Program uses agriculture to conquer real world problems | Sustainable Tallahassee

My company, Farming the Future, is a woman-owned, socially minded, award-winning business that provides multi-tiered support to educators K-12 by supplying everything they need, from seeds to soil, to successfully grow and maintain their own science-focused, student garden program.

I founded this company for many reasons, but the most important one was to contribute to a more sustainable future here on Earth.

Growing up, I didn’t have much of a science education, and because of health issues was unable to go away to college. I began waiting tables and started attending Tallahassee Community College as a biology major with an interest in alternative fuels/biofuels. My dream was to own a gas station that offered a variety of ecofriendly fuels and doubled as a marketplace for fresh produce.

I got into plants after I was introduced to aquaponics, which couples aquaculture, the breeding and maintaining of aquatic animals, with hydroponics, the farming of plants in water without soil, in one-closed loop system. From there I started sitting in on classes at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering.

Hands-on teaching

In 2016, I founded Farming the Future to build gardens and use them to teach science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) to students, partnering with at-risk schools and juvenile detention centers to make the biggest impact.

In 2018, I received the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award, which each year honors six young adults working to transform communities and create positive global change.

From there our company has catapulted its reach and gained enough traction to be recognized and receive multiple awards for our work. Last fall I was honored to receive ReThink Energy’s “Energy Innovator Award” at their annual 2021 Energy Ball.

STEM through agriculture for students also fuels a more environmentally and ecofriendly mindset. Students simultaneously learn about the resources it takes to grow food and the impact it has on the environment. This inspires more ecofriendly approaches like buying local, becoming more mindful of waste and healthier lifestyle choices.

By providing students with gardens, they see something that they have grown from seed become something they can eat and are thus more willing to try it; the mystery is gone.

The way that we’ve really seen our program's impact has been the increase in educators who are coming to us saying, “Hey, we want this program. We want to use agriculture and microgreens and gardens to teach science in our classroom.”

Teacher demand has increased via our website, at conferences and through our third-party retailers because it is more important now than ever to expose kids to how food grows.

Kits for teachers

We now sell a variety of different kits, from microgreen kits for home use or in classroom, to school-wide educational gardens, including hydroponics and aquaponics, that schools can use year-round. Teachers are excited to see our thorough lesson plans that make integrating our products in the classroom easy; we provide them with all the tools they need to successfully teach to national science standards in the classrooms with wholistic remote support from our team.

Although Farming the Future was founded in Tallahassee, we now host local gardens in Gadsden, Jefferson and Wakulla, as well as Leon County, serving over 50,000 students across 12 states.

Today, Farming the Future is a nationwide group of educators, teachers, farmers and technology specialists.

We believe that by creating an engaging environment for learners we can help them to truly experience science through the work of their own hands. We believe that agriculture is the greatest vehicle for teaching core science concepts integrated with real world problems.

I truly believe that if we expose kids to the issues and problems of sustainability that we are experiencing today and if we expose them to ideas and an alternatives way of approaching those problems, one day one of those students will revolutionize the industry.

I can only imagine where I would be now with a program like this when I was in fifth grade. However, that did not stop me, and I consistently think back on those wise words of my mother: “Education is your escape.”

By providing students with opportunities to explore and giving educators a chance to teach students at early stages about what it means to truly sustain life, we just might hope to conquer the big issues we face today. Check us out on our website, ftfeducation.com, and on Facebook at facebook.com/FarmingTheFuture.

Michele Madison is the founder and CEO of Farming the Future and can be reached at michele@ftfeducation.com. This is a “Greening Our Community” article, an initiative of Sustainable Tallahassee. Learn more at SustainableTallahassee.org.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Program uses agriculture to conquer real world problems