Inside the cafeteria at Ashwaubenon High School near Green Bay, Wisconsin, past the tater tots and fried chicken sandwiches, students have access to a salad bar filled with home-grown produce.
The vegetables were planted and picked just down the hallway, where a no-soil indoor hydroponic garden runs on circulating water, special nutrients and LED lights. "Fresh food can be grown easily in Wisconsin in the middle of winter," said Kaitlin Taurianen, nutrition coordinator for Ashwaubenon School District.
Taurianen says the indoor farm produces around 850 pounds of produce per month, which is enough to feed up to 2,000 students throughout the district. "A lot of our kids aren't exposed to fresh foods at home, just because it's financially hard for the families to purchase those kinds of things," Taurianen said.
he innovative system stemmed from the imagination of Wisconsin native Alex Tyink. Trained as an opera singer, he got into rooftop gardening in New York City between gigs. Then he decided to use what he had learned to start a company called Fork Farms, with the aim of helping people grow their own food.
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