Oklahoma Group GAP 

We have the opportunity to create a group of Oklahoma farmers and perform a ‘Group GAP,’ the USDA Good Agricultural Practice food safety audit. This audit is what is usually required by distributors, many of the school districts, hospitals, universities, and grocery stores. If a farmer wants to get GAP certified on their own it costs $3,000-$4,000/year, but we have a very good solution to share that cost.

 

How it works:

• A group is established. This is for farmers who grow produce and mushrooms. They are allowed to produce other items, those items just won’t be included in the GAP (like meat, hot sauces, etc). The USDA does not have a maximum for the number of farmers, nor geographical constraints.
• The Internal Auditor (Taryn DeWitt) will establish a Quality Management System and implement the program per farm. The farms will need to get their water sampled and complete charts. Taryn will come on site and help implement everything. Taryn will work with you to make this time and resource efficient.
• We are hoping for 16 to 36 Oklahoma farmers to join. The cost for each farm will roughly be $300-$500 a year (looking at partnerships to low this further). GAP certification opens up a lot of opportunities to sell produce in grocery stores, schools, restaurants, hospitals, and through distributors.
•  You will not get a USDA formal audit each year. USDA created a formula to only audit a sample of the Group GAP. They will audit the square root of the number of farmers who joined will be audited, then rotated each year. So 16 farmers join, 4 will be audited per year. 36 farmers join, 6 will be audited.
• If a farmer fails, the whole group doesn’t fail. That is not the case in the solo audits. So this is another reason to get started. There’s a lot more grace built into the Group GAP.