FTGA CEU Day--Need Your CEUs for Pesticide Licenses?

This is a great opportunity to get any CEUs you may be lacking towards your pesticide license.  Florida Turfgrass Association is sponsoring this virtual field day so we can increase knowledge and get those extra CEUs.  To register online you can go to this link.  https://www.ftga.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1372122 or you can print out the registration page and mail or fax.

Farm Worker and Employer Safety Measures for Covid-19

There has been an uptick in farm worker infections with Coronavirus recently and you may be wondering how best to keep employees safe on the farm.  Here is a link to the Center for Disease Control's Interim Guidance for Agriculture Workers and Employers that you can use to develop your farm's plan.  https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/guidance-agricultural-workers.html

Here are the key points of the information: 

• Management in the agriculture industry should conduct work site assessments to identify coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) risks and infection prevention strategies to protect workers.

• Work site guidance for COVID-19 prevention and control should be taken into consideration in employer-furnished shared worker housing, transportation vehicles and work settings.

• Prevention practices should follow the hierarchy of controls, which includes using source control and a combination of engineering controls, administrative controls (especially proper sanitation, cleaning, and disinfection), and personal protective equipment

• Grouping workers together into cohorts may reduce the spread of COVID-19 transmission in the workplace by minimizing the number of different individuals who come into close contact with each other over the course of a week, and may also reduce the number of workers quarantined because of exposure to the virus.

• Owners/operators should maximize opportunities to place farmworkers residing together in the same vehicles for transportation and in the same cohorts to limit exposure.

• Basic information and training about infection prevention should be provided to all farmworkers in languages they can understand.

• Agriculture work sites developing plans for continuing operations where COVID-19 is spreading among workers or in the surrounding community should work directly with appropriate state and local public health officials and occupational safety and health professionals.