Vertical gardens bring solutions to food deserts

Who’s Awesome? 2State AeroFarms—that’s who.

Bringing healthy veggies to Augusta’s food deserts and the food insecure, we provide aeroponic tower gardens to those that desperately need healthier food choices. As Tower Garden Ambassadors, 2State AeroFarms (2S a.f.) is changing the paradigm in the 2 State or CSRA. Because tower gardens are actually rocket science, using the same aeroponic technology as NASA, you only have to: check your pH in the water, plug in your tower and watch your vegetables grow exponentially. NO DIRT! Roots are watered 15 minutes on, 30 minutes off, 24 hours a day. Produce grows in 3-4 weeks

At present our community of Sand Hills is a food desert- geographic areas where access to healthy food options is limited or nonexistent because grocery stores are too far away. Our children suffer the most: The national rate of childhood obesity increased from 13.9 percent in 1999 to 18.5 percent in 2016, but the disparities are significant among certain racial and ethnic groups:

• 25.8 percent of Latino children and
• 22 percent of Black children have obesity

Boys are slightly more likely to be obese compared to girls, but Black girls have proportionally higher rates of obesity than most groups.

But we can bring healthy choices to our community with Tower Gardens.
Each tower holds 28 plants and on average one tower garden growing lettuce, leafy greens, or herbs will produce 6 oz per plant monthly. Our 12-tower community garden will yield approximately:

12 tower gardens x 28 plants = 336 plants x 6 oz = 2,016 oz of produce a month.

Residents can eat, sell excess produce to restaurants and farmers markets, and assist in duplicating the model throughout the city. Amid a pandemic, 2S a.f. will grow plants and minds. Our community garden will serve as an outdoor learning lab where students will learn photosynthesis in action. We’ll provide our local teachers with Tower Garden lesson plans from grades k-12.

Tower gardens = Game Changer.

Подкрепен от STEAM (November 2021)