Minding Your Business; 400; NM Deptartment of Agriculture

K-R-W-G-T-V presents Mining Your Business, a look at the people, places, events and issues that impact the business and economy of Southwest New Mexico, with your host, Charles Comer. Hello and welcome to Mining Your Business, to show where we explore business, economic development, community resources and events, and issues that impact our region. This week on Mining Your Business, we all remember the tomato scare this past summer that was so severe, even hamburger chains stopped buying them until investigators could finger the culprit. Turns out the problem came from South of the border, but nonetheless the event was devastating to U.S. tomato producers and many other businesses. The New Mexico Department of Agriculture, however, has a program that can prevent local producers from being falsely accused of food contamination. Here to tell us more about it, is Craig Maple from the State Department of Agriculture. Craig, thanks so much for coming out. It's a pleasure to be here. Boy, that's a big hand. That just about covers my whole thing, my whole hand, but a little bit about yourself. Were you grew up?

Were you went to school? A little bit about your background in the industry. I grew up in Southwestern Ohio and moved into Mexico about 31 years ago, and primarily to get a master's degree in history from New Mexico State, and I went back to school and got another master's degree in agriculture economics. Two many years ago to count, but I've been working for the Department of Agriculture, the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. It's often on for about 25 years now. I work primarily with smaller growers in northern New Mexico, even though I do a lot of work statewide as well. Now how does the historian get involved in agriculture? I just have to ask that. Long story, but when I received my master's in history, PhDs were rather a dime a dozen in history. I had some good friends over in the ag school who encouraged me to go talk to the people in the ag college, and that's what I did and ended up working in agriculture. Well, you came to the right place, great history department, world class agriculture college.

We're glad to have you. You came to New Mexico, what, 75, 76, and August of 1977. That's funny. My family, my father retired from the military, family moved here in early August of 1977. It's a wonderful place. I have only good things to say about my adopted state. We became us kids. Our parents had lived here before, but we became enchanted immediately. Now to topic. Tell us what gaps and what GHP stand for, because that's what you're here to talk about. Right. Gaps is actually two things. Good agricultural practices, which is the on-farm aspect of it, you know chemical storage, worker hygiene, field hygiene, things of that nature, and then there's good handling practices which has to do more with the packing shed, the facility itself, the produce is packed and shipped out of.

No. We're going to talk a lot more in depth about how you folks do that. Now, when I worked for a major seafood chain, I was on the FBI committee, and that's what we called foodborne illnesses, and whenever something happened, we had to investigate that, who was working that shift, what the guest ate, and those kind of things, it was a tracking system where we could finger potential problems, particularly with handling the seafood. Now there weren't too many cases, it wasn't something we had to do a lot, but something it happened enough that we had to sit down once a month and do it. So foodborne illnesses, a huge problem for, they can cause many problems for the food industry, be it agriculture, be it much farther down the line with the restaurant. Is gaps a lot like that, but on a much larger scale, what that committee was with that seafood chain?

That's part of it. Again, the two aspects of it are in the field and things of that nature, and then the handling part of it in the packing shed, but ideally, the goal is if there is an incident of food borne illness, you would be able to track where that occurred, whether it be in the field or in the packing shed, and really ideally, who was on shift that day, who was working that day, things of that nature. So it is very similar, but again, ideally, you would be able to go back to a specific point in time when that contamination might have occurred and where. So tracking is just one aspect of a much larger overarching program. Right. Now, how and why did the program come to be? The program is a United States Department of Agriculture program, and I spoke with them yesterday. Just out of chance, I met the district supervisor for USDA, Fruit and Vegetable Inspection program, and what he told me was the program started in 97 as a result of some growers

in, I think he said New Jersey, California, and New York approaching their state departments of agriculture, looking for a quality assurance program about food safety, and if their state departments of agriculture could help design and implement something. Those state departments of agriculture, and again, California, New Jersey, and I think New York, approached USDA and asked them to design a program primarily to instill confidence in the product that was being shipped into the food system. Our program started as a result of some sales, direct sales to the public schools, okay, historically, smaller growers in northern to Mexico, many of whom I work with, have had no market for a lot of their product.

