University City High School is in the center of the sprawl in and around St. Louis — about as insulated as it could be from the wide swaths of farmland outside the city. Tucked in the back of the school, between the gymnasium and the swimming facility, is a shipping container that contains the school's new hydroponic farm.
Students in the school's agriculture program are growing their first batch of lettuce, basil and collards. "You can grow all year round. You don't have to wait for certain seasons," said Corey Bradley, manager of this hydroponic farm and several others like it throughout the city.
His indoor farm can produce up to three acres of fresh produce for the neighborhood year-round, he said, all while teaching students every step of the farming process. "There's not farms in the urban city," Bradley said. "By having a hydroponic farm in the middle of an urban community, it exposes more people, the youth, to agriculture."
The students chartered their FFA chapter in January as the last step to earn state approval for their agriculture program — making it one of the first FFA chapters in St. Louis and its suburbs. It's part of a growing number of FFA chapters in city schools.
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