The Farmer Services Coordinator supports CAFF’s Farmer Services program, and specifically the Food Safety program by providing in-person training to farmers and leading our Partner Farm Program. CAFF offers a wide variety of food safety trainings to meet farmers where they are at and help guide them in improving their farm’s food safety practices. This position will help co-teach the Produce Safety Alliance Grower training with guidance from the Senior Manager for Farmer Services. This position will provide FSMA 101 and basic GAPs trainings throughout the state with our local partners (UCSC, Center for Land Based Learning, First Generation Farmers, and others); provide small group farmer trainings throughout the state; and manage the Food Safety Partner Farm Program. The Farmer Services Coordinator will meet with farmers, help them develop food safety action plans, guide them through completing them step by step, and organize farm field days. The vast majority of the time for this position will be spent “in-the-field” providing trainings to farmers and talking with them 1-on-1 and in small groups. This position will include a fair amount of travel especially during January-March. Additionally, this position will spend a small amount of their time on supporting our new food safety e-course and in other areas of the program.
Part Time – 60%, with significantly more hours during November-March each year (closer to 90% FTE during that time, April-Oct. each year will be closer to 30% FTE; possibility for additional time to be added
Location flexible, ideally based in Sacramento, Davis, Santa Cruz, Salinas, Merced, or somewhere near those locations
$17-20/hr, depending on experience
Food Safety Program Support:
• Organize logistics, create promotions, and co-teach Produce Safety Alliance Grower trainings with Farmer Services Senior Manager.
• Collaborate with local partners in different parts of northern California to provide Food Safety Modernization Act 101 and basic Good Agricultural Practices trainings.
• Lead the CAFF Partner Farm Program with ten farmers a year in the cohort.
• Travel to different parts of northern California to provide trainings, do outreach, and provide on-farm technical assistance.
• Attend any professional development courses as needed.
• Provide feedback and help develop an online food safety course.
• Follow-up with growers after they’ve received our assistance to complete evaluation tracking.
• Organize, promote, and give field days with Partner Farms each year.
• Research small farm food safety questions and report back on findings to Farmer Services Senior Manager.
• Develop (in collaboration with the Farmer Services Senior Manager) short resources and how to guides for growers.
• Support regional food safety and farm to market activities and actively promote CAFF membership with farms & businesses
• Represent CAFF by participating in community activities and events as necessary
• Other duties as assigned
• Participate in staff meetings and collaborate with regional staff statewide
Handle some administrative duties in the regional office
• Strong written and oral communication skills
• Resourceful and able to perform a variety of administrative and organizational tasks with a creative approach to problem solving
• Flexibility to work independently, with minimal supervision, as well as collaborate with others in a team setting
• Flexibility to work on a variety of projects
• Strong ability to multi-task
• Direct small-scale farming experience and/or farming knowledge
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office, especially Excel
• Familiarity with collaborative working platforms such as Salesforce, DropBox, and Google Drive is preferred
• Experience with Creative Adobe Suite preferred or other graphics software, preferred
• Experience with (or interest in learning) project management software Asana, preferred
• Bilingual in Spanish, preferred
• Connections to local growers in whatever part of the state you are based in, preferred
• Knowledge and formal training on Good Agricultural Practices, Food Safety Modernization Act, and 3rd Party Food Safety Audits, preferred
• Send a one page cover letter answering the questions below:
o What small-scale farming experience do you have?
o How would you rate your food safety knowledge on a scale of 1-10 (10 being expert). Why?
o If you could describe your approach towards work in one word what would it be?
o Where would you be based for this position?
o Why are you interested in this position?
• Attach a 1 page resume to your cover letter
• Attach them both to an email and send to kali@caff.org with the subject line: Farmer Services Coordinator
Applications received by 12/6 will be prioritized, applications still accepted after 12/6