Progress 07/01/24 to 06/30/25

Outputs
Target Audience:The target participants are K-14 educators, especially those from food deserts and/or resource-constrained regions. Sam Houston State University has been the host for the Texas FFA area and state Career Development Events (CDEs) for many years. We have utilized these venues as well as college agriculture education programs to recruit participants for the Healthy Hydroponics Workshop. Applicants for the program were required to complete a Qualtrics survey that collected personal and school-related information. A total of ten K-14 teachers from various schools in Texas participated in the workshop in 2024. Six of the ten schools were located in low-income neighborhoods, and four of those were also situated in food deserts. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The three-day workshop covered the biological, technical, environmental, and socioeconomic aspects of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) and healthy eating. This training enables K-14 educators to develop CEA curricula with a healthy eating component and allows them to bring both CEA and nutrition education into their classrooms. This novel approach of blending healthy eating into CEA will facilitate the pathway from CEA to improved food security and healthy diets among students in K-14 schools. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Based on the feedback from the first cohort of participants, we will streamline and improve the training materials, making them more relevant and applicable for the participants. The Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) curricula and implementation reports developed by the first cohort of participants can be used as examples for trainees in the subsequent years.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The overarching goal of this project is to train K-14 educators in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), enabling and empowering them to bring CEA into their classrooms through a Healthy Hydroponic Project (HHP). Objective 1 of the HHP is to help K-14 educators acquire deeper knowledge of CEA and healthy eating through immersive learning experiences. Participants engaged in a three-day immersive learning workshop covering four (biological, technical, environmental, and socioeconomic) aspects of CEA and healthy eating. On the morning of the first day, participants took a field trip to Hope Farms, located in a Houston food desert, where they completed the Seed-to-Plate Nutrition Education Instructor Orientation. In the afternoon, they visited Moonflower Farms, an urban vertical hydroponic farm, where they learned about commercial operations in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) and received hands-on training in using GrowKits and GrowPods. On the morning of day two, participants learned the foundations (biological aspect) of CEA and took a field trip to the Plant Sciences Field Lab and Greenhouse at Gibbs Ranch, Sam Houston State University. In the afternoon, they explored the social and economic aspects of CEA.They were also introduced to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the USDA Thrifty Food Plan as tools to help promote healthy eating in their future classrooms. On day three, participants discussed the environmental aspect of CEA through hands-on activities and worked on developing CEA curricula with a healthy eating component. At the closing reception of the workshop, participants completed a Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice (KAP) survey to evaluate their understanding of what is known (Knowledge), believed (Attitude), and done (Practiced) in CEA and healthy eating. Results from the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Tests indicated a significant improvement in participants' knowledge and attitudes toward CEA after the workshop. Participants were also significantly more likely to incorporate hydroponic systems into their courses. Their understanding of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the USDA Thrifty Food Plan improved significantly, and they were significantly more likely to encourage their students to eat more vegetables. Objective 2 of the HHP is to assist K-14 educators in developing improved curricula to train the next generation of agricultural workforce in CEA and healthy eating. During the workshop's final session, participants were encouraged to reflect on and summarize the knowledge and practices acquired at the previous sessions and worked on CEA curricula that embrace the four aspects of CEA and healthy eating. They also incorporated the Seed-to-Plate (S2P) Nutrition Education™ curriculum provided by Hope Farms. After the workshop, each participant received 50 hydroponic grow kits for their students to experiment with. Moonflower Farms delivered the hydroponic GrowPods to all ten schools and assisted participants in setting up the classroom CEA systems.

Publications