How Lee Berry is getting GAP certified

Over the years, local farmer Lee Berry of Berry Patch fame attended many workshops on getting GAP certified. GAP, which stands for “Good Agricultural Practices,” is a voluntary set of procedures to protect consumers from food-borne illness by requiring certain production practices and product traceability. However, Berry never took the plunge to make it official. Recently he has found opportunities to sell the collards and sweet potatoes he grows for his produce stand to wholesale markets as well, such as the Sandhills AGInnovation Center (SAIC) in Ellerbe. Many wholesalers, including the SAIC, require farmers to be GAP certified.