Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Boston Latin School’s Hydroponic Farm in Its Backyard

by Kate Domenichella 
Spring 2016 Intern 


Recently, a friend and I traveled to the Maybarton Community Garden in Clinton, Massachusetts, for community service. Growing Places, a nonprofit community garden organization based in my hometown of Leominster, Massachusetts, helped assist the Maybarton staff with building 15 raised beds. Local farmers plant various fruits and vegetables for low-income individuals, families and communities in North Central Massachusetts. Not only does Growing Places help to build and maintain the beds, but the organization also gives people the knowledge and skills to help them continue to grow produce for generations to come.

While I am new to personal farming, some Boston students have a farm in their school's backyard and are working hard to produce quality food for their families and people in need.

Boston Latin School (BLS) has a recycled metal shipping container behind their school. This container, fondly called a “freight farm,” serves as a hydroponic farm that uses no soil and circulates water and nutrients to harvest produce.

BLS “produced” the funds for the freight farm through the efforts of its students, who formed a Youth Climate Action Network (YouthCAN) club in order to address problems of climate change and promote education for sustainability. The club won a “school makeover” competition in 2013 from Global Green USA, which included enough funds to purchase the $76,000 hydroponic farm.

The freight farm can produce an acre’s worth of food in one year. The food is given to students, teachers and faculty, as well as local food pantries, and YouthCAN’s goal is to introduce the produce into school meals.

BLS students aren’t the only ones working hard to create a more sustainable environment. The National FFA (Future Farmers of America) Organization is a formal education program sponsored by local school chapters to aid students studying agriculture. Established in 1928, with 33 students from 18 states, the organization has grown to over 500,000 members, with more than 7,000 chapters across the nation.

Did You Know?

Since 2010, India-based Bakeys Foods Private Limited has been producing edible cutlery in response to a dual problem: the 120 billion pieces of plastic cutlery found in landfills and the effects of the increase of rice farms in India. Founder Narayana Peesapaty developed the edible spoons from sorghum grain—the grain requires far less water and land to sustain its farms than rice crops. Compared to plastic, which can take 450 years to decompose, uneaten edible spoons decompose in just a few days—if animals and insects don’t eat them first!

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