Gate 1 · Food-safety documentation
Produce Safety Alliance — Grower Training & resources
Cornell University, with FDA & USDA
The FDA-recognized curriculum for the FSMA Produce Safety Rule — hygiene, ag water, soil amendments, and writing a farm food safety plan, with recordkeeping templates.
FSMA Final Rule on Produce Safety
U.S. Food & Drug Administration
The actual federal requirements for growing, harvesting, packing, and holding covered produce.
GroupGAP Food Safety Program
USDA Agricultural Marketing Service
How groups of farms, hubs, or cooperatives certify under one shared Quality Management System — background reading on a direction Farm2Chef is studying, not a service we offer.
On-Farm Food Safety Project — free plan builder
FamilyFarmed
A free step-by-step tool that generates a farm-specific food safety manual plus the recordkeeping forms to document it.
Gate 2 · Volume and aggregation
Scaling Up Your Vegetable Farm for Regional Markets
ATTRA / NCAT
Judging wholesale readiness: crop planning against buyer demand, aggregation and food hubs, insurance, and food safety at volume.
Assess Your Readiness to Scale Up
SARE
A short wholesale self-audit — cold chain, uniform pack, food safety, buyer communication. A good companion read after the Farm2Chef assessment.
USDA Local Food Directories
USDA Agricultural Marketing Service
Find registered food hubs, CSAs, and buyers by location and product — and see how aggregation actually happens.
Gate 3 · Pack-grade traceability
Grades and Standards
USDA Agricultural Marketing Service
The official U.S. grade standards buyers write into specifications — the shared language for size, quality, and tolerances.
FSMA 204 — Traceability Records for Certain Foods
U.S. Food & Drug Administration
Lot-level traceability: Traceability Lot Codes, Key Data Elements, and the written traceability plan. FDA enforcement is set for July 20, 2028 — buyers are asking well before the deadline.
Produce Traceability Initiative — Resources
PTI (CPMA, GS1, IFPA)
The industry's practical playbook: milestones to case-level traceability and the harmonized case label.
Gate 4 · Cold chain
UC Postharvest Research and Extension Center
University of California, Davis
The reference library on cooling methods, storage temperatures, and handling — including small-scale pre-cooling for producers without industrial equipment.
Postharvest Handling and Storage
UMass Extension — New England Vegetable Management Guide
Crop-by-crop table of cooling method, storage temperature, humidity, and expected marketable life.
Direct Marketing & Quality Control
UC Small Farms Network
Plain-language guide to temperature as the top quality factor — a good first read for smaller operations.
Gate 5 · Business and invoicing
ATTRA Sustainable Agriculture — marketing resources & hotline
NCAT / ATTRA
Free publications and a staffed hotline (1-800-346-9140) covering institutional markets, invoice and insurance expectations, and payment-term reality.
SAM.gov — entity registration
U.S. General Services Administration
The free, official registration needed before federal buyers can pay a business — and a model for the documentation discipline institutional vendor onboarding mirrors.
SCORE — mentoring, templates & workshops
SCORE (SBA resource partner)
Free one-on-one business mentoring plus invoice and bookkeeping templates.
A platform by Travel Villa Kitchen / VK Capital Ventures Inc.
Operated by VK Capital Ventures Inc, a Delaware-registered corporation based in Houston, Texas. This site runs on HTTPS, and Farm2Chef's readiness results are self-reported — never a certification, audit, or USDA approval. Questions: [email protected].