Garden Lesson Plan: Food and Carbon

Notes from our reviewers

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• Teaching Tips
  If teachers don't have access to a garden for the harvest, they can skip this portion of the activity and still have students engage in the research, food mile calculation, and discussion about food in their communities. Teachers could also find and partner with a local/urban garden program, visit a local farmers market, or even grow plants in a container garden in the classroom. Video resources are linked that help bridge the gap from hands-on field experience. To get the most benefit from this lesson, providing some background knowledge on how food is grown and transported, and the difference between large-scale farming and locally grown food, would be helpful. Schools engaged in the garden/harvesting activity will need to consider using this lesson around the growing season schedule.
• About the Science
  Food produced locally can help prevent CO2 emissions associated with transportation of food. This lesson plan connects carbon cycle and system science concepts with concrete data collection from a school garden, but could be easily adapted to grow smaller numbers of plants in a classroom under a grow light. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to the garden produce and compared with the carbon costs associated with obtaining food grown locally. The information provided and used for carbon footprint calculations are all referenced and linked from valid sources. Comments from expert scientist: Scientific strengths: Clarity about limitations about life cycle assessment; hands-on experiential learning through tomato example; good overview of the debates around local food and industrialized food. Suggestions: A few points that should be clarified, a) local doesn't mean non-industrial; every industrial farm is 'local' somewhere-- having students reflect, or comment on what farms/agriculture look like where they live (ie, gardens, farms, CAFOs) would help students understand the diversity of farm structures, even where they live, b) one of the learning goals Ess3-4 states students should understand "how increases in human population growth and per capita consumption impact Earth's systems"-- my clarification here would be to help students understand that how/what we consume is very relevant, not just an environmental deterministic lens on increased population means greater degradation of natural resources Note: CO2 emissions associated with food travel are used as a metric to evaluate our food production system and introduce students to the dynamic life-cycle of food.
• About the Pedagogy
  The lesson relates abstract concepts of system science, the carbon cycle and climate change to concrete and tangible quantitative measurements of atmospheric carbon produced as a result of different steps in food production. This is a well-written lesson plan with learning goals and NGSS clearly laid out. The pedagogy strategies used include student research into food production and transportation, calculation of food miles, as well as student discussions of results and the information they learned. There are supporting videos teachers can show students. This lesson works best for students who are engaged in a school garden so that they can engage in the harvest (although students without access to a garden will still benefit from the research, calculations and discussion about food in their communities). Appropriate assessment is included.
• Technical Details/Ease of Use
  There is one link in the PDF that doesn't work and isn't otherwise listed out. There are two possible extension activities that aren't linked in the PDF. Otherwise, all the necessary materials and links are provided.