Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** we propose to partner across…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** we propose to partner across california, north carolina, south carolina, and new mexico to complete the development and delivery of a PSA-equivalent curriculum for diversified, sustainable, organic, beginning, and socially disadvantaged farmers growing produce for local and regional food markets. These producers are highly likely to be operating farms that are not covered by or qualified exempt from the fsma produce safety rule (PSR). Among this audience, those that are covered often need significant support to gain an understanding of good agricultural practices (gaps), and maybe unaware of the PSR. The project partners, carolina farm stewardship association (cfsa), community alliance with family farmers (caff), national sustainable agriculture coalition (nsac), and new mexico farmers' marketing association (nmfma), combined have the equivalent of over a century of serving the needs of this farm audience and have been leaders among community-based organizations providing GAP, foodsafety, and fsma support to these farmers since fsma was passed. They have worked at the state, regional, and federal levels to develop a variety of successful training programs and support services for these farmers. These community-based organizations have been cooperating with the US food and drug administration (FDA) in creating a PSA-equivalent GAP curriculum targeted to the needs of this audience. The proposed diversified farm fsma training initiative continues that collaboration by taking that curriculum and developing a full program for delivery to the target audience, including hosting walk-through trainings, conducting pilot trainings on-farm, creating a train the trainer curricula, establishing a review and monitoring process for curriculum maintenance and distribution, and hosting an initial round of trainings.together, through this proposal for the diversified farm fsma training initiative, the project partners will develop and implement a customized food safety educationand outreach program for small farms that use conservation-focused, sustainable, and organic practices and distribute their produce in local and regional food markets, especially farms in this category that are operated by beginning and socially disadvantaged farmers.