 Hello, everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm your host for today's seventh field of fork webinar for the 2023 season. It's brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. And if you missed any of the previous webinars from this year or previous years, they are all archived on our field of fork website. This is the eighth year that we've done the series and we're really glad you joined us today. The next slide shows the upcoming webinars and we hope you join us for these as well. The following slide shows the webinar controls. Because of our large number of participants, we invite you to post your questions and comments in the chat. So I would like you to ignore the Q&A box and find the chat and open it and please type your city and state like many people are already doing. We're really glad to see people from all over the country joining us. The next slide provides an acknowledgement. I have a special request. This program is sponsored in part with grant funding from USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. And I will ask all of you to complete a short online survey that will be emailed right after today's webinar. And as a thank you, we will continue to provide prizes to lucky winners of the random drawings. We already have sent out a lot of prizes. So be sure to put your complete address on the follow-up form including your city, state, and zip code. Again, welcome to today's webinar and I'm very pleased to introduce today's speaker. In a unique joint appointment between Kansas State University and the University of Missouri, Landa Nawadakey serves as state extension food safety specialist for both Kansas and Missouri. She works with county and district extension agents and other stakeholders in both states to develop programming and resources in food safety. Especially focusing on consumer, produce grower, and farmers market vendor issues. She also works in local food systems issues including food access. Landa has had an interesting career. She has worked for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization based in Rome, Italy. She has extensive experience living and traveling in Africa. Prior to starting this position in 2013, Landa served as extension food safety specialist for the University of Vermont. She grew up on a farm in our neighboring state, South Dakota, and is happy to be living in the north central region. So with that, thank you Landa for being with us today. Great. Thank you so much, Julie. And yes, I'm very happy to be with you all today. And I always get a little nervous when I'm sharing the screen. I don't want to check the chat to see where people are from, but I'm sure that there's people from lots of different states, like Julie said. And I know that some of you have more snow than others. I was just in South Dakota over spring break for my niece's wedding and I know there's a lot of snow up there yet. So I'm, how do I say, this picture maybe feels a little, like a little ways off to some of you, I would guess. But you know, when, I think sometimes when the spring seems a little ways off, that's a great time to be planning for spring and a great time to be getting ready for, you know, thinking through what you're going to be doing in the spring and thinking through your growing season. And so, and I know it, like, again, it might be a little while before the snow melts and do you have green things growing, but it'll be coming, it will be coming. So, so I'm going to talk today about, you know, if you are going to be doing growing produce and particularly if you're going to be using organic practices and particularly if you're certified organic. So, so I'll go ahead and turn, go to my next slide here on the, with the kind of overview of what I'll be covering today. But so I will be talking just a little bit more about why food safety is important. And I know I'm a lot of my previous speakers and some of our future speakers will talk about this as well. But, you know, obviously it's important to us. And since you're all here today, you must think it's important, which is great. I'll talk a little bit about produce safety regulations and certifications and then, you know, I'll talk a little bit about specifically about organic production if you are, you know, certified organic or using organic practices and how that kind of meshes I guess with with produce safety. I'll talk a little bit about water testing to because it's something that's very near and dear to my heart and some other resources available on this topic as well. And if you do have questions like Julie said, you can type them in the chat and we'll happily take as many as we have time for today so but happy to take questions and my contact information will be at the end of the webinar so then you can feel free to ask questions of me afterwards as well. You know, like I said it's great to see so many of you on today so that is encouraging that that you all do think food safety is important and that you feel like this is an important topic to you know to spend an hour with this afternoon. You know when we think about growing produce in particular. You know there's so many reasons why we grow produce. I think at least there's there's a lot of different reasons, and you know, and so when I was growing up we always had a big garden, my mom always had you know lots of fruits and vegetables that we would raise we just had it for our own consumption but when you're thinking about making that step into you know raising produce to sell in particular, but this is also relevant if you're just raising it for your own use. You know, I guess it's just as relevant for your own use because you really want to make sure that the products are as safe as possible. I haven't personally worked with any farmers that want to make anybody sick or gardeners that want to make people sick but but we really do want to just think through just reducing that risk as much as possible really is the key. Again if you're if you're selling produce so if you're you know into that realm of things where you have enough produce to sell. We always have to think about in our society liability. You really don't want your market to be. Well I can't think the right word jolted I guess by by you know first of all if somebody sues you that's obviously not a good thing and then just if there's, you know your reputation is really important as well if you're