[We're reprinting a piece we wrote last July, given current food safety concerns.]
"Unlike huge food corporations, smaller, family-scale farmers have the most to lose from unsafe food." Food Safety trainer and esteemed farmer Anita Diffley shared this adage, which always rings true to us as family-scale food farmers.
There are numerous food recalls and warnings in our country, the latest involving salad mix. The stories illustrate the complexity and length of our country's food supply chain. More recently, stories also underscore the complexities of producing food safely in an industrialized food system versus our local food system, or as we like to call it, “know your farmer, know your food.”
Beyond countless hours of food safety training, we’ve trained ourselves, trained farmers and farm crews, written safety plans for other farmers, and earned food safety certifications.
"We are food handlers." This is how we always begin our food safety training with our farm crew. We play an essential role in producing safe food, as our food safety precautions begin with growing the crops in the field.
Our farm team training includes information about our role as food handlers and delves into food safety systems throughout the farm, encompassing everything from water systems and employee practices to harvest containers and implements, facilities, storage, and the transport of food. We share this plan with our organic certifiers and conduct spot checks of our systems, particularly after weather events that can compromise buildings and structures.
Your food travels fewer food miles. Your food is handled by fewer people. Your food is stored in fewer coolers, trucks, and containers. Fewer points of contact between your food and you means there’s inherently less risk. Add to those recent publications measuring nutrient loss in food within the complex food system versus a local food system, and early findings suggest that local food is indeed healthier, as it contains more nutrients simply because of its shorter harvest-to-plate timeline.
Finally, we farm for you! We’re not harvesting for a distributor or someone we will never meet. We have a relationship with you, our CSA community, and we’re harvesting for you. We feel a deep sense of responsibility for providing you with a healthy product. Returning to the adage, but stated differently: together, we all have a lot to gain from a strong local food system.
Thank you for supporting local farmers!
