FRIES ARE NOT A VEGETABLE. Urban Farm High School Grows Its Lunch and Its Curriculum

Abstract

Each school day, Seattle public school children are served a lunch that does not reflect the city’s access to fresh food, its progressive attitudes on sustainability, nor its successful thriving industries. However, changing children’s behavior toward their personal health and the health of the environment starts not only with a better lunch, but by actively involving them in their food supply system and its environmental impacts. This thesis proposes a new form of public school that integrates agriculture into both a hands-on curriculum and into the building itself. Using high-performance, high efficiency hydroponics in the building along with soil growing on the site, the facility becomes both an educational and a production facility. This “hyper local” model for food supply would eliminate the environmental costs of transporting fresh food, allow for waste, water, and energy efficiencies in the building, and engage both students and the surrounding community in the process. By growing, harvesting, and learning about sustainable technologies, teens would be vested in preserving the planet and in eating nutritiously, encouraging behaviors for better health and well-being throughout their lifetime.