A group of Upper Peninsula farmers in the US are participating in a pilot program designed to explore new ways to address small farm food certification.
Through this programme, the farmers are assisting the UP Food Exchange and US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop a Group Good Agricultural Practice (Group GAP) model, ABC 10 News reported.
With this effort, smaller farms will be able to comply with federal regulations.
UPFE-Group GAP documents coordinator Neal Curran was quoted by ABC 10 News as saying: "There's some language in there, there's some stands that don't quite fit the farms of our scale, so a lot of the work that we did as group administrators was to interpret that language and make them accessible to small farms."
The programme is expected to enable the farms to expand their consumer reach.
"Having these food safety requirements kind of allows them to access a wider market for their products, it also build consumer confidence and is making these small farms more viable in the marketplace," Curran added.
As part of the project, the MSU Centre for Regional Food Systems will carry out a case study about the Group GAP project and it will be available in 2015.
