HOUSTON COUNTY, Ga. — Northside Middle School is making sure students understand the importance of agriculture through the school's agricultural program.
The school recently received an innovation grant that will help further the program and incorporate more student-led ideas focusing on agriculture.
"A lot of people think that agriculture is just farming and stuff, but there's so much more to that. If you like gardening, agriculture is for you. If you like animals, agriculture is for you. If you just like eating food, agriculture is for you," said student Lilah Green.
"The food we use in restaurants... mainly from agriculture. I can't really think of anything that's not," said Slade Wilson.
"Without agriculture, it would be a lot harder to do what we do now," said Kaitlyn Costigan.
The trio are all taking 8th grade agricultural education classes at Northside.
"We feature some really cool facilities for our students. We have a school farm that students have access to so that they have the opportunity to show livestock, such as cattle and pigs," said teacher Christina Sanders.
Sanders has been teaching agricultural education for seven years. She says students have access to the school's greenhouse and garden through her classes. It's where they plant flowers and grow vegetables.
They also have access to the schools recycling and composting program.
"We depend a lot on grants because it's hard for us to fund some of the ideas that we have, because we have some really creative students that we want to make these ideas happen for. Everything that we done so far has been a student-led idea," she said.
They just received another $10,000 grant to establish the schools S.T.E.A.M farm.
"This farm is going to focus on S.T.E.A.M initiatives, which stands for science, technology, engineering, arts, and math," said Sanders.
Sanders says this grant will help them get poultry on campus to teach students to raise chicken, quail, and turkey.
They're also planning on placing hydroponic towers in classrooms to help grow a soilless medium, expanding the recycling program, and adding more raised vegetable beds.
Sanders says all of these new additions will give students a hands-on learning experience.
"If we're teaching about pigs, we don't have to read it off of a text book or watch a video. We can go see them. If they want to learn about stuff in the greenhouse, they can know how their food has grown, how to take care of flowers, and so much more," she said.
The school plans to start implementing the new additions immediately. Everything should be in place by December.
Sanders says the program has grown so much since she got to Northside in 2015, and it's only going to keep growing.
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