Agriculture students at the Carter G. Woodson Academy in Lexington have an uncommon opportunity: to grow food that's served in the school cafeteria and eaten by classmates. The food — lettuce, mainly — comes from the school's hydroponic container, part of a program run since 2019 by agriculture teacher Jacob Ball.
It gives students involved in the agricultural program at the academy — an all-male school for students grades six through 12 that offers a rigorous curriculum through the lens of Black history — the opportunity to learn alternative ways of farming outside of a traditional field.
Hydroponic containers like the one at Woodson Academy are indoor, environmentally controlled farms where plants can grow in a shipping container using nutrients other than soil. Water tanks inside the container hold and flow water through the plant roots. The school received the container farm in the summer of 2021 from AppHarvest, an Eastern Kentucky-based agriculture tech company that filed for bankruptcy in July 2023.
Ball said at one point there were only 12 container farms located at Kentucky schools, most of which were at eastern Kentucky schools.
Read more at Lexington Herald Leader