Of the many concerning scenes she witnessed, it was seeing so many kids staring out of classroom windows, unable to concentrate because they were suffering the affects of poor dental health and hunger, that made an unmovable impression.
With Kelly’s own health suffering while she was on the road, due in large part to not being able to access the fresh fruit and vegetables she was used to in her regular diet, she returned determined to find a way to address what was happening.
It catapulted the idea of empowering communities and schools in remote locations with state-of-the-art, purpose-built, easy-to-run agritech solutions so they could create their own fresh food supply and reduce the need for supply chains to travel sometimes thousands of kilometres.
McJannett and Food Ladder co-founder Alex Shead came up with a way to combine technology and teaching systems to create lasting social change.
Their greenhouses, complete with either ‘in-soil’ or hydroponic systems, are now in 39 schools nationwide – from Tassie to the Territory, WA to Victoria, NSW and Queensland – and providing kids from K-12 with hands-on experiences planting seeds, cultivating and harvesting vegetables and learning to turn them into delicious meals.
What’s even better is the cross-curricular application of the program – whether it be STEM, sustainability, social enterprise, horticulture, cooking, biology, nutrition or entrepreneurship, it’s an incredibly diverse learning opportunity.
“The program involves the individualising of each school’s needs, understanding what the goals are and providing all of the training and education required,” Lucy Payne, head of partnerships at Food Ladder, says.
“From day one when the Food Ladder team arrives to set up the 20-metre-square purpose-built climate controlled hydroponic greenhouse, there’s on-site teacher professional development and all of the training provided, including planting the first seeds with students and the community.
“We follow that whole journey, liaise with schools to decide what they’re looking to achieve and complete a program logic map typically with the executive team or core staff members,” Payne explains.
The cost of each greenhouse varies, depending on the location of the school, a solar powering option and whether the greenhouse is cyclone-rated or not.
Food Ladder particularly prioritises being supportive of schools in need, which might not have the funding capacity to deliver or fund a school greenhouse, Payne says.
“In these cases, the organisation draws on philanthropic foundational support, but in general schools are most often able to provide some form of contribution towards the structure itself.
“Whether it’s an infrastructure budget or a grant round that they’ve applied for independent of us, it’s an investment.”
Sue Liddicoat is the finance officer at Ungarra Primary School in South Australia, and is a long-time fan of the Food Ladder program.
Now a Food Ladder ambassador, she says the program has been transformational at her tiny school of 30 students.
“I love talking about Food Ladder, I think they’re amazing,” she laughs.
With the student cohort made up of predominantly kids from farms and in the middle of a wheat growing area, Liddicoat says the program has been a game changer for her school, not least because the area suffers “really hot summers and really cold winters”.
“We often get frosts and big heatwaves, so to have something that will reliably grow food is amazing because it takes the pressure off me. If something fails in the garden which happens all the time, I know that that there are crops in the greenhouse that will be there without failure.”
“I’ve never come across anything so inspiring,” Sue Liddicoat, pictuired above middle, says. “When we went to the Sydney Food Ladder summit we came away saying, ‘wow this is not just about putting hot houses in schools, this is a movement’.”
Within four to six weeks of each planting, the students are harvesting, and there are always things growing in the greenhouse.
“I’ve never seen anything that grows like it here, it’s quite remarkable,” Liddicoat says.
“It’s opened up a whole heap of food that we couldn’t grow here, just lettuces would bolt to seed before we ever got anywhere near them, or they’d be bitter, and bok choy we don’t even bother, so it’s given us a whole other range of food that we can grow now. It’s amazing.”
Liddicoat says as well as having access to such an incredible array of produce and exciting new growing techniques, one of the biggest positives of the program has been the engagement of students who were otherwise struggling to enjoy their learning.
“…we’re finding that especially our boys … a lot of them don’t do well in the classroom, and you see this a bit with farm boys, they are blokey blokes, they’re used to being out in the paddock with dad, these are 10-year-old kids driving tractors (on their parent’s property) and driving the ute, that sort of thing, so school for them is quite a struggle.
“…we’ve had probably three or four here who struggle in the classroom and they get into that hot house, they love the technical side of it, it’s like another farm, they can understand it.
“… like they get that you need these nutrients to grow because that’s what they do on the farm, so it’s almost calming space.
“If kids are kicking off in the classroom sometimes they’ll take a break out in the greenhouse, they’ll go and check it out, they’ll check the pH level and then they reset and they come back in.”
Across the border in WA, the State Government has just announced $135,000 in funding to roll the program out in more schools, another indication of just how rapidly Food Ladder is taking hold across the country.
“We get three or four visits each term from garden clubs, other schools, CWA, Provis, the whole works, and the kids are now very skilled at doing tours,” Liddicoat reports.
“Junior primary kids partner with others kids for the tour, and listening to the conversations of our kids explaining it to these other kids, I’m like, ‘wow, they have learned so much, I cannot believe what they know!’”
Students are harvesting up to 30 kilos of fresh produce within 5-6 weeks and finding an appetising array of ways to put it on the plate.
To hear the kids explaining why they test the PH levels, why nutrients are added to the water, where the water flows etc, warms Liddicoat’s heart.
“They’re proud of it, they want to show people what they can do, they love explaining the process and they’re so proud of the whole garden,” she says.
“They love taking other people in that greenhouse because I think it’s so unique.”
Part of the program involves connecting educators and principals via monthly webinars along with an annual Food Ladder Futures Summit, involving teacher professional development and panel discussions.
Last year at the summit in Sydney, Liddicoat and colleague Lisa Fitzgerald, Ungarra Primary’s kitchen coordinator, said they found it mind-blowing the variety of takes each school had on the program.
“Like there was one school in far north Queensland, somewhere very isolated in an Aboriginal community, and they didn’t have a kitchen so they were growing this produce, and they would box it up and take it to the elders and give it to them, because it’s (usually) $30 a lettuce that’s barely edible. So for them to get fresh produce is a godsend.
“There’s another school in Tassie who had something like 200 or 300 kids they feed every day, with breakfast program and lunches, because you know, they’re not getting fed and their hot house was providing reliable greens that they could cheaply bulk up food.
“Other schools are using it for their canteen, and I just love that it’s doesn’t have to be used a specific way - each school is tailoring it to themselves.”
While the initial idea for the program was to target remote schools, Payne says the rollout now includes numerous metropolitan and regional schools.
To hear her Ungarra kids explaining why they test the PH levels to student visitors from other schools, why nutrients are added to the water, where the water flows etc, warms Liddicoat’s heart.
“Historically, we’ve always been targeting, or have been contacted by, disadvantaged schools, but more and more it’s across the board, and schools have told us the cost-of-living crisis is at a point now where families are treating vegetables as discretionary spending and a luxury. Within their weekly shopping they’re actually unable to afford it.”
Clearly a company always searching for innovation, accessibility and student learning opportunities, strategic priorities for Food Ladder heading into next year involve partnering with IBM to deliver AI-powered solutions for teachers.
“So it’ll allow teachers to jump right in. Curriculum codes for each greenhouse situation that customises and develops and then spits out amazing lesson plans.
“It’s a network developer that I think is really going to allow us to scale seismically next year and beyond.
“We’re also planning on rolling out from currently 12 greenhouses per year to 40 per year and scaling internationally as well," Payne says.
To see Food Ladder in action in a host of schools, click here.
