Extension to Offer Last Produce Safety Grower Training Opportunity in May

Apr 15, 2025

By Rebekah Hall

On May 15, the Cooperative Extension Service will offer its last produce safety grower training until a new funding opportunity is secured for the program. Sarah Bakker, extension food systems and food safety program associate for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said attendance is critical for farmers’ success.

“This will be our last training session until we are able to secure a new funding opportunity or set up the program as fee-based,” said Amanda Philyaw Perez, extension associate professor of food systems and food safety specialist for the Division of Agriculture. "Currently, we charge $25 for the training, which covers food and beverages. However, without program support, we will likely need to charge several hundred dollars per attendee.”

The training will take place from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. at the Faulkner County Extension office at 844 Faulkner Street in Conway, Arkansas. Participants must register by May 12 at uada.formstack.com/forms/psa_faulkner. The cost is $25 to attend, and attendance is limited to 20 participants.

For fresh produce farms, the Food Safety Modernization Act, or FSMA, Produce Safety rule sets mandatory federal standards for growing, harvesting, packing and holding produce. Bakker said most produce farms are affected by this rule. Growers who attend the training will receive a certificate of completion, which satisfies the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Bakker said growers should secure their certification before the program is suspended, as Arkansas fruit and vegetable growers are still required to meet FSMA Produce Safety Rule standards.

“The 2011 FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act introduced regulations to protect public health by preventing food-safety incidents instead of reacting to them after they occur,” Bakker said. “This way, we can reduce financial risk to farmers and protect the public by ensuring a safe food supply.”

The training will cover new regulations for fruit and vegetable producers, including information about agricultural water, soil amendments, worker health and hygiene, wildlife management and more.

Program suspended due to funding cuts

"Through a partnership between the Division of Agriculture and the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, this federally funded cooperative agreement has been vital in helping the state’s produce industry meet federal standards since 2017,” Perez said.

Perez said the produce safety team at the Division of Agriculture has trained approximately 500 local growers and industry service providers on the Produce Safety Rule’s Good Agricultural Practices and provided “valuable on-farm visits to assist growers in preparing for federal inspections.

“However, due to recent federal funding cuts, this essential outreach and training program will conclude on June 30,” Perez said. “With increasing food safety outbreaks across the country, the loss of this program marks a significant change for the state’s agricultural community.”

Perez will still be available to help growers with technical questions about produce safety. For more information on these changes or to seek additional support, contact Greg Alexander, produce safety program manager for the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, at 501-225-1598, or Perez at 501-671-2228.

Source : uada.edu

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”