selling produce direct to consumer. Because people will talk and say well, you know, I got I'm sure I got sick from their broccoli. You know, so then others will hear that maybe want to buy that product from you anymore so so you really want to make sure you're protecting your markets. You know when you're selling things like produce you know produce is so nutritious and so good for you. And we all need to eat more produce well all basically everybody needs to eat more produce particularly vegetables. You know it's just important that you are assuring your customers that produce safety and quality is important to you and that their health is important to you so. These are all just important reasons. And of course there are regulations in place as well which I'll talk a little bit more about here soon but but it is really important to meet regulations as well if they apply to you. And even if they don't you still want to make sure that you're selling safe product and that you're providing safe product to whoever is eating that produce. So, I think I mentioned or Julie might have mentioned I grew up on a farm I guess I talked about a little I grew up on a farm and you know. My, my dad, you know he, I can just always imagine what he would say when we had corn and soybeans and beef cattle and so on but, but you know when we think about produce safety and food safety. It's not only increasing the safety of it it's also increasing the quality in the shelf life. And so you know if you can increase the shelf life that is really important that's that's important to you as a producer for your bottom line, you know being able to make more money which is which is important of course. So, you know when we think about those practices that are good from a safety perspective they also can help from a quality and shelf life perspective to so. You know having good temperature control getting the temperature down as fast as you can as soon as you can will help with with quality and shelf life but it'll be a really juicy looking great looking strawberry. If you're doing that having good sanitation to you know, not only is that good from a food safety perspective it's also good from a from a quality and shelf life perspective it'll last longer your tomatoes won't rot as fast you'll have more tomatoes to sell. They'll look better and people want to buy more and people want to eat a more which is important we really want people to eat more healthy produce. So yeah like I said you have more products to sell because you know when you have when if you're not refrigerating things fast enough cold enough. You'll have a lot of what you have water loss and then you don't have as much pounds of produce to sell like tomatoes is a really good example of that you want to sell. You know as many pounds as you can so keep that water in the tomato don't let it get out and big way to do that is keeping your product as cold as possible tomatoes you don't want to go too cold. You know about 45 is usually kind of a good range for tomatoes but you want to keep things you know get it get that field heat out as soon as you can. And then just preventing early spoilage and bad appearance of course is also really important and then extending the shelf life. Like I like I talked about a lot as well as important so improving your sales and profits you know food safety isn't you know there's a lot of reasons to have good food safety practices and then also can increase your sales and in your profits which is important as well and you'll you won't have to throw any strawberries out because you couldn't sell them fast enough like you can maybe sell them. You know tomorrow as well they'll last longer which is which is really important to so foodborne illnesses do happen unfortunately. And the big thing I want to emphasize on this slide is that you know it's not just the large produce growers that have to think about food safety. It's everyone that needs to think about it. I won't go into a lot of details right now on the process of how foodborne illnesses get attributed to to a particular product. But generally speaking you know the products that are sold in large quantities are more likely to get you know we're more likely able to trace back any food safety problem that happened in a larger lot of produce to that particular lot of produce just because more people are eating it but but it can happen in small scale production as well. It can happen in organic production it can happen in conventional production. The thing is you need to use those good safe practices so whether whatever size you are you know whether you're using organic practices or not. Or conventional you need to make sure that you're using good safe practices that we'll talk about in a little bit here. But again foodborne illness does happen, but we can really do a lot to prevent it and that's why that's why we're here today is to talk about how we can prevent it. And one other thing I'll mention, you know the populations that are most vulnerable to foodborne illness are the young the old the pregnant and the sick. And you know those are populations that we really want them to be eating more produce. And you know, thinking about those vulnerable populations we don't want them in particular to end up with foodborne illness. I have you know 11, nine and six year old right now and and boy you know I don't want they love watermelon just that's watermelon last night was imported of course but. But you know I don't want them to be getting sick from that watermelon because boy I really want them to eat more produce and I don't want them to get sick from it. So, okay now we're going to switch gears and talk a little bit about marketplace requirements or certifications as well as regulations so that the governmental regulatory side also. So, you know, if you are selling produce, or if you're if you're a buyer of produce as well. But if you're selling produce your buyer might tell you, you need to use good agricultural practices or use gaps is the acronym, like a lot of school districts might require this or you know some grocery stores distributors. They might, you know they might tell you you have to use good agricultural practices. If they tell you just need to use good agricultural practices that means just you know, using safe practices and we'll again we'll talk a little bit more about that later, but using them that's that's fine. It's everybody