These Indianapolis students live in a food desert, so they're learning to farm
On a hot May afternoon at Allegiant Prep Academy, a group of kindergarteners and first graders squeal as they see something move in the dirt they are putting into a planter.
They find a roly poly, also known as a pill bug, and some of the kids back away in disgust while others