Michael: Providing students with real, fresh, grown,
nutrient dense produce... Is... is real
pivotal to the learning. Narr: Michael Jochner admits
it's a very unusual way to farm, but says that technology
and this shipping container are key to meeting
the green salad lettuce needs for students in the Morgan Hill
Unified School District. Michael: Well, I think food
sovereignty is important, um, especially in underserved
communities. And I wanted to demonstrate
that a school district and not just
large
farming or small scale farming, that a school district
itself could be the farm. Narr: Michael
has a background as a chef, and he's Morgan Hill's
director of student nutrition. The shipping container
is called a freight farm and uses the vertical hydroponic
farming technology
developed by a Boston company. It all takes place in a ten
by 40 foot space. Michael: So let me show you
our nursery station. This is where the lettuce and the seedlings
start their life cycle. All of our nutrients a
re stored
here. The computer pumps continually
check the water, evaluate the EC readings, PH
readings, temperature readings. And at the end of the nursery
station, we have a 40 gallon reservoir
where all that water is stored. Narr: Michael grows
five varieties of lettuce, which germinate at the nursery station
in small grow pods. Nutrient dense water feeds
the roots of the tiny plants. Michael: Down on this floor,
we start our seeds in the grow pods. They'll spend two weeks
in the humidity domes
and at the end of the two week
cycle, they turn in these
beautiful little seedlings. Narr: The freight
farm at Sobrato High School is one of two in the district,
each costing $150,000. After sprouting, the seedlings
moved to vertical growing panels called cultivation walls
watered with drip irrigation. Each farm container will grow
4000 small heads of lettuce at a time.
LED light walls powered by the high school's
solar panels, provide the illumination
for plant growth. Michael: So leafy greens
require
specific light spectrum. Crate farm uses red and blue
lights in the cultivation walls. This is our daylight setting. We have over 100,000 LED lights
and these lights will remain on for 14 hours
of simulated sunlight. So lettuce on
this wall is now six weeks old. Morgan Hill students
get to enjoy living lettuce right from our walls. We take the lettuce from the wal and unlike conventional farming,
where you have to bend over, we simply lift the panel
off the wall and we transfer the pane
l
right to our nursery station. Narr: Lettuce
from the cultivation panels goes directly to lunchrooms
in cafeteria salad bars. Michael says the container farms
produce the equivalent of two
and a half acres of lettuce in just 320
square feet of grow space. Raising
their own has also helped the district reduce part of
their spending on fresh produce. For second graders
Aida and Cody, It means a tasty part
of their daily choices at lunch. Aida: I always love salads. I had tomatoes, salad,
ranch,
cucumbers, and plums. Cody: I usually wait in line
until it's my turn. Then I go to to go to the salad bar
and I pick what I want. Dr. Garcia
For a lot of our students, it's the only meal
that they have during the day. And so we take our school
nutrition efforts very seriously to ensure that our students
are eating healthy. Michael: My dream is to
ultimately try and grow the whole salad bar. While ambitious,
we decided to start with lettuce because the technology
allowed us to do so. Narr: Micha
el calls his future agricultural plans,
farm tech. It would utilize existing greenhouse facilities
and the district's open space to develop curriculums
and coursework. Both would emphasize the
nutritional and environmental benefits of merging technology
and farming. Michael: The district is sitting
on several acres of land that has been set aside
to see if we can build farm tech into a destination
worthy field trip worthy location for
both students and the community. I'd like
to show off the tec
hnology and show that its importance
in a community is... is not solely reliant
on conventional farming, that there are high tech
alternatives. Narr: But for now,
the technology is providing daily evidence of the possibilities
that come from finding new ways to help feed students
and the community. Michael: For me, it's
really just been about the kids and watching them grow
to learn real produce. Dr. Garcia: If we begin
with our students and teach our students the importance of healthy
eating ha
bits, those habits
will stay with them throughout their entire lives,
and it will pay dividends to ensure that
our kids grow a healthy life. Narr:
There are now more than 600 of these freight farms
located in every U.S. state, as well as 40 other
countries around the world. Besides lettuce
and other greens, schools, nonprofits, farmers
and even restaurants are now also growing radishes,
strawberries and even flowers using the same hydroponic wall
panels and artificial light.
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