should do that anyway, but if they tell you need to be gap certified, then that's something different so gaps is a marketplace requirement it's a it's a buyer requirement it's not a regulatory requirement. So, you know, basically, if, you know, again if a school district that you want to sell to they say okay I will I can only buy from you if your gap certified. Then you know it's up to you if you want to sell to that school district or not if you don't you just sell to somebody else. But getting gap certified. I know farmers that are in Kansas to Missouri at least you know we can help you with that and a lot of our my extension colleagues across the US can help you to get gap certified. The USDA has a gaps cost share program right now that's available for any farmer. In addition, like we in Missouri right now we have extra gaps cost share funding and we typically do in Kansas to but. So there are programs that can help you get gap certified we have lots of resources on our website templates and record keeping forms and food safety plans and stuff that are on our website that can help you to get gap certified so if you want to do it. You can you just it costs money you have to pay for the auditor to come so. So that's that's again marketplace requirement side. So now we're going to switch over to the regulatory side to the governmental regulatory side so there's something called the food safety modernization act so this is from FDA is the entity in charge of the food safety modernization act. So there's a number of different rules under the food safety modernization act and the one that the largest one that deals with produce is called the produce safety rule. So, and then there's other ones there you can see preventive controls for human food and animal food etc. So there's a number of different other different requirements under that food safety modernization act as well. And the produce safety rule the final rule was released in November of 2015, which sometimes I can't believe that's already been eight years so it's been her almost eight years I guess so it's already been a little while since, since it came out so. But still something new this was the first time there was ever governmental regulations on on fruits, or sorry production harvest and handling of fruits and vegetables so. So this is new for a lot of produce growers to have governmental regulations. The thing about like I talked about gaps earlier. And now I'm talking about fizba there. You know they're two different things, but there's a lot of similarities between the two there's some differences but there's some similarities and we have again on our fact sheet we are sorry on our website we do have a fact sheet that kind of goes that just helps explain the differences between the two it has it's a table it shows you know the differences between one and the other and the similarities so if you have questions on that that's available on our website to. So the big question that a lot of people will have is okay there's this food safety regulations that you're talking about. And you know there's it was Senator john tester was kind of one of the main he's from Montana he was kind of one of the main. Leaders I guess and having what they called the tester amendment and so that exempted the smaller scale farmers from being required to meet all those the requirements and have an inspection done. So the first exemption of this food safety modernization act produce safety rule is if you're selling less than $25,000 of produce per year on average. So then you're actually the term they use is excluded you're like so you're not covered by the rule. So if you're selling, you know if you're a small scale farmer just getting started, or you know just just have selling to a few markets, you know less than $25,000 per year than you're exempted from the rule. If you're selling things that are rarely consumed raw that's also not covered because the rule is really intended to cover things like those tomatoes strawberries leafy greens, you know things that are going to be often consumed raw. That's like pumpkin, you know that's, I've never met anybody that eats raw pumpkin. So that's something that's, you know, going to be baked before it's cooked and then are, it's going to be, it's going to be cooked sorry before it's eating. So, so that's something that is exempt from the rule. So that's going to be commercially processed before consumption such as if you're selling tomatoes to a canner or, you know, cucumbers to a pickling operation that would be those will be also exempt as well. So this next exemption here is what we call it qualified exemption. It's a, it's a two part situation so first is, and I won't go into a lot of details we have a lot more detail on our website. Again, I'll, I'll share later. But, but if you meet both of these, then you would, you would qualify for this qualified exemption. So, if you're selling less than $500,000 of annual food sales and that food includes things like wheat, corn, milk, meats, you know if you're selling any food that's just just and that's for the purposes of calculating the exemption. You're selling, you know, less than $500,000 of all your food. And if most of your food is sold directly to a qualified end user which is things like direct to consumer, a restaurant in the same state as you. You know, so there's so kind of the local foods exemption, then you would also be considered exempt. So all those people are exempt. But they have record keeping requirements. So everybody that I haven't mentioned would be covered by the rule. But if there's ever a foodborne disease outbreak linked to your farm, then then you would then you would not qualify for that exemption anymore so you have to make sure and everybody is always required to sell safe and unadulterated food. So everybody still has to sell safe food but whether you'd get inspected or not depends on if you're exempt or not. So if you are, you know, if you are wanting to fall under that qualified exemption if you're saying like you know I'm selling mostly to direct to consumer markets. And if you are certified organic then you can use your existing organic records of sales to document your business qualified exemption as well. And you do need to keep track of that documentation. I have again on our website there's a just an example template that you could use just for you to document your exemption you don't