How To Start A Farm-to-School Program With A Freight Farm
October is National Farm to School Month!
We’re proud that so many schools use our hydroponic farming technology for their farm to school program. From California to Massachusetts, Freight Farms are put to work to achieve each of the pillars of farm to school: local food sourcing; student access to healthy food; and learning opportunities. In this blog, we explore each.
Local Food Sourcing
Core to farm to school is the practice of sourcing food from local producers rather than large distributors. That’s easy to do when you have a container farm on site. Each Freight Farm produces over 200 lbs of lettuce each week to fill cafeteria meals with locally grown produce.
Example:
Morgan Hill Unified School District in Morgan Hill, CA, grows 60% of their lettuce needs (to feed 9,000 students) in just one Freight Farm. The Nutrition Department, which operates the farm, is so thrilled with the result that they are bringing a second farm to the school district, so as to grow 100% of the lettuce they need right on site.
Access to Nutritious Foods
It’s simple: Growing healthy produce at your school and sending it straight to the cafeteria ensures that students will have access to that healthy produce. Plus, as a bonus, freshly harvested greens offer a lot more nutritional value than sad iceberg lettuce that has been shipped halfway across the country.
Example:
Albany High School in Albany, NY, is located in a food desert. The school’s Freight Farm provides critical access to healthy, fresh food for their students in addition to learning opportunities. Albany High School’s farm is funded in part by a USDA Farm to School grant.
Learning Opportunities
With a Freight Farm, your school’s students have everyday access to growing plants, offering myriad opportunities for hands-on learning experiences with the vegetables in the farm. Your teachers can bring classes out to the Freight Farm for lessons applying to a wide range of subjects: plant science, botany, biology, and nutrition — but also business management, physics, marketing, and more! We explore the uses of Freight Farms as a platform for STEM learning in a previous blog.
Example:
Teachers at Mountain Vista High School in Highlands Ranch, CO, bring students out to their school farm for lessons relating to spectrometry, pH, and microbiology. Their Freight Farm is also the platform for a robust agriculture business course.