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K-State Research and Extension
123 Umberger Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506-3401
785-532-5820
extadmin@ksu.edu

December 1, 2020

KSRE/KDA Direct to Consumer Sales Conference- Watch Parties

Submitted by Londa Nwadike

Some of you may be familiar with the Regional Farmers Market Vendor workshops that KSRE has organized jointly with the Kansas Department of Agriculture in the past years (information on the February 2020 workshops is available here. As with so many other events, we are planning to move this event online for February 2021. We are also planning to expand the content of the event to more broadly cover all direct to consumer sales of foods, including farmers markets.

While we plan to encourage as many people as possible to join the meeting online at home, we know that some of our Kansas farmers market vendors who would greatly benefit from the workshop do not have good, or any, internet access at home. Therefore, we would like to request if any of our local KSRE offices might be willing to allow interested participants to join the livestream (via zoom) at their office?

Any office that does agree to allow participants to come to their office to watch the event would need to abide by the KSRE state COVID protocols (including mask wearing, social distancing, limiting numbers of participants, etc), as well as your local COVID protocols if they are stricter, at the time of the event (February 2021). We are planning to start advertising this workshop soon and would like to get an idea of how many local offices might be willing to allow participants to come watch at their office. Here is what we would be asking of the local offices:

- Provide a space with a video monitor where participants can watch the sessions that will be streamed live through zoom (thus requiring internet access).

o If possible, provide a way that participants can either ask questions by typing them into the chat/ Q&A screen or by speaking them during the session.

- Assistance with advertising the event locally and keeping track of the number of people planning to watch at your location (to keep track for space available in light of COVID social distancing measures). We will ask that everyone register for the various workshops at the state level (they will need to pay $5 for all the workshops) and they will need to indicate if they are planning to watch it at a local Extension office.

- You are NOT expected to provide lunch or refreshments to the participants due to COVID protocols.

Benefits to your local office of hosting a socially-distanced “watch party”:

- Reach out to and build positive relationships with potentially new clientele (direct to consumer food marketers, farmers market vendors).

- Enable additional people in your area to gain information on beneficial programs for them.

- Receive multiple free copies of KSRE publications normally distributed at the workshops, including Regulations for selling foods direct to consumer and food labeling regulations.

The main session will be held on Friday, February 19 (8:30 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.) and will include the following topics:

- Available KSRE resources

- Keynote speaker on direct marketing

- KDHE presentation on the latest requirements for layouts of farmers markets and other direct to consumer food sales venues due to COVID-19

- KS Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program training

- KDA resources

- Overview of the Double Up Food Bucks program

We will also be hosting noon - 1 p.m. sessions on February 16-18. You can also sign up to host as many or as few of these sessions as you would like. We plan to cover the following topics:

- February 16: Regulations for selling eggs, baked goods and other value-added foods direct to consumer; Resources available from the KSRE Kansas Value Added Foods Lab

- February 17: Regulations for selling meat and poultry direct to consumer

- February 18: Sales tax for direct to consumer sales; Accepting SNAP/EBT

If you are interested in hosting a session in your office, please fill out this registration form indicating which days you would be willing to host a session.

We understand that even if you sign up to host now, you may not able to host the session(s) in February due to COVID restrictions in your office at the time. We will be sure to make that clear in our advertising to attendees as well. Please let us know if you have any questions or would like more information on this before signing up. We will plan to have an orientation session for all offices hosting a local watch party before the event.

We want to sincerely thank the Kansas SARE and KSAAC program for their support of these workshops over the years! Thanks for all the work that all of you do in so many areas! Please contact Londa Nwadike at lnwadike@ksu.edu if you have questions on this.