Project Overview

FamilyFarmed provides technical assistance to small and mid-scale farmers selling into wholesale markets. As part of this effort, we have created this website to support fruit and vegetable growers in developing a customized, on-farm food safety plan, the basic building block of a comprehensive, on-farm food safety program.

There are two components to this website:

1. Educational information and resources (on why and how to create an on-farm food safety plan and why and how to get food safety certified), and

2. A free, easy-to-use tool that is based on user input (mostly yes and no answers) to generate a customized on-farm food safety plan. This plan can be saved and updated as well as printed for use on your farm. The intention is that your printed plan is the basis for your farm’s food safety program and that:

a. All employees are trained on this plan

b. The plan is implemented and becomes part of your daily operations, and

c. Your plan, along with all supporting documentation for your food safety program, is placed in a binder. This way, whomever you assign to manage your farm’s food safety program has all the necessary documents together in one place.

The website’s educational information and resources are considered by this project’s advisory and technical committees to be best practices in on-farm food safety. Small and mid-scale produce farmers, food safety professionals, and agricultural extension specialists will find information on topics such as produce traceback, worker health and hygiene training materials, and packinghouse standard operating procedures for cleaning and sanitation.

The food safety plan tool on this website is based on comprehensive, harmonized GAP standards developed by United Fresh and industry partners. The tool is designed around decision trees that help you to assess food safety risks for different areas on your farm. Based on your input, the tool automatically generates certain documents to help address those risk areas. It will also provide you with a full set of record keeping tools to document your food safety program and to provide training to your employees.

Both the educational information and the food safety plan tool have been peer reviewed by a national team of food experts to ensure accuracy and applicability. FamilyFarmed.org has collaborated with an unprecedented team of stakeholders to guide the project’s development including the FDA, USDA, Earthbound Farm, Sysco, Chipotle, United Fresh, Produce Marketing Association, Compass Group, Organic Valley, Wild Farm Alliance, Community Alliance with Family Farmers and others.

We hope you find this website helpful and we invite your feedback so that we can continually improve it. If you have any questions or feedback, please
email us.

For information on our manual and workshops for “Wholesale Success: A Farmer’s Guide to Selling, Post Harvest Handling, and Packing Produce,” please click here.