Project Overview
Annual Reports
Commodities
- Agronomic: peanuts
- Fruits: melons, apples, berries (other), berries (blueberries), cherries, grapes, peaches, plums, berries (strawberries)
- Nuts: almonds, pecans
- Vegetables: sweet potatoes, asparagus, beans, broccoli, cabbages, carrots, cucurbits, garlic, greens (leafy), leeks, onions, peas (culinary), peppers, radishes (culinary), sweet corn, tomatoes, brussel sprouts
- Additional Plants: herbs, ornamentals
- Miscellaneous: mushrooms
Practices
- Crop Production: food product quality/safety
- Education and Training: farmer to farmer, focus group, participatory research
- Farm Business Management: budgets/cost and returns, community-supported agriculture, cooperatives, marketing management, farm-to-institution, market study, risk management
- Sustainable Communities: public policy
Proposal abstract:
The proposed project seeks to bridge gaps in the marketing channel between small-medium scale producers and institutional food-service operations. Existing barriers already limit the flow of produce between these (potential) supply-chain partners. In addition, legislation proposed in the Food Safety Enhancement Act will add new, mandatory, requirements of all producers who supply institutional food services. As it is perceived that meeting these requirements will be time consuming, expensive and logistically challenging, small-medium scale producers are likely to be disproportionally burdened by these regulations and may opt to exit this marketing channel all-together. From the perspectives of both small-medium scale producers and institutional food consumers, this project will explore and propose remedies to challenges posed by the traceability requirements. In doing so, it is hoped that this project can facilitate the continued participation of smaller scale producers in this economically important marketing channel.
Project objectives from proposal:
1. To examine and document the relevant issues, research questions and extension needs of small-medium scale specialty crop producers with regard to traceability requirements proposed in the Food Safety Enhancement Act.
2. To examine and document the relevant issues, research questions and information needs of institutional food purchasers to document traceability throughout food-service.
3. To assess the extent to which there exist similarities and/or conflict between the traceability information and logistic needs of small-medium scale producers, and institutional food providers.
4. To collect, document, and integrate suggestions regarding best-practices for traceability in the operations of small-medium scale specialty crop producers and institutional food services.