Wanted: safe, flavorful produce year-rpund

Joe Jancsurak, Editor 

Increasingly, greenhouse growers are recognizing produce as a profitable niche market that carries with it responsibility in the form of food-safety considerations. Whether we’re talking bedding plants for IGCs and big-box retailers or finished produce for local restaurants, schools, and grocers; food safety and innovative indoor growing methods for year-round production are important topics.

This month’s issue of Produce Grower covers both. The cover story, “Growing Fresh Ideas for Food Safety,” on page 16 by Bob Whitaker, chief science and technology officer for the Produce Marketing Association, looks at food-safety testing technologies that growers need to be aware of as they evaluate what makes sense for their own operations.

Complementing Whitaker’s article is a sidebar report by PG’s Assistant Editor on how the Food Safety Modernization Act’s Produce Rule may affect some growers, especially when it comes to the quality of water used for irrigation. And in “Protecting edibles requires a plan,” on page 19, BioSafe’s Rob Larose details the sanitation steps growers need to take to ensure edibles meet food safety requirements.

In “Producing produce cold-weather style” on page 22, Carol Ford, owner of Garden Goddess Produce in Milan, Minn. and author of the Northland Winter Greenhouse Manual,” shows why the notion of sustainable greenhouse-grown produce in cold-weather climates is no longer impractical.

Together with her late husband, Chuck Waibel, Ford led an effort resulting in a ‘cool weather’ greenhouse and the formation of the Deep Winter Producers Association and a relationship with the University of Minnesota’s Regional Sustainable Development Partnership.

Finally, to all of you who follow Greenhouse Management on Twitter @GreenhouseMag, you can now follow Produce Grower @Produce_Grower. For those of you not following either, I hope you will do so. And please don’t forget to follow me @JoeJancsurak.

Joe Jancsurak, Editor | jjancsurak@gie.net
(216) 236-5960 | Twitter: @GreenhouseMag