have to send that documentation in anybody necessarily unless somebody asked for it but it's just for you to have on hand you know in case your inspector ever would ask you for it. Okay, so what are some things that are covered by the produce safety rule. So, you know things like water is very important to produce safety. If you're using biological soil amendments so things to help improve the fertility of the soil, like manure is a good example then you have to pay attention to that how you're handling that. You have to pay attention to how you're handling domesticated animals wild animals. What you're how you're training your workers, you know your equipment that you're using you know so all those things that are good practices you have to pay attention to all of those. So, um, pretty safety training requirements so if you know unless you're exempt, then you know if you're covered by the fizzman produce safety rule you are required to go to a training. And it's a particular training. I know NDSU and SCSU and Iowa State quite often work together to provide these by remote distance on zoom probably like this webinar. And MU work together a lot to do these we also provide them by by zoom. It's an eight hour training so it is quite a bit but you know we try to keep it as fun and interesting as possible. You know sometimes we'll offer them in person so there's, you know, there's resources available for taking this training and that you can get a certificate then from that and that will you know help to really give you a good foundation for produce safety. So, um, now you know thinking about organic in particular and produce safety sorry that was a lot of background on produce safety first but you know there are a lot of similarities if you are getting organic certified. And you know if you're needing to comply with the fizzman produce safety rule if you're not don't cover on if you're not falling under one of those exemptions. And if you are exempt you still need to sell safe produce but you know so if you're already organic certified, or if you're thinking about becoming organic certified. You know they're not in competition with each other. So you can be organic certified and you know meet produce safety requirements. It's not automatic if you're doing one that you're doing the other, or vice, you know, either way it's not automatic but but there's definitely similarities between the two. And so there's, you know, if you've again if you've already been organic certified, you know that there's set standards that you need to meet there's certain things that you need to do. For produce safety it's the same you know that there's some set standards that you need to meet so you kind of have that mindset of following those standards. Documentation is required for both so if you're, you know, if again if you've already been organic certified or considering getting organic certified. There's documentation that's required they have to know for sure what you're doing, and not that you just say you're doing this but you're actually doing it. So you know so that's important too and then again the same is true on the produce safety side you have to make sure that you are really doing what you're saying you're doing you have to document it. And then also the level of operation influences compliance levels so. And the terms of the produce safety rule, if you're larger you had to comply earlier, if you're smaller you have to you have more time to comply. And as I mentioned there's even some exemptions for the smallest farmers in terms of the produce safety rule so. So there's another similarity. In general so in general studies that you know that I've seen have shown that there's similar microbial levels in organic and conventional produce so you some people might have the perception that organic has less microbial contamination and some people might have the opposite they maybe think organic produce has more microbial contamination but but studies have shown that they are similar. You know there's probably some cases that are one way or the other but in general they're they're similar. And so that's why like I mentioned at the beginning it's important to use good practices no matter what doesn't matter if you're organic or conventional producer if you're larger small you just have to use good food safety practices no matter what. And if you're again if you're organic certified it doesn't automatically mean you're compliant with FSMA and if you're compliant FSMA doesn't mean you're automatically compliant with organic you have to do both to make sure that you're meeting both requirements. So thinking about. Kind of the big picture and I'm you know I've kind of talked about this already these are all the things that influence produce you know and then how safe it is to the soil the water you know all these different things are all influencing it. So this picture and when I teach this picture in a smaller group than I often ask people to, you know, shout out or put in the comments but you know we have a larger group today but you know you can look at this picture and see all the different hazards that could be there. Like there's definitely some hazards here. One of my colleagues you know kind of says this is like the worst case scenario for growing produce, you know, and the thing is low, low ground is usually you know very fertile soil. But that low ground has seen there's a reason why it's fertile soil too. But in terms of produce safety we do have to make sure we're thinking about, you know, run off from livestock operations. The light the runoff from the livestock operation going into the water and the water going on to our produce. So you know there's going to be while and there's wildlife happen deep birds happen and we love I mean I love to see birds. I just don't want them. I don't want their feces on my produce. So, you know, how do we how do we balance these things out, and particularly with organic production you know a lot of farmers that are using organic practices are doing it because of, you know for tropical reasons that they really appreciate biodiversity and so on and so so I'll come to that more here in a minute but so when you're again if you're thinking about, you know, or if you are organic certified or if you're thinking about it and you're also, you know wanting to make sure you're using good food safety practices. You know thinking through soil