So we approached the public schools, oh, four or five years ago, and ended up, or began with a very small sort of deal, about $12,000 in sales, and this has grown over time to about $300 to $400,000 a year, primarily coming out of northern to Mexico, some of it coming out of southern to Mexico. But we wanted to ensure that our growers had the basics and the basic understanding about food safety. So what we did was started a series of workshops around the state, and these are ongoing. We just finished three more this past summer, going through good agricultural practices, worker training, good handling practices, worker hygiene, things of that nature. So that's how our program got started. Right now, we have three USDA certified facilities in the state. Now I understand the program was developed by a team involving 22 universities, am I right?

And does my memory serve me right? It was a major effort. Cornell University has been a major, major player in this. They were really the spearheaders, and that's the national website is out of Cornell. Right, and they've just been great, and very progressive school, and again, they spearheaded the whole effort. Now off the top of your head, do you know the kind of people that they brought on board? I understand it was a very multi-disciplined task force. I'm sure they had food technologists, food scientists, I'm sure OSHA was involved to some degree. I think I read that. And just a variety of other people, I'm sure at the farm level, you know, chemists, things like that, chemical specialists, things of that nature.

Now let's talk a little bit about the ripple effect. Now my show with Jeff Whitty, we talked about agro-terrorism, and the economic impact it can have. Now in your experience, what does an outbreak mean for that group of producers, and all the different tendrils that go out from a producer to the handlers, the shippers, all the way down the line to the retailers and to the consumers, what kind of economic impact does that have when there's an outbreak? It's enormous. And it goes from the grower all the way down to the ultimate consumer. Look at the tomatoes scare, people were actually pulling tomatoes off of their hamburgers or off of their plates, because they didn't want to eat them, just out of fear of catching something when it ended up maybe not being tomatoes after all.

But I think there was a bill in Congress to compensate growers for the tomato growers, for $100 million, I think. So the losses can be enormous. You have people throwing out product, and it tends to shut the system down, so there's no flow of commodities to the consumers, so it impacts everybody. Now I know an example, Craig used, was with hoof and mouth disease, it's what, a million dollars an hour of a loss until things are identified and isolated and contained, so very similar impact for people who may not raise livestock, but fruits or vegetables. Absolutely. Absolutely. Now that's something about the ripple effect. Let's go to some of the nuts and bolts of the gaps program. I think it's from step one, so a producer wants to get involved, what happens next?

Primarily, we have two contacts we can start with. One of them is Nancy Flores, the food science person here at the Mexico State University. And she can help set up some of the initial workshops and things of that nature and just answer some initial questions about what's involved. And then the second contact would be Stacey Gurk with the State and Federal Fruit and Vegetable Inspection Service, and he can actually come onto your farm and start the audit, what they call the audit process, and look at what you're doing, what you need to change, what you might need to modify, so there's two tracks there. Now what are some of the key elements of actual implementation, what's some of the equipment that producers are going to have to get, and what are some of the systems they're going

to have to implement, because from what I understand it takes more management, things like that, takes some extra equipment, what are some of those? People are actually afraid of this, but it really boils down to record keeping, is a lot of it. And farmers generally don't like to keep records, none of us really do, but it's a lot of record keeping. It's a lot of initial training of your staff, for example, about handwashing, just basic things, washing your hands after you smoke a cigarette, after you use the restrooms. As far as equipment goes, it's not a big investment. You're talking about porta-potties in the fields, for example. Handwashing, portable handwashing stations in the field or in your packing line, it's not a huge investment. Now, those portable handwashing stations just saw one at the State Fair, at the Sun in the Mexico State Fair, and my wife and I just marveled at it. You step on a little pump, and it sits out there in the sun, so the water is kind of warm,

and it's got paper towels and soap. You said something like that is not very expensive to buy a couple and fill up with water and soap. Right, it's not a huge investment. You could probably actually lease those or rent those from a company, from a local company. Now, what kind of outbreaks does that help prevent? Just simple handwashing. Contamination from E. coli, salmonella, which are the two major ones that we have. And simple handwashing goes a long way toward preventing that sort of outbreak. Now, tell me a little bit more about the record keeping. Because that is the scary thing. Like you say, none of us like to do it. Most of us don't like to have to balance our checkbook, but so I certainly understand producers who aren't used to that kind of thing, being wary of bringing that in. But are we talking about employee tracking, or are we talking tracking of what's being

