I’m a big fan of the television drama The West Wing, which premiered in 1999. I remember in one episode early in the second season (2000), the character President Bartlet, while campaigning, said that 1 in 5 children in the U.S. was growing up in poverty. It is a good assumption that this also implied 1 in 5 American kids is food insecure, if not routinely hungry.
Twenty six years later, we have nearly 1 in 5 children in the U.S. being food insecure. In an age of record stock markets (which have been setting all-time records since the Obama administration through the present, minus the COVID period) and humanity’s first trillionaire, we have made very little to no real progress with ensuring all of our children have ready access to nutritious food, where the 18.4% figure (from 2024 data) is over 14 million kids not knowing when the next meal is coming, at least not consistently.
I suspect most who read this will be aware, if for any other reason than common sense, that children don’t do as well in school when they are hungry. And this is the case for those students who already are coming from lower income families, which have other issues against the school children coming from those families, which include going to schools that are likely underfunded relative to the schools kids from higher-income families attend; and lower income families and children are overrepresented by children of color. For example, Black and Latino families are about twice as likely to be food insecure than White families. Food insecurity is a factor in the academic achievement gaps we see in so many diverse school districts around the country (here are data from the Evanston, IL, school districts to show examples of academic achievement gaps), and low performance in many urban school districts.
The reasons food insecurity is a factor in academic performance and student learning are numerous. Even adults are hard-pressed to remain healthy and perform at work at optimal levels when hungry. Lower income families in general have less access to high-level nutritious food, often living in the ‘food desert’ areas of cities, where fresh produce is miles away. Hunger (and the resulting decrease in the nutrition needed for good overall health) affects concentration, physical and mental health, proper brain development of children, energy levels, behavior, mood, memory, and motor skills.
I and countless other educators presently worry about the next few years when it comes to nutrition in public schools because of the politicization of federal aid to low income families, such as cuts to SNAP benefits and funding for free and reduced lunch programs around the US, which are already affecting millions of our children.
One avenue to help with this situation in schools is to consider having school gardens, both outside and inside schools. Indoor farming has become more possible in classrooms over the past decade due to efforts such as the Green Bronx Machine, founded by my friend Stephen Ritz, who has taken time to write full K-12 curricula centered around growing food in classrooms. He uses primarily tower gardens, and has helped transform his school in a poverty stricken section of the Bronx, and turn around not only the school, but the entire community. He has taken this global, and helps set up school gardens and food programs all around the world. I have tower gardens in my classroom and adjacent research center, where my students and I grow fresh produce to donate to a local food pantry over the fall and winter months, when outdoor farming is not possible around Chicago.
This past school year we grew and donated 809 bags (mostly gallon sized) of arugula, kale, chard, basil, parsley, and lettuces (166 pounds) from late September through early May, using just 5 towers, which went to dozens of families each week who rely on the food pantry. We will be expanding this with student-built grow systems both in the high school and some elementary classrooms in our feeder district. We hope to add more and more resources throughout more and more classrooms each new school year, since the need for food assistance continues to grow around the country, up to 14% of households from 10% since COVID.
The US was making some progress reducing food insecurity from highs during the Great Recession, but the percentage is rising back to those levels after the COVID pandemic.
For educators, there are two other pieces of this I’d like to mention. One is the inclusion of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into classes and community service projects. The second is to realize the future importance of indoor farming to this generation of young children, due to climate change.
The UN SDGs are something I have included in my classes for most of the past decade, after they were adopted by all nations in 2015. As a science teacher, most of the 17 issues defined as the SDGs will need STEM as a primary means of finding real solutions to those issues, and No Hunger, SDG #2, is one of those issues. Any type of classroom and school farming is something that can bring attention to our children, and make them aware of and able to help those classmates and community families who may not be as fortunate as others when it comes to food insecurity.
Things like possible population growth, and most importantly, the effects climate change (SDG #13) will have on global agriculture, will make outdoor farming more and more challenging, and likely less productive as top soil loss and nutrient level degradation in our most fertile farmlands (especially outside the US) continue to decline. The growing fresh water crisis in many parts of the world plays into this complex system. Indoor farming is something my students and I talk about as a part of the solution to feeding their world several decades from now, and it already is having an impact here and in other parts of the world, where they are investigating industrial indoor farming (mostly hydroponics). I think this is something educators can use in multiple ways of applying STEM knowledge and applications, as well as developing community service projects that begin introducing this important concept to the children who will be seeing this type of farming in their lives, and as one of the pieces of solutions to climate change the world will need to consider and develop on bigger and bigger scales, such as this massive indoor farm in New Jersey, from AeroFarms.
It is possible to link indoor farming in classrooms, regardless of STEM subject one teaches - I’m doing this as an AP Physics teacher, and the students love having the tower gardens in the room and helping feed community members, despite it being outside of our curriculum.
It is important to make students aware that not everyone is able to have consistent and predictable meals. It is important that we get nutritious food to those kids who need it, in order to help them grow and develop as healthy as possible, which in turn will optimize their learning in school. It is important this generation understands that these newer farming techniques and technologies exist and are developing here and abroad because it will become more important in the future due to climate change. We owe it to them.
