By Kendra Meyer
Destination owners learn how to keep employees and visitors safe when on the farm
The Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Visit Iowa Farms program will hold three Safety and Health Best Practices for Agritourism Businesses Workshops during the winters of 2018 and 2019. Attendees will learn safety and health best practices to keep the public and employees safe while on the farm.
The workshops will be held in Storm Lake (Feb. 27, 2018), Altoona (March 22, 2018), and Cedar Falls (Winter 2019). Registration will start at 8:15 a.m. and the workshops will conclude by 4:30 p.m. The workshops are free to attend but space is limited. Lunch, refreshments and course material will be provided.
“We are excited to offer this workshop for agritourism destination owners to learn best practices to keep visitors and employees safe when on their farm,” said Shannon Hoyle, program assistant in Value Added Agriculture with ISU Extension and Outreach. “Safety might not always be the first topic they think about when opening their farms to visitors and hiring employees, but it is certainly one of the most important.”
ISU Extension and Outreach experts will discuss food safety best practice topics such as food, farm and consumer, understanding legal risks in agritourism, public play area safety, pesticide safety for agritourism destinations, protecting animals and humans from biosecurity risks, and farm emergency preparedness and planning. Two participants at each workshop will be selected at random to receive a $300 stipend to use toward an agritourism-related safety improvement.