produced and exactly where, as far as GPS coordinates, what kind of record keeping specifically are we talking about? It's primarily basic record keeping. When you did something, write it down. Our rule of thumb, or what we tell people, is if you didn't write it down, you didn't do it. Okay? So it's very simple sort of what time you irrigated. What time of the day did you irrigate? What was the temperature that day? As far as workers go, what kind of training did you have? And when did you do it? What time did you do it? How did you cover? So it's not onerous. It just initially takes time to develop those programs for your employees, or maybe some extra paper or something like that, but it's not really that burdensome. Certainly, the case was smaller producers, but I did read on the online information that much larger operations may actually need to consider bringing on a few extra people to

help with that record keeping. Have you seen that be the case? You're the one out there in the field, up there in Alcalday, and helping those folks in the northern part of the state, so from your experience? I've seen some of that to do the initial sort of field training manuals, things of that nature. But the one grower we have in Northern Mexico, who just got certified last year and has just gotten approved this year, just yesterday, for the second year in a row, actually had a family member do it, okay, and work through the manuals and the training programs and things of that nature. So you can go out and hire somebody to do this for your farm, and I think the fee is about $75,000 if you wanted to bring somebody in from outside, say from California or something like that, but it's not something the farmer or somebody in the farmer's family could not do.

So we're talking investment versus return. What kind of return are we talking for that? What is apparently a very minimal investment? The return is huge, and which is why we wanted to work with our growers, selling to the public schools. From my point of view, the public schools will always be there. That's always going to be a permanent market. It might go up by a few thousand students or down by a few thousand students, but it's always going to be there. So the thing to do is to protect your marketplace, and the schools love this program because they know that what they're getting is coming from a farm that does keep records, that does have a worker training program. And if you add up all those years of being able to sell to the schools, the income stream from that is enormous. So I don't want to put a number on it, but the return on investment is high. No, that gives us a good segue to preferred vendors, and that can be a positive and practical

upshot of becoming gaps certified. What are preferred vendors, how do you become certified, how does gaps help? This is part of that preferred vendor situation you're talking about. Last year, for example, Washington Paragrovers, who've always sold to the schools, got a little note from USDA saying that if they were not gaps certified, they were going to be unable to sell to the schools. That portion of the paragraph, they've always sold to the schools. So if you get gaps certified through USDA, not through NMSU, it does set up a preferred sort of vendor list through some of the commodity programs with USDA. The pair example is just a great example. And the reason why you're on that list is because you track, you're a lot more accountable,

should anything hinky come up with something you produce? That's right, you have a lot more credibility with the marketplace. And customer confidence. And customer confidence. Now I know that there was kind of a pilot program going on in Albuquerque quite a while back, but you said that's greatly expanded. Share some of the school districts on the top of your hand. We've basically started a very small pilot program in Santa Fe in I think 97 with a small grant from USDA, looking at getting the Mexico produce into the school lunch program. And that was a result of a House Memorial, House Senate Memorial, requesting the Department of Agriculture to look into that. From there, and I think we had sales of roughly 10 to $12,000, we went into the Santa Fe Public School Districts in the Albuquerque Public Schools, which is about 85,000 students, about 85,000 lunches a day.

So about as many people as live in Las Cruces, and a little bit of the surrounding area. Eat lunch. And from there, last year we got into eight districts and we're still in those eight districts, including Las Cruces. They bought local produce from down here and from Northern New Mexico for the school lunch program. And given seasonal work, a steady income stream has got to feel good to these local producers around there. It's like night and day to a lot of the people I work with. It's been a blessing to them. And they realize, I think, how fortunate they are to have that marketplace and want to protect it through things like gaps and other programs. Now I actually have to shift a question list here and move on. Now we talked about preferred vendors. We talked about the school programs. Now you're actually up there in the field, up in Northern New Mexico. You're teaching people this.