amendments, particularly manure is a big thing. So, and I definitely don't, I definitely want you to come away from today knowing that it's okay to use manure manure is a great source of nutrients for the soil. You know, it's, again I grew up on a farm we had a feedlot and like you've got to use that manure you got that manure out of the yard anyway. And so, you know where do you put it. The big question is when do you put that manure on your, your produce you know if you're raising field corn or soybeans that's something different but if you're raising tomatoes, you have got to make sure that you're putting it on enough ahead of the time when you're harvesting that any pathogens that might be there in that manure are going to have the chance to die off. So, so in this case, the, the food safety rule borrowed or is using the organic rule for the interval between the time that you apply the manure and the time that you harvest. So in this case it's easy to comply with both because they're the same. So, 120 days is the recommendation for things like leafy greens, strawberries, you know things that are carrots, things that are growing in the ground or you know near the ground. You need to wait you know about four months from the time that you apply the manure to the time that you've harvest to allow for time for any, any pathogens any germs that can make people sick need to allow for time for those to die off before you harvest the crops so this time of year is getting a little late. You know, November is a good time to do it October, November, you know you need to make sure you're having those that four months between the time that you apply the manure to the time that you harvest the crop. And if it's things like sweet corn, although sweet corn is usually cooked before consumption but even peppers, the peppers I would probably air on the side of 120 days but apples is a good example, you know they're growing far enough away off the ground that the edible portion is not in contact with the soil then 90 days should be enough based on risk assessments that have been done, you know, scientific research that's been done showing generally that's about the amount of time that's needed for pathogens that are in the manure to die off. So, the more time the better always it reduces the risk. So composting is something that a lot of farmers that are organic certified will do and composting is a great thing. You know, I'm a huge proponent of making sure that we are composting you know our watermelon rides and our, you know, our orange peels and all those sort of things as well. But if you are going to be composting and again it's okay to compost on your farm if you're organic certified, and you're wanting to comply with food safety regulations. So you just have to make sure that you are again doing it properly. So keeping records is really important. Monitoring the temperature so making sure that you are using a compost thermometer I have one in the corner here but you know big old thermometer to check your temperature. And then turning it as well as important because you want to make sure the whole pile is getting hot enough to kill off any bath pathogens that might be there. So the National Organic Program does have you know composting requirements so again if you want to be compliant with food safety make sure that you're using those National Organic Program requirements for composting as well. So you need to use a scientifically validated treatment process so you can't just say well I've left it there about you know nine months I never checked the temperature I never turned it. Like that's not that's not considered compost then properly treated compost that's just considered manure. But if you use that scientifically validated process you turned it you check the temperature, have records of all that then you know and you've done it properly then it can be considered then it can be considered treated compost. And make sure your dog doesn't go out in the pile, because we don't know if the dog left something there when he was digging in the pile. So, next we'll turn to thinking about water. So when we think about water. You know, again, I don't want anybody to come away saying, I can't use surface water. No, that's not the case you can use municipal water you can use groundwater you can use surface water. But at least post harvest I think I don't know if I have a slide in this deck or not but but it's if you do use surface water you just have to do it properly. So, you know the level of risk changes you know from you can see lower risk is the public municipal water whether it's rural water or city water. And then the highest risk is surface water and rain barrel water would be included in surface water because you know the rain comes down on the roof. It, the water is touching your or the snow comes down the roof, the water is touching the, you know, bird poop that might be on the roof and then it's getting collected. So that would be considered surface water as well. So again you need to use it properly and use good practices and that. So, for egg. So thinking about, you know, for what you're what you need to do if you are using water which, you know, most people are watering or watering their crops they're irrigating their crops. Unless you're living in a place that has perfect amounts of rainfall, you know, most of us are going to be using water and everybody should be washing their hands before they're harvesting anyway so you have to use water for that. And you might be rinsing your products after harvest so so most everybody uses water. So you do need to it's a well I shouldn't say you need to it's a good idea to test your water. The, we don't have the final rule yet on the water quality side of produce safety but it's still like I said a good idea to test the water. So, and that's post harvest it is required to test your water. For pre harvest it's not currently required but I highly encourage it it's a very good idea. So, municipal water you wouldn't have to retest it yourself if it's already been tested, but you're well and your surface water. Again, for pre harvest it's a really good idea post harvest it's required that you do test the water. So, let me see for production water. Okay, post harvest water it has to be portable so it has to be of drinking water quality. So and what, what we mean by portable here in this case is no detectable generic E. coli