3 Tips to Build A Sustainable Agritech Program

(Image credit: Clark County School District/Trina Reaves)

Basing any STEM-based project on a solution for a real-life problem will help the lesson stick, and connecting it to a subject that affects everyone, such as food and farming, cultivates the learning even more.

“The STEM standards for elementary, middle, and high school lend itself to any type of agriculture initiative,” says Trina Reaves, Director of STEM and Innovation at Clayton County Public Schools in Georgia. “We started organically. A lot of the schools had gotten aeroponics towers and aquaponics systems, really trying to show children how they could grow in alternate spaces other than traditional farming. We were having students look at real-world problems, such as Clayton County being in a food desert, and how they could solve them.”

Reaves was recently recognized for the Best Overall Implementation of Technology Award at the Southeast Regional Leadership Summit as part of the Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Awards.

Reaves discusses her impressive agricultural technology initiative and shares three tips to plant a similar program in your district.

Growing Solutions With STEM

innovative leader award — (Image credit: Clark County School District/Trina Reaves)

“As I moved to start the program, I went to Forest Park High School to see their gardens which had been growing for 10 years,” says Reaves. “They were having a salad bar for the teachers. They had a student who was cooking meals the teachers could buy! The day I visited, he was making pan-seared herb-encrusted salmon with a citrus sauce and asparagus. Wow, all of this was going on and nobody really talked about it.”

Forest Park High School had a FarmBot, or tech helper that, once coded, guides planting of seeds, watering intervals, and other key tasks for a successful crop.

“I went to an aeroponics farm in North Georgia,” says Reaves. “They showed us their farm and how this could work for our plans. They suggested a seed business. I had one school which already had a FarmBot with the space and the capability to sell seeds, so we decided to start an initiative at Forest Park High School in which they would produce seedlings to sell to the rest of the district. We call it Agritech Solutions.”

An Organic Way of Connecting the Dots

Reaves pulled in the greater community to serve as mentors, and then let students shine in all the ways that are helpful for a growing business.

“Our aquaponics labs were supported by the science department in collaboration with the Georgia Aquarium,” she says. “One of the teachers at Forest Park helped them build a system to grow tilapia throughout the year to harvest at the end. At Drew High School, they have a culinary CTE pathway with a teacher who uses several aeroponic towers for ingredients in her class.”

The program went beyond simply farming.

“We didn't want this just to be about agriculture, we wanted it to also touch other CTE pathways,” Reaves says. “We have a minority business who's helping us with logistics and distribution. We're training a group of students at the school who are going to run the business. Besides the ag element, we have marketing students creating campaigns to raise awareness. The computer science students are creating the platform so schools can take and fulfill their orders.”

By welcoming in students with a variety of talents, Reaves has built an ecosystem for industry knowledge to thrive.

“The goal is for this to simulate a real-world business,” she says. “Students get practical experience through promoting and securing sales. We want this to sustain the program, so the business students are creating a business plan. The goal was to use this one initiative to support many different pathways while we're also working on a real world problem that's a part of our community.”

Planting The Seeds and Watching Them Grow

With one successful first launch, Reaves looked for ways to include additional schools. Each school designed a unique program–some instituted rain barrels, pollinator gardens, compost bins, beekeeping, and worm farms to support projects that include traditional farming, hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics, and even a fruit orchard.

“We have an elementary school that just launched their program with the help of Georgia Tech,” Reaves says. “The university’s engineers came and helped us set up Oliver Elementary School's FarmBot.”

A FarmBot can do as little or as much as it is coded to accomplish.

“Some people will just use them to simply grow produce,” Reaves says. “You can program it to plant the seeds in the system. You can tell it when to water. It takes away some of the manual labor. But we're going to use it to start seedlings and sell them to schools in the district. They plant, they water, the kids then move the seedlings out to sell and just start a new system. We have to keep that rhythm going. If Brown Elementary School wants 20 plants, you’ve got to have a system that's just continually moving. The FarmBot makes that work easier.”

Reaves’ ultimate goal is to raise production to the point at which seedlings can be sold to parents and the community, as an agri-bake sale concept. Of 37 schools, 22 have FarmBot systems.

“The seedlings can be used in traditional planting or in aquaponics or aeroponic towers,” she says. “When we went to the Northern Georgia farm, they shared that a certain number of towers break even when it comes to labor and costs. Seeds are what really grew their business. We're going to start selling to schools, but we are talking about having community farmers markets. That would be a first-touch point for parents to know they can buy seedlings, plants, or fully harvested crops from the students. However, we can also buy seeds if we're growing ourselves in the home.”

Besides offering students the full entrepreneurial experience, creating an opportunity to grow backyard produce addresses the county’s food desert issue.

“We're having a September Farm to Fork event in which we will have all the schools bring their first crop of the season, with a farmer's market for schools to show off their success and sell their yield while talking about the project with customers,” Reaves says. “It's going to be an informational event with vendors and classes about healthy living. The event’s location at Drew High School is right next to Southern Region Medical Center. The hospital staff will come talk about exercise, eating healthy, diabetes, and those issues permeating our community.

“I'm really excited about the opportunity here — it’s not just all about growing,” says Reaves. “You've got finance, you've got marketing, computer science and tech, there’s a whole business side of agriculture. Every time I turn around, there's an opportunity. I joined the National Women in Agriculture association in the Georgia chapter. So many are willing to come and support the schools. It’s really good to see more women and minorities, it’s very important for our kids to see underrepresented groups and to be exposed to as much as possible.”