By Billy Mitchell, NFU Food Safety Training Coordinator Organize the tools. Clean the barn. Patch the pants. As farmers make their New Year’s resolutions, produce growers have an extra one to add: test the water. Contaminated water is often the culprit of produce-related food borne illnesses – but with proper precautions, it can be avoided. … Read More
By Mackenzie Jeter, NFU Intern A hundred years ago, agriculture was a relatively diverse profession in the United States: a million Black farmers operated about 14 percent of the country’s farms. The makeup of the modern agricultural workforce could not look more different. Today, there are just 48,000 Black farmers – a 95 percent decline … Read More
By Billy Mitchell, NFU Food Safety Training Coordinator Built on Booker T. Washington’s practice of taking educational opportunities to rural areas, designed by George Washington Carver, and financed by Morris Jesup, Jesup Wagons were “moveable schools” that delivered the university classroom experience to farmers across Alabama. Back in 1906, they were horse-drawn wagons but gradually evolved with the … Read More
By Melanie Arthur, NFU Intern Pre-pandemic, you needed a few essential things to host an on-farm tour or educational event. First, a place for people to park. Second, some hot coffee brewing. And, finally, a good story to tell and a megaphone to carry your voice across the farm and to your attendees. Now, with trucks staying parked at home and farmers getting their coffee refills at home, farm … Read More
By Jeanne Janson, NFU Journalism Intern The last 400 years of Native American history is marred with stories of land being stolen, children being forced into boarding schools and a crusade for assimilation through the erasure of culture. One result of this traumatic history is an entrenched cycle of poverty that persists on many reservations … Read More
By Billy Mitchell, NFU FSMA Training Coordinator Over the years, the picture of a farmer and farm service provider working together has often looked the same – two people, sometimes with paperwork sprawled across a tailgate, looking out over rows and rows of a crop surrounded by farmland stretched to the horizon. It’s a classic … Read More
By Tracy Heim, NFU Intern As fall transitions to winter, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is reviewing their New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint implementation. On October 26, the FDA hosted a webinar that gave an inside look at the progress made in the first 100 days since the Blueprint announcement in July. … Read More
By Billy Mitchell, FSMA Training Coordinator Like a moth to a glowing jack-o’-lantern, you may be drawn towards towering shelves of mass-produced candy this Halloween season and tricked into thinking that local treats are a thing of the past. Do not be scared: farm-made, value-added products are alive and well in 2020. The old classics, … Read More
By Jeanne Janson, NFU Journalism Intern From mid-August through the end of September, Megan Brown spent countless hours fireproofing the livestock enclosures at her family’s ranch in Northern California and preparing to evacuate should the LNU Lightning Complex Fire—the third most destructive in the state’s history—get too close. Unfortunately, this has become a sort of … Read More
By Melanie Arthur, NFU Intern “Parking lot, go ahead and blow your horns. Let everybody know that you are here!” food safety trainer and technical service provider Darrell McGuire shouted at the crowd. Alabama farmers and ranchers – who had drove their vehicles up to the Bethel Spring Missionary Baptist Church to hear speakers present … Read More