West Warwick, Rhode Island - High School, Sodexo Unveil New Hydroponic Farm

Kendra Port/klolio@ricentral.com

October 15, 2018

Photos by Kendra Port

WEST WARWICK –– West Warwick High School this week officially unveiled its new state of the art hydroponic farm and served up a number of delicious recipes using freshly harvested produce grown right on campus.

The Leafy Green Machine is a turnkey farming system located inside a shipping container that can grow the equivalent of 1.8 acres of farmland in only 320 square feet. West Warwick High School partnered with the district’s food service provider, Sodexo, and a small startup company out of Boston called Freight Farms, to purchase the unit, which now sits in the school’s courtyard.

On Thursday faculty and staff held a Hydroponics Harvest celebration event at the high school where kitchen staff used recently harvested lettuce to demonstrate some of the meals they will eventually be making for students once the machine is fully operational. Right now the school is only growing different types of lettuce as staff learn how to run the machine, but the Sodexo staff proved that you can make a lot of different meals with a simple head of lettuce.

Staff served up vegetable lettuce wraps, spiced lettuce cake bars, lemon pudding wraps, lettuce beef wraps, lettuce soup and leaf lettuce bread, all made with the fresh lettuce grown in The Leafy Green Machine over the last several weeks and harvested that morning.

Each table in the high school cafeteria was adorned with a colorful display of fresh lettuce from the farm for the celebration.

It’s only about 20 steps from the farm to the school kitchen, says Sodexo General Manager Donna Walker, and “you can’t get any fresher than that.”

Naturally the school plans to use the farm to produce food for all of its students, but eventually they would like to grow enough to feed the entire district. They also plan on using the farm as a teaching tool, and to start a Leafy Green Machine Club in the future to gather students to help run it on a regular basis.

The plants in the farm start out as seeds that are planted in a special seedling area in the pod for about three weeks. Afterward they are transplanted into vertical racks where they will grow for the next five weeks. In about eight weeks total the plants will go from seed to harvest and eventually onto the plates of students and teachers. They plan on growing things like basil, kale, Swiss chard, spinach, arugula, dill and parsley down the road.

Hydroponics is the practice of growing plants in water with a nutrient solution, according to Freight Farms Representative Dana Lucas, who attended the harvest celebration Thursday afternoon. There’s no dirt involved in the growing or planting process and the farm uses a number of LED lights to act as the sun. The nutrient solution feeds the plants and can adjust the farm’s pH as needed. The temperature levels can also be automatically adjusted based on a plants' needs. There’s even an app for the phone or computer where farmers can view or modify the farm’s settings 24 hours a day, meaning they can grow produce year round without having to worry about the growing season.

“It’s the coolest thing for me to see the farms in action,” said Lucas. “I love seeing them in high schools.”

Freight Farms now has over 200 farms throughout the country.

“This is an exciting joint venture,” said West Warwick Superintendent Karen Tarasevich. “We value our long standing partnership with Sodexo in so many ways.”

She said The Leafy Green Machine is just another way to give students and staff hands-on learning experiences, and she was excited when Sodexo brought the proposal forward to the West Warwick School Committee last year.

“This is one opportunity with one machine that has already served the purpose of expanding the mindset of what we can do,” she added. “This celebration of the first harvest is just the first steps towards feeding the world.”

Sodexo Regional Manager Mark Tucker said the company is always looking to create a partnership with local school departments to provide services beyond the lunchroom.

“We’re really looking to find a way to bring another avenue for students to learn, develop and have access to a machine like this you normally wouldn’t see,” he said. “This is helping us bring nutritional meals to students and redefine local. We all want to do our part and buy local and we’re happy to be able to do that here.”

“Hopefully this is bigger than just growing leafy greens,” he added. “Hopefully it will be an opportunity where we can continue to revitalize students’ minds.”

Lucas was one of the Freight Farms team members assigned to go out and train new users in how to operate the machine.

“Everything is regulated and it takes very little for a farmer to start up their farm,” said Lucas. “Anybody can be a farmer and be successful. It’s totally revolutionary for farming. You don’t need to check if your conditions are good or the nutrients in your soil. Data is being collected by computers and that data will allow us to feed the world. We take pride that students can learn not only about plants but about farming.”

Sodexo’s Hydroponic Consultant Amy Lynn Chauvin has been helping to maintain the farm over the last couple of months, working alongside teachers to get it up and running. Chauvin is a teacher with six years of hydroponic growing experience. Chauvin provided guests with tours of the farm Thursday, fielding question after question about how the whole thing works. Lucas said Chauvin is running the farm like a well-oiled machine and said its one of the most well maintained farms she’s seen in action.

West Warwick High School Science Teacher Haley Winsor has also been a major part of the program.

“Students have been talking a lot about this,” said Winsor. “There’s a lot of interest in getting in there. We’ve had a few students coming in and we need to continue to teach them how to maintain the cleanliness of it.”

Fellow West Warwick High School Science Teacher Gina Poulos said the school is already looking at ways to implement The Leafy Green Machine into the curriculum. The school will even be starting a Freight Farm Committee, which has its first meeting next Wednesday.

“Some faculty have already emailed me sharing ideas and we’ll discuss all this and how to incorporate it into all different parts of school,” she said.

Other administrators of the program include West Warwick Schools Finance Director Joseph Spagna and Director of Facilities Kenneth Townsend.

Follow Kendra Port on Twitter @kendrarport