With the Pat Cooke Fellowship, I hope to visit the Yasai Pilot Farm and a few stores that sell its fresh produce in Switzerland to broaden my knowledge on vertical farming. The genesis of this project comes from having first hand experience of harvesting and consuming vegetables from Boston Green Academy’s very own freight farm that incorporates vertical farming. I was very intrigued to learn more about how vertical farming actually works, how it can benefit the environment, and how I can incorporate it into my lessons in my math classes. Having a freight farm right at Boston Green Academy and freshly grown vegetables available throughout the year is such a blessing to have. I want staff and students to take full advantage of this resource and to spread their knowledge of vertical farming to help their own communities as well. Additionally, I would like to be able to use the freight farm as a resource in my math classroom and apply concepts that we learn in class.

 

I hope to visit the Yasai Pilot Farm to see how they build and manage their vertical farms. Yasai’s vision is “to create balance by empowering the world to grow more with less” (https://www.yasai.earth/pages/about-us). They are actively shaping the future of food in various types of locations, like deserts, cities, and remote islands. Yasai focuses on building and managing Vertical Farms, circular food production systems, in sites and regions where resources needed like fresh water and land are sparse. Yasai is able to replace food imports and lower the cost of production throughout the supply chain. Yasai uses different types of technology and techniques that can be used in vertical farming in urban settings, like Boston, so I hope to bring back this knowledge to my community. Thinking about my students who live in the urban setting of Boston, I hope to learn how Boston could possibly incorporate their technologies and techniques into vertical farming.

 

I also hope to visit a few of the stores that sell Yasai’s fresh produce during my visit to see the full process from seeds in the vertical farm to fresh food on shelves to consumers. Wu 4 Specifically, two stores located in Zurich are COOP BAHNHOFBRÜCKE and JELMOLI. Seeing the full circular economy of the food will allow me to see how one can truly benefit from vertical farming and how it is possible to incorporate in a city like Boston. It will also allow me to show my students how the whole process works and how they can envision something like this in Boston themselves.

 

By visiting the Yasai Pilot Farm and stores that sell its products, I hope to promote environmental sustainability in my teaching by bringing back knowledge about how vertical farming works and connect it to how the vertical farm at Boston Green Academy runs. This will allow students to have hands-on experiences with the freight farm and to measure and collect data such as water usage and crop yield and compare it to that of traditional farming. Ultimately, I hope to create a project that allows students to use Boston Green Academy’s own vertical farm to collect, analyze, and compare efficiencies of vertical farming versus traditional farming techniques.

 

Goals for the Fellowship

My first goal through this fellowship is to increase my knowledge of the environmental benefits of vertical farming in urban environments and share this information with my students at Boston Green Academy. I currently only know that vertical farming takes up less space and water than traditional farming, but not specifically how much space or water it actually takes. By sharing my knowledge of the environmental benefits of vertical farming in areas like Boston, I hope my students can apply the knowledge and incorporate it into their own daily lives.

 

My second goal through this fellowship is to learn how to incorporate various ways to relate vertical farming to my classroom. Specifically, I hope to create a project in which students will use algebraic equations to model and analyze different parts of vertical farming, such as the amount of water or light needed for different vegetables, the cost of operating, or the potential crop yields. With our own vertical farming system at Boston Green Academy, I strive to be able Wu 5 to have my students collect the data needed to analyze different aspects of vertical farms and make conclusions of its efficiency compared to traditional farming techniques.

 

My third goal for this fellowship is to deliver a presentation for all staff at Boston Green Academy with my experience visiting Yasai Pilot Farm and any knowledge I gained as well as how I plan on incorporating the knowledge into our own freight farm (vertical farm) and my math classroom.

 

What I hope to bring back to my school

I hope to bring a plethora of information back to Boston Green Academy from this experience. First, I hope to bring back more knowledge on vertical farming and its environmental benefits in an urban setting. I also hope to bring more information on how one can connect vertical farming to mathematics and make more real world connections with mathematics. Ultimately, I hope to create a project in which students will be able to collect and analyze data about vertical farming that shows how much more efficient it is than traditional farming and how it can benefit their own urban community in Boston if they were to support vertical farming. Finally, I hope to share all my new knowledge of vertical farming and how I plan to implement it in my own classroom.

 

General Timeline

A general timeline of my planned fellowship activity is to take a trip to Switzerland from around August 10, 2023 to August 17, 2023. I plan to fly to Zurich and visit the Yasai Pilot Farm, which is just a short car ride from the city. I also plan on visiting two stores that sell Yasai’s fresh produce that are located in Zurich, specifically the COOP BAHNHOFBRÜCKE and JELMOLI. When I return from my trip and in the following school year, I hope to create a project that will allow students to collect data from our own vertical farm at Boston Green Academy and compare the data to traditional farming techniques. Additionally, I plan to share my experience Wu 6 with my colleagues during a Professional Development opportunity during the school year of 2023-2024.

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Read Carol's Project Report and Bio