Food Safety
AUBURN UNIVERSITY, Ala. — Alabama farmers markets are displaying their fall offerings and preparing to close out another successful season. For one Alabama Cooperative Extension System specialist, she is reflecting on this year’s farmers-market season, which brought growth and forward momentum to vendors in the Black Belt region.
Janice Hall is a specialist with Alabama Extension’s federal nutrition programs, working in the areas of nutrition, food safety and produce safety. She said Extension saw a need in Black Belt communities to ensure that farmers understood the requirements related to food and produce safety in order to be a farmers markets vendor.
“For years and years, we have been providing food safety and produce safety training,” Hall said. “This project, ‘Building a Food Safety Training to Empower Disadvantaged Producers in Alabama’ is a project we felt would benefit our farmers.”
Willie Boyd, co-owner of Boyd Farms in Macon County, said he got involved in the program through his involvement with his local Extension office.
“We started learning a lot of things that we didn’t quite understand,” said Willie Boyd, who is a retired colonel in the United States Army. “We figured out that there was a better way to do things and grow a better product at the same time.”
See and Hear the Difference
Hall said one of the things the program focused on was materials for farmers with low vision.
“A lot of times we take for granted that people can actually see things in a presentation,” Hall said. “We made sure that the screens were wider and fonts were bigger.”
Clinton Boyd, co-owner of Boyd Farms, said this program provided magnifying glasses and materials with larger print to help elderly individuals see and understand information more clearly. Willie Boyd said the books with larger print were helpful, but the bolded sections made a difference in comprehension.
“The book lays it out for you,” Willie Boyd said. “If it is in bold print, we know this is important.”
Hall said program organizers were also intentional about making sure attendees could hear the presentations.
“At all of our programs throughout the training, we used PA systems,” Hall said. “This really made a difference for our farmers.”
Know the Difference
Farmers with low literacy were also among those who received additional resources. Hall said they went into the project knowing that they wanted to lower the curriculum’s literacy level to a sixth-to-eighth-grade level. Willie Boyd said he appreciated the effort put forth to accommodate comfort and comprehension.
“They were very aware to try to accommodate the information, our time and our comfort,” Willie Boyd said. “I appreciated them being there.”
Clinton Boyd said the program was geared toward making attendees comfortable, as well as walking away with a deeper understanding of the material.
“It wasn’t like they were going through the material to satisfy a requirement,” Clinton Boyd said.
Improving Communities
Through this project, Alabama Extension partnered with Tuskegee University Cooperative Extension and the Communities Improvement Association worked to serve Black Belt farmers. Hall said the partners had disadvantaged farmers in mind, as they worked through the development of the program.
Anthony Pinkston, president of the Communities Improvement Association, said this was a great project through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
“We know that our farmers now know how to handle food safely to make sure that it is safe for the public to consume,” Pinkston said. “Any time we have that situation, it is good for everybody.”
Tuskegee University Extension’s Millicent Braxton said their role included marketing, facilities and conferences with farmers.
“This grant provided great opportunities for farmers to do their farmers markets and also gain knowledge,” Braxton said.
Hall said throughout the trainings, many types of materials and resources were provided to farmers. Also, at the end of the project, the partners created two farmers market days — one in Montgomery and one in Selma — as opportunities for the farmers to set up their displays and showcase what they learned in the program.
More Information
The exciting outcome of this project is that the efforts will continue through the three partners. The Alabama Extension Food Safety team will continue to use the materials. Also, the farmer market outreach efforts will continue in a partnership between Alabama Extension and Tuskegee University Extension. Learn more about the impact of this program through a video on the Alabama Extension YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/@AlabamaExtension