GROWN Locally partners with the Leopold Center to produce a Grower's Manual

GROWN Locally, a producer cooperative in Northeast Iowa, has partnered with The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture to publish a "Grower's Manual" to help local food cooperatives improve their handling practices and meet food safety standards.

GROWN Locally originally developed the manual to establish standards for pre-harvest and post-harvest handling and to meet the specifications of local food service establishments.  The Leopold Center revised and expanded the manual for other cooperatives to use as a model.

The 24-page manual can be downloaded from www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs-and-papers/2011-10-growers-manual.

The Grower's Manual describes requirements for personnel procedures, general handling, cleaning, sanitizing, packaging, labeling and transporting, and offers information for planning a mock recall. It also includes detailed tables that describe how to prepare and package a variety of crops.

Joanna Hamilton, a master's degree candidate at Tufts University and summer intern at the Leopold Center, prepared the manual with assistance from the Leopold Center's Marketing and Food Systems Initiative, GROWN Locally and Iowa State University Extension.