You're connecting them with the program. What's been the feedback you've gotten from producers? Maybe if you have an example of someone who was apprehensive and then once they got involved, wondered why they hadn't been doing this all along. Stories from the field. Oh, let's talk about the Valardi Applesia. The one that got recertified yesterday. Been in the business for 50, 60 years. The father's 83 years old, still very active. Initially, there was a lot of resistance. Like Craig, we're not going to have to do this to sell the schools, are we? This is ridiculous. We just can't do this. To the point where last year we got certified, I was talking to him and I said, you know Edward, this has made you a better grower, hasn't it? He said, yeah. And he said, it's made my employees better too because I give them breaks. I treat them a little better. We have training and they pay more attention to what's going on.

And it has made my whole operation a better deal. So that's the best example I can give you. How does that feel? I'm good. Good, really good. How so? You don't know, you know, when we started our workshops three or four years ago, you think, well, is this really something that's going to happen? You need to be worried about it. And then when you see it coming down from USDA or from the schools inquiring, is anybody gap certified? You can tell the schools, yeah, we're working on it. And then when you actually have a producer get certified and then recertify this year, it's a very good feeling. Because, you know, you did something right to make something good happen in the marketplace. Fascinating information. Real quick, give us some contact information so some of the local viewers be interested in looking at it. Yeah, again, Nancy Flores, the food technologist here at New Mexico State University. If you just have basic questions, maybe you want to do a workshop and we'll go anywhere

basically. We were in Lincoln this last fall. And her phone number here on campus is 575-646-1179. And then Stacey Gurk, who again is the State Federal Cooperator with the Fruit and Vegetable Inspection Service. That number here on campus is 575-646-2752. Those would be your best contacts. I'm impressed. You know those phone numbers off the top of your head. I call those people a whole lot. Craig, great to meet you. Thank you. Appreciate the time. Well, it's time again for our weekly piece here on Mining Your Business. Showcase is some of the hardworking entrepreneurs and business people in our area. We call it the NYB Local Business Feature on the road in Silver City. There you go, dear. Thanks, you. It's now called Yankee Creek Coffee House. It's been a coffee house for 10 years.

A lady named Jacqueline had it for probably 10 years, so it's been here longer than 10. And then another couple had it for two. In October of last year, we brought a new equipment, brought it in and opened up Yankee Creek Coffee. Changed a little bit of stuff. We changed the position of the counters and so forth. But as far as the coffee, we still serve the same coffee that was served here for the past 12 years. We did bring in some coffee, my wife, the coffee snob of the family, had her favorite coffee from Berkeley, California, what we used to live. And she insisted on bringing that in, and we used that as our espresso and our house blend. We have carrot cake, my recipe.

It's the best you'll ever taste. We have a death by chocolate that's, it won't carry it, but it's very chocolatey. And we do cookies. There's a wonderful little bakery out in Membray's Valley that's called Living Harvest. We have stuff brought in from them and it's very good food. We bake some stuff across the street at Vickies. We have Italian sodas. We try to do the same thing that all little coffee houses do. They drink for not only mom and dad but for kids. When we first moved here, we wanted to do a coffee house. We found that the area is pretty much saturated and we ended up buying a restaurant. And when this place came open, we decided we wanted to own the coffee house. Our clientele consists of a lot of the older people. We play classical music and the 40s music on our XM radio. So we bring in an older crowd.

Some of the skateboarders come by occasionally. So we provide a nice quiet place for the people in their 40s and up to my age group, which is 27. That's where you're right now. It's really a tight little knit community, very open and friendly. It's just one of the things that we find about this place. It is very supportive of downtown. That just about does it for this week. Our 100th show since I became host and producer and thanks so much for watching and becoming fans. If you have a question about the show, you can call the mind of your business hotline 646-73050 or email me at Charles Comer at Yahoo.com. For information on upcoming shows and an archive of past shows, you can log on to www.www.krwgtv.org. Again, I'd like to thank my guest, Craig Maple, from the New Mexico Department of Agriculture for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for watching. I'm Charles Comer. Here's hoping you have a great one. Thank you. You You

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