Covid-19 & Growing Food

The rapidly evolving situation with COVID-19 is raising questions throughout the U.S. on its impact on lives, businesses, and the global economy. But how does it affect U.S. food and farming?

Abundant Harvest Aquaponics will always highlight and place emphasis on the many impacts that our produce/fish products and outreach efforts have on our community.

Abundant Harvest Aquaponics has and will always use the “absolute” best and most healthy and ethical methods to grow, nurture and harvest its produce.

We constantly monitor our training procedures for the fantastic volunteers we serve with.

Below you will find “FOOD HANDLING PROCEDURES” we use to harvest the produce we grow and offer for sale to our retail and, commercial customers as well as the many people in need that receive our produce through our outreach programs

Please know, Abundant Harvest Aquaponics takes seriously the responsibility of providing healthy produce to our community!

Abundant Harvest Community Garden Procedures for Handling Organic Produce

To maintain the quality during handling:

Sort, clean, grade and pack with care.
Use appropriate containers according to the market.
Apply proper cooling to retard senescence and ripening.
Clean all contact surfaces every day.
Always wear gloves when handling produce

Vegetables picked from the Grow bed area must be taken to the cleaning area, there they are sorted. During sorting, handlers remove culls for disposal and then classify vegetables to appropriate grade standards.

Sanitation is critical during all handling and washing operations to minimize the risk of spreading human pathogens from contaminated to non-contaminated vegetables.

Maintaining sanitary conditions is even more challenging for organic crops due to the limited number of approved sanitizers. As a harvest, worker hygiene is critical at this stage of handling. Studies have shown that properly washed hands are as hygienic as plastic gloves. All surfaces that contact the crop-picking containers, benches, cutting/trimming tools, and reused containers-must be regularly cleaned and sanitized. Thoroughly brushing contact surfaces with soapy water and rinsing them with potable water effectively removes debris and pathogens and eliminates their build-up over time.

Often, vegetables are washed before sale. Fresh vegetables should not be wiped with a reused cloth because microorganisms accumulate readily on cloth and can be transferred from fruit to fruit. Tanks or tubs are commonly used to wash vegetables, but this reused water presents challenges for organic operations. Postharvest fungi and bacteria can wash off vegetable surfaces into the water, and these can survive to inoculate other vegetables as they are immersed. The best method for cleaning most organic vegetables is to carefully brush them under running, potable water.

Detergents should not be added to wash water since, as surfactants, they favor the uptake of the water through openings in the vegetable. Any decay and/or human pathogens present in the water can also enter the crop, a process called internalization. Once inside the vegetable, these microbes are protected from being washed off or killed by sanitizers. Further, detergents that contain synthetic surfactants are prohibited for contact with organic crops.

Wash/rinse water can contain chlorine (eCFR 205.601) as long as it meets state and federal standards for drinking water, which is a maximum of 4 parts per millions of free chlorine, measured at discharge (U.S. E.P.A., 1996). Maximum sanitizing effectiveness of chlorine is achieved by adjusting the water pH to the range of 6.5 to 7.5; citric acid is approved for this purpose.

Ozone is an effective alternative to chlorine, particularly to sanitize water used in once over applications. White vinegar (acetic acid) was found to effectively sanitize iceberg lettuce: a 35% solution achieved a 5-log reduction of E. coli after a 5-minute, agitated soaking. Other sanitizers approved for use with organic crops include calcium chloride, sodium chloride, hydrogen peroxide, and peroxyacetic acid.

Packing is another key step to protect fruits and vegetables. An effective shipping container protects the crop from bruising or other injuries and is compatible with the cooling method that will be used. It must be strong enough to support the weight of stacked (palletized) containers during storage and shipping while providing adequate ventilation for cooling. Many vegetables are packed by count into a container that has specific dimensions. The most commonly used carton contains 1 and 1/9 bushels. Grape tomatoes and other small crops are usually packed by weight. Melons are normally packed in a single layer in a corrugated carton or in bulk bins that contain about 800 to 1,000 pounds. Some crops (e.g., summer squash and tomato) should be dried before packing to minimize the development of decay. Leafy vegetables and sweetcorn are examples of crops that can be packed wet as long as they are quickly cooled. The shipping container must be resistant to contact with moisture whenever wet vegetables are packed. For conventionally grown vegetables, corrugated: fiberboard cartons ar

Typically impregnated with paraffin wax for resistance to water. However, paraffin wax is not approved for direct contact with organic crops.

Organic growers and handlers have several options for shipping containers, depending upon the use. For single-use shipping containers, options include:

Dry vegetables, and then pack into corrugated: fiberboard cartons.
Watermelons and cantaloupe can also be packed in bulk bins.
Place a plastic liner in the container prior to packing.
Pack into consumer-size plastic bags or rigid clamshells and place them in the container.

For reusable shipping containers, options include:

Purchase plastic lugs for internal use or with repeat customers.
Rent returnable plastic containers (RPCs) for single shipments to distant markets.
Place plastic bags or clamshells in RPC master containers.