About the Authors

Farm to Fork has a personal meaning to me. My grandfather started the stockyards/auction houses in Michigan and I have childhood memories of listening to auctioneers and playing in the wool room. My father’s farm concentrated on beef cattle and sheep. Summers were full of 4-H fairs and farm work. I went and lived on a dairy farm, as part of an exchange program, learned to milk cows in the fields and bring the full milk cans back to the barn on my bicycle handles. I married into a centennial dairy farm family and spent my days milking cows, doing field work, growing and preserving food while raising a family. As a 4-H leader my children enjoyed the fairs and farm pets.

I started college as a non-traditional student when my eldest son went off to college. I graduated from the local Northwest Michigan college with honors in my nursing and business studies. A recent university center gave me the opportunity to complete a BS in community development from Central Michigan University while running my own business. While raising my six children I’ve sold cars, nurse call and communication systems, been a securities and commodity broker and hung holiday decorations in municipalities. 

Accomplishing my MSA in International Business, from Central Michigan University began a new chapter in my life. I wrote for an international internship and received a call from Washington DC asking if I would consider participating on a USAID project in Africa. I said yes and I have continued to learn from farmers and producers around the world.

I felt I needed more than my farming, entrepreneur, and business background to help create markets and improve conditions. Too many of the projects I worked on contained predominately business and numbers people. They had no knowledge of the applications needed to create better conditions and safe foods for international markets.

I went to Michigan State University and gained master degrees in Public Health and Food Safety, along with certificates in HACCP and International Food Laws and Regulations. I was on a USAID assignment in Liberia when I took the Codex Alimentarius class online from Dr. V.P. Hegarty. The USAID project was creating food producers. But was the food safe for consumption? Liberia had no food laws and no laboratory capacity. I got permission to bring Dr. Hegarty, a professor that I had never met in person, to Liberia to put on a workshop for the Ministries and people of Liberia to help create a change.

I have had the privilege of working from farm to fork in Latin America, the Middle East, the Near East, and in 18 African countries. I have learned more from them than anything I’ve read in textbooks about cultures, farming, processing and life. I now know where much of the food comes from on the USA grocery shelves and what it took to get it there.

And so my journey for safe food began….