differences with urban farming versus a rural environment has to do with the neighbors. There are questions of vandalism. Sometimes certain aspects of farming in a city can be cost prohibitive like water, but other things can be like beneficial. For example, in Flint, sometimes the land is
Speaker: really reasonable to buy, but then you're also up against other challenges like dealing with your city authority, your land bank authority, zoning policies. Yeah, I was going to add, especially with seasonal high tunnels, your
Speaker: if in an urban environment that may not have been processed through the policy system, there may be a lot of like, not really sure what structures you can and cannot put up. We've been through that in Flint and it was definitely really challenging to kind of educate the community and work to get policy passed. Policy seems really hard. I wasn't part of that.
Speaker: And maybe Aaron can speak more of like it's hard to have a diversified farm sometimes in a city because there are ordinance against like small livestock or poultry which can be prohibitive to some farmers.
Speaker: Different communities, especially in Michigan, have done different things with that. At some point, I sat on the Michigan Department of Ag and Natural Resources. We had a small urban ag committee that looked particularly at animals
Speaker: in urban agriculture and there, I mean, as with any communities, there's gonna be really different approaches, but they were really looking for something that they could legislate at the state level. They're really, because it is such a complicated issue around food safety, around safety of neighbors, there really wasn't anything that came of it. Different communities like Detroit have passed their own
Speaker: policies around small animals. Other cities in Michigan have done chickens and there's a lot of different precedents that you can apply around communities. So do you guys want to talk a little bit more about the food safety risks that are unique to urban farming? I was just going to talk about hand washing challenges around water access.
Speaker: You know, in Flint, where we have the ability to rent a lot from the Genesee County Land Bank or purchase a vacant lot, that may or may not be adjacent to a home that you, like it may not be next to your house. So like with a lot of community type gardens, when you're starting to do urban agriculture, access to water can be really challenging.
Speaker: So if you're working a plot that's not next to your house or a house where you can access water, that has been a huge challenge for urban farming. It is possible in some municipalities to put in a well for agricultural purposes that would give you access to water. I do know other farmers who have to bring in their own water for hand washing and other
Speaker: washing of bins. It's one of the major challenges to food safety. I agree with water is a huge hurdle that I see on a lot of farms I visit and not just for hand washing but also for irrigation. The need to water the crops has led to a lot of water catchment systems
Speaker: which may or may not be monitored for any kind of like bacterial water testing. And that also includes any water that's been used for post harvest. So when farmers who don't have water access
Speaker: are on their farm and they're harvesting their vegetables, they may be using water that's been stored in a rain barrel or in a catchment pond in that post -harvest process, which might not necessarily be the safest water to use at that time. And then there has been some misunderstandings, at least in Flint, on what we're testing water for when it comes to safety.
Speaker: After the Flint water crisis, looking for high lead levels in your water became like a practice that farmers were concerned about, but they haven't necessarily been as educated on looking for those coliform levels when doing water test. So then other than water, what are some other food safety risks that might be found on urban farms?
Speaker: I think that composting can be an on -farm food safety risk, making sure that the compost that's being used, especially when it's from like the table scraps or things being used in cooking. So if you're cooking something and you're chopping up vegetables, making sure that
Speaker: the time temperature levels are recorded on the farm when using compost. Also, I've seen kind of some ideas around compostable toilets and the safety of using compostable toilets on fresh fruits and vegetables. And then I think another big hurdle is training and finding enough consistent labor
Speaker: training in mid -season, using friends and families and volunteers and getting them trained to those food safety policies is a challenge. All right. And do you guys have any suggestions for how some of these risks can be reduced or how urban farmers can improve the food safety on their farm? Totally shameless plug. I work with conservation district technician.
Speaker: I think that also taking the eight hour produce safety alliance grower training is a great first step. It kind of gives an overview and an understanding of the practices that need to be implemented on the farm. And it's a great opportunity to ask questions. I would also say working with a mentoring farmer like Aaron, who understands
Speaker: produce safety and uses those practices on their farm is a great opportunity for new and beginning urban farmers? I would second talking with a farmer who's been doing it for a little while because often maybe contacting a food safety person might seem intimidating at first, although they are not. They're actually really wonderful to work with and are not out to like
Speaker: check you or they're really out to help and do the education that we all need. But if you feel more comfortable working, you know, and asking questions of a farmer who's been doing it for a little while, I mean, make sure their practices are good. But also, you know, they may have come up with some ingenious ways to, you know, add a hand washing station or wash their produce or what they use to
Speaker: to harvest produce in, like all of those things. I've gotten so many different ideas from other farmers who have been doing it for a while and they've found ways to problem solve and find really good approaches to food safety. But definitely there's a lot of educational opportunities out there that
Speaker: It's important and it is your responsibility to educate yourself and how to approach food safety on your farm and I think that there are you know, whether it's an online class or All kinds of there are ways even if it's reading to just get a start and start implementing things on your farm and then you can always reach out to people like Micah to
Speaker: to help you problem solve the things that you can't figure out on your own. It's such a big policy. FSMA and the produce safety rule specifically seems so big, especially to some of the small urban farms and beginning farmers I see in our more densely populated community. And I see people get really overwhelmed by everything they think they have to do.
Speaker: I just don't want anyone to get discouraged. It can be done on any scale, small, medium, or large. And produce safety and food safety can be adapted to any size farm. I think that's one of the things that, I mean, as a beginning farmer, when you're starting out, you want to do everything right and you want to
Speaker: make sure that your food is safe. Like we are growing, many of us grow food because we want to feed our community and we would all be horrified if something happened. So this is the way you get in front of it. This is the way you learn about what you need to do. But so many of these things are common sense. You're probably doing them anyways or you know you need to do them. So reaching out and figuring out what those things are that you could do better
Speaker: is just part of good farm practices. And it is, even though it does seem intimidating, it's so important and it really is, a lot of it are simple fixes that you can do in a really small scale.
Speaker: All right. Well, thank you guys so much for coming out and talking with us today. Thanks, Alison. Thanks, Erin. Yeah, thanks. Good job, Micah. Links or definitions 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. And don't forget to tune in next month for another episode of our Produce Bites podcast.
