Dec 10, 2017 3 min read

Advocates of locally sourced food have long complained that Americans have become disconnected from how our food is grown. They have a point. In 1900, farmers made up 38 percent of the labor force. Now, in 2017, they make up 2 percent of American workers.

Granted, farming has now become much more industrialized, and how we lived 117 years ago was barely a golden age.

We now have much more access to food, a greater variety of it, and at a lower cost than ever before. Our days are not dominated by hunting, gathering or plowing. But it’s easy to forget that the process of getting food to our plates doesn’t begin when we head down the aisle at the grocery store to grab a box of cereal, or when we scan a menu and decide there’s something we’d like to order.

At Trinity High School, students are learning a thing or two about growing food, and helping out families in need in the community. It is the sixth public school in the nation to undertake a Freight Farm project.

What does that involve? As we reported Dec. 1, a shipping container measuring about 40 feet long is being used to grow lettuce hydroponically. It requires no soil, and no sunlight.

All that’s needed is water, along with LED lights that simulate the rays of the sun. Trinity students, along with vocational-agricultural teacher Jeannette Hartley, control the growing environment through their smartphones and laptops.

All told, it uses about 10 gallons of water per day, a 90 percent reduction from the amount that farms typically use.

The “farm in a box” arrived courtesy of Boston-based Freight Farms, and it can harvest up to 1,200 heads of lettuce a week. Trinity is covering the cost of the project through an $85,000 grant from slots revenue. It also used funds from the Local Share Account in 2016 to pull together a fabrication laboratory and its computer-controlled tools. In the new year, the district is planning on deploying local share funds for wind turbines and solar panels. It is gratifying to see the district using this windfall for forward-looking enterprises.

Another bonus: the lettuce the district grows will be donated to the Greater Washington County Food Bank.

Donald Snoke, Trinity’s assistant superintendent, pointed out that Freight Farms and endeavors like it could well be crucial to keeping people fed by mid-century.

“Statistics show that by 2050, if we keep doing the same things we’re doing, there won’t be enough food for people. We thought, ‘What can we do to really help solve the problem?'”

Given the gridlock, food-fighting and sniping that characterizes our politics now, it’s easy to lose faith in our ability to solve fundamental problems and surmount our challenges.

Projects like Trinity’s Freight Farm offers some hope that, where their parents and grandparents have failed, today’s young people can confront knotty problems squarely and not be overwhelmed by them.