About Us

Our commercial ventures continue to expand while at the same time, state budgets continue to make cuts to our extension programs and availability.  In order to keep you up to date with needed information and materials related to food safety, I have set up this website to provide you with information related to various crops, food safety practices and other issues as the need arises.  You can contact me and ask questions related to commercial production on the blog page located in the website.  I will try to answer or get you the answers as soon as possible.  They will be posted so others who are needing the information can access this too.  Please let me know of your needs and I will try to get your information to you. I hope that this will keep us in touch and up to date on critical issues.

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Who We Are

My name is Wythe Morris, I am a retired educator having taught in public education for 26 years and worked for Virginia Cooperative Extension for 11 years.  Since retirement, I have continued to help small and medium sized farmers/growers to prepare for GAP Food Safety audits required to sell fruits and vegetables to various buyers.

Our History

When the food safety initiative first began,  the word was "you need to be certified" but no information or help was available to help farmers achieve a GAP certification.  When we sat down with farmers in 2007, it became evident very early that we were beginning with a clean slate related to having any materials for training or preparing for certification.  Many educational programs emphasized what a farmer needs to have or do in order to get certification but no programs showed the way.  Much of the instruction was theory and unfortunately was delivered over the head of the average grower.  Having taught agriculture education in secondary schools, I resorted to basic teaching methods that I had used to devise a training and materials for farmers and growers.  I emphasized "farm based" food safety and our goal was how to understand and manage information to achieve a GAP audit.  Food safety was emphasized in a "hands on" instructional program.  We put together the GAP Plan of Action Manual to prepare for audits while learning food safety practices.
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I have been involved with helping farmers and growers to prepare for food safety audits since 2007.  Since that time, over 800 individuals representing approximately 400 farms have participated in my trainings.  Those farms that have gone on to request an audit (about 12-15%) have had a near perfect pass rate.