By DOUG GRAVES
Ohio Correspondent WOOSTER, Ohio — Believing that one is never too young to learn about agriculture, the staff at Metro High School in Columbus and The Ohio State University have teamed up to create a student-run farm and farmers’ market through the “Growing American” program.
Led by Neal Bluel, a botany/research faculty member at Metro, the small-scale farm and farmers’ market will help introduce students to farm planning, design, management and operations, plant growth and development and produce marketing.
“Some of our urban students have never seen a seed before,” he said. “It was surprising how fun it was.”
This combined effort is part of Ohio’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) learning network, which is a method of developing an agriculture program using these four disciplines. The farm is located at the Waterman Dairy Farm on the OSU campus; the farmers’ market will run from July-August near the intersection of Kenny and Kinnear roads in Columbus.
Through this combined effort, students will be able to experience a variety of opportunities and may serve in several levels of leadership and responsibility. Participants will learn about the path that food travels from farm to market, as well as gaining hands-on experience in food production, harvesting and distribution.
“Our school will be a demonstration school for all the STEM learning networking in this state,” Bleul said. “Eventually we want to work with the Wooster campus to develop internship programs and overnight camps.
“After their second year, our students have finished their high school curriculum and they can begin taking college courses their third and fourth years. This way when the student graduates from high school, they can have a career and put themselves through a four-year degree.”
Metro High School, with an enrollment of 400, offers a lottery system whereby any high school student in Franklin County may apply. “At this time we’re writing grants in order to get this program free of charge,” Bluel said. “We’re trying to push this out to other schools in Ohio to work with us.”
According to Bluel, the experience will be valuable to students interested in business, marketing or entrepreneurship. The time students spend in the program, he said, will be based on the position they accept. The project needs students for 12-, six- and one-week programs.
“There’s a need for agriculture fields like these, there’s a need for diversity in agriculture and there’s a strong push for urban agriculture,” he said. “This idea is headed in the right direction at the right time. We’re trying to create a pre-K to Grade 16 program that will allow us to create a seamless transition for students in the STEM fields, looking at research and using the agriculture as the main driver for that.”
Bluel is ecstatic about the prospect of teaching agriculture at all grade levels, especially at the early levels of education.
“As we get our graduate students involved in their own prior research and working on the program, we can go beyond the pre-K to Grade 16, but that would be the cherry on top of this effort,” he said.
Growing American will take applications for the 12-week program until May 20, for the six-week program until June 10 and for the one-week program until July 10.
Metro High School students are seeking local producers to set up stands at the market. The cost is $12.50 per market day, with a minimum commitment of two market days from July 25-Aug. 15. For more information about the farm or the farmers’ market contact Bluel at 614-247-2276 or by e-mail at blue@themetroschool.org |