and 100 mil sample so this in this case we don't think about night we don't test for nitrate and things but we just test for generic E. coli. Okay, so for water sampling and testing in Kansas and Missouri we currently have a grant that's paying for free water testing for growers and other states. There's a nice map that's that some universities have put together of water testing laboratories and different different parts of the US so private labs will also test your water. And, you know, they just will charge you for it so let me see so we have a lot again we have a lot of information on our website about water testing so there's the link there. We have some videos and again if you're in Kansas and Missouri will test your water for free, but but for anybody from any state that website will have a lot of information on water testing and and and on just water quality in general and how to help improve it. Okay, so again thinking through thinking through your irrigation and what you're how you're doing it. So if you're using drip drip under plastic like those are really good ideas from a water conservation perspective as well. It's also, you know, going to be less likely that any water that's in there is going to be touching the strawberries that are growing there the actual berry. But you know if you're raising things like carrots, those are growing underground and so then you know your water is going to be touching it so you know so there's you just have to think through. How can I if I am using a source of water that's you know maybe a little bit higher risk, you know how can I reduce that risk as much as possible. Like you're maybe a rain barrel water, you know you could if you put it on drip or drip under plastic that's going to really reduce the risk rather than using overhead irrigation. Okay, so thinking about again about if organic production and and compared with produce safety regulations so if you're, you know, organic again organic producers really, you know, appreciate biodiversity love to see the biodiversity see different animals. You know, the thing with the produce safety rule is, and the thing with produce safety is that the feces is really the concern not so much the animals and so you know we don't need to get rid of all the animals. But we just need to keep them from defecating on our produce like that's the goal is that they are not defecating on the produce if they are are near the produce. If they are defecating on the produce you cannot sell that product so if you see a tomato that has a, you know, big white spot on it, you know that's obviously feces from a bird or whatever, you know, you cannot sell that tomato. So, but you know if, again, from a production standpoint you don't want animals getting in the produce anyway because they could eat it and they could you know make a mess and they won't have anything to sell. I know we always had issues with raccoons and the sweet corn you know we do everything to try to keep them out so so we don't want them to eat all the sweet corn. So, you know you really want to help help make sure that you are keeping those animals out as much as possible. Then, you know, also thinking about again an organic production we're interested in in thinking like conservation of natural resources and, you know, having more biodiversity of the plant life around that water will help with filtering the pollution as well so so the coal management is really the key making sure that you're thinking things through in terms of you know what the impact might be. Okay, so thinking about domesticated and wild animals, you know again we want to do all that we can to keep, especially things like cats, you know you don't want. But we do know that cats help control mice and cats can control voles and whatever else might be around to and dogs, you know, often are used as well to help kind of keep the pests away. And the thing is we don't want that cat using the produce field as her litter box you know we don't want to have feces all over. And with the dog to we don't want him leaving his feces in the field so you really want to monitor that and and again as I mentioned before you do not want to have you cannot harvest produce that's been visibly contaminated feces that's or you cannot sell Harvard. You know, anyway harvesting is another question but you do not want to sell produce that's visibly contaminated with feces. Washing and cooling my next slide I'll talk about organic post service considerations but just first big picture for washing and cooling after harvest. You know for some produce it's really better not to wash it after harvest so it is not a requirement from a food safety span standpoint that you have to wash your produce it's not required to wash your produce after harvest. You know, a lot of buyers probably like it like especially if you're selling things like carrots. You know, people don't usually want to buy carrots that have lots of mud on it you know people aren't used to that seeing that in the grocery store the farmers market. So, you know things like that like you know that it's a good idea to wash it if, especially that's a buyer they're used to the things like tomatoes berries, you know green beans like they don't always hold up that well. With washing their shelf life gets reduced. So you want to make sure that you're thinking through, you know what are the pros and cons of washing it you can save a step and save water and save hassle to. So, you need to think through that, you know if it really makes sense to wash or not. If you do wash need to make sure you're doing it properly. So, you do not want to spread more contamination. So, again, thinking about if you're an organic producer, you know, organic, the national organic problem. Wow, national organic program. They, they require that you cannot use any, you know, packaging materials storage containers, you know anything that has any synthetic fungicides or preservative or fumigants in it so you need to think through your. The packaging materials that you're using. And then also thinking through chlorine use so. chlorine is is allowed to be used in an organic production setting, however, you do need to think through. You do need to make sure that you're under the FDA and EPA. You're under the FDA and EPA levels for those for chlorine. And then also you have to make sure that you're thinking about the. You're thinking about how you're discharging that water into the environment. So, with the organic program they do require that you cannot have it it cannot be very strong it has to be diluted so they don't have to use more water. And also, you know, under the organics regulations or rules. If you have use chlorinated water, you have to then rinse it off with just plain water. So a lot of organic producers do organic certified producers do not use chlorine because of these reasons there's a lot of. You know, a lot of extra steps that are needed if you are using chlorine. So then what do you do like I was saying earlier if you are going to be rinsing your produce post harvest. So carrots again is a great example. Even if you're spraying it like you can see here this is you know on the left there that's a spray a single past system on the right is like a vat, you know, a big tub that you are sink that you're rinsing your produce in. Either way, it's a very good idea to use some sort of a sanitizer in the system because you don't want biofilm build up and you don't want the problems from one. Carrots or one tomato or one whatever one winners one summer squash going from that produce to all the produce. So, a lot of organic growers will use parasitic acid so tsunami is one name brand, Sanadate. So, you want to make sure that you are using, you know, something that's approved by the National Organic Program and something that will help to control, you know, bacterial spread as well, or pathogen spread I should say. So parasitic acid can be used, you know, in your rinse water and it can also be used on food contact surfaces so like your tables that you're using you know even those racks, the sink you know all that is food contact surfaces. So you want to make sure that you're, you are cleaning those and sanitizing those. You have to make sure that you're not going above the FDA and EPA limits though. There's some other examples as well. One of my colleagues has a lot of research on UV ultraviolet treatment of water and produce that's another option that's organic that is allowed on the organic program so. So there's other things that you can do if you're an organic farmer, but you need to make sure that you're again controlling any hazards that might be there. So farmer health and hygiene this is the same whether you're an organic producer or a conventional producer. Sorry I just want to make sure that you're washing hands cleaning hands you know this is the same for any sort of food that you might be producing whether it's, you know, in your kitchen at home or at a restaurant or on the farm raising fruits and vegetables. Handwashing is super important for all those. So labeling considerations again, specifically for organic producers. You know, it's, it's important for if you're, if you are in that qualified exemption category that I talked about it's beginning. You do need to have your farm name and address on the product. And if you're organic certified, then you also have to have you know the name of your organic certifier on your label. So that needs to go directly below your contact information so that people will know, you know that this was a legitimate organic certified product, and they'll know who to contact if they have any, any issues or if they enjoy your product they can contact you as well. So the national organic program does require label approval so with with NLP you do need to get your labels approved because they want to make sure that you're accurate in your transmission of your information about your product. The Food Safety Modernization Act produce safety rule does not require that you have to get label approval so if you are, you know, organic certified you just need to go through your organic certifier to get the label approval of produce meet is a different story but that's a topic for another day. So record keeping is always important. Again, like I mentioned, national organic program will require records as well as produce safety. You know there are some impacts. I'm going to jump ahead here. Some of these, what do you call it links that I listed here they do have some examples of some, you know, some some record keeping that records that you can have that that you know are both going to work for national organic program records as well as produce safety records. The thing about record keeping is if it's hard it's not going to get done. So you want to make it you know as simple and uncomplicated as possible. So here's our website or here's the number of different websites but our case state website I mentioned a number of times. As I mentioned I work for both I got my two shirts on today. But you know I do work for both but our produce safety stuff we just put on our case state side just because of logistic purposes but but we do have information on the MU side to but the food safety modernization Act website is here. So there's some great information on there. Colorado State has some great information. And I see it kind of shows up funny on the slide but but in when I click on it it shows up better but so it is important to make sure that you're, you know, that we are using those good food safety practices and as well as the organic practices if you want to, you know, have that organic certification. And the Alliance with family farmers that's an organization in California I believe and they had also some good information on their website about again that kind of having good food safety practices and those good organic practices you know how they can work together they don't have to be combative but they can be working together. And here is our just a picture of our case state produce safety website. You know we got lots of information on Bismar and getting gap certified on, you know, and on lots of other resources as well so. So, I'm gonna, I'm happy to take some questions and I see a few things in the chat so there's probably a few questions and I'm going to put my contact information slide up there so you can feel free to ask me if you have any questions. Sure. So, I have one for you. What constitutes raw manure in this this person says someone has offered us manure for our garden that she has piled for two years. Yes, okay. That is a great question a great question yeah. Well, you know the term raw means a lot of different things to different people but in that specific case. If you do not have records that show that that manure pile has gotten up to a proper temperature, and you don't have the records to show that it's been turned, it's still considered manure. It might be aged manure but it's not considered properly treated compost so you still would want to wait that 120 days from the time that you apply it until the time that you harvest it so so you can still use that that's great but you just want to. Or you could use it on things that you're going to be cooking or you know potatoes or you could use it on I'm trying to think of another or your flowers or whatever you know things that you're not going to be. I wouldn't use it on my spinach or my strawberries that sort of thing without waiting that 120 days from the time of application to harvest. Here's kind of a follow up question to that. At what age does manure lose its value. Yeah, and I'm not an agronomist or I'm not a whatever the expert is on that side of things so I cannot give you a good answer I wish I could. That's a great question I don't have a good answer but I guess there's going to be a time when it's not, you're not getting any nutrient value out of it anymore and I am afraid I can't tell you what that is but yeah, good point. This will be getting some fiber in the soil but yeah you're not going to get a lot of nitrogen and that sort of thing after a while probably. And I would suggest at least on the NDSU side that you check out the ag resource hub because we do have specialists in North Dakota as in other states that somewhat specialize in manure management so. Exactly. Check that out. Good question here what is your recommendation for washing produce at home. Yeah, great question and I yeah I know I've seen Julie give presentations on this before but maybe not in this particular webinar series but. But yes, great question so things like if you're buying even you know bananas or apples or anything like that. Well, I guess maybe I'll start with cantaloupe let's start with cantaloupe because that's the most complicated one. Things like cantaloupe that have that netted rind you really want to and potatoes because they're kind of have rough skin, you really do want to make sure that you're using a produce brush to get to really get into that netted rind or into the the eyes of the potato to get it clean. So but just clean running water is all that we recommend that's all that I recommend the research that I've seen shows that like produce washes aren't really that much more effective than just using clean running water. You know always needs to be portable water. But produce washes and you know some people use vinegar or whatever. Those things aren't we don't have a lot of data that shows that they're effective or that they're helpful. So just at home just using clean running water. Again, if it's something like. I want to say muskmelon but yeah cantaloupe or muskmelon. You know you do want to use a brush but even you know bananas, I would still wash off because you know that peel might be touching something else even though you're not eating the peel. But I recommend just clean running water. Good question. One other thing I want to mention to if it's if you're buying like triple washed lettuce you know if you're buying a bag of cut lettuce if it says triple washed or like ready to eat. Then you don't have to wash it again and in fact if you do wash it again. If your sink is dirty, you've now introduced any contamination from your sink on to that produce so. But I know some people do but you want to make sure that your sink's not dirty so. We have another one on washing produce and this one's about parsnips. Does washing parsnips reduce shelf life. Oh, that's a great question. Honestly, I would need to check with my post harvest physiology colleagues on that so I'm blessed here at quesadilla to have a colleague right down the hall that's a post harvest physiology person. I, I don't know and some of those publications on our website might talk about it to. I'm gonna, I don't know that answer sorry I apologize I. I don't I don't know maybe not because you know carrots I don't you know it's parsnips of course are similar to carrot so. Sorry that's not a very good answer I would say most likely it's I would you know most people are not going to want to eat a dirty parsnip or buy a dirty parsnip so. But you know like I tell my mom to like don't wash the grapes when you get home wash them right before you eat them. Because if you do wash them right away to get home they're not going to last as long it does reduce the shelf life so. With a lot of produce actually you know if you're just going to be storing it for your own use it's really better not to wash it it's better to wait. Until before right before you eat it rather than washing it right away if you're going to be using it for your own use. Sorry long answer. No that's that's fine and if you have follow up questions I think Wanda would be happy to to answer them. As you can see in our world we have many specialists in different disciplines and I have a question for you now that is out of my discipline and I don't know if it's in your discipline. How concerning are bowls in a home garden and should they be trapped. That's a great question I brought up bowls because bowls are something that I do get a lot of questions about I'm not an expert on bowls by any means. We do have on our website that website. I go back up here with this website under the I think or this picture is from a little while ago actually but but anyway on this website. We have additional resources or something like that tab that has lots of videos that we did in the in 2020 when we couldn't do things in person we did a lot of videos on wildlife control. And our state extension wildlife specialist did and actually one of my colleagues I think in Missouri take that back he did a really nice video on bowl management. And so I think it's it's maybe a six minute video or something. But yes I will defer to my colleagues that are experts on that topic but there we have some great resources on our website that talks specifically about like bowl management. Just because they you know they just dig their little holes and they chew on things and you know cause reduce your produce that you can sell or you can eat which is not great so. Well with that you have answered all the questions and I just want to thank you for a very interesting talk and I want to thank everyone who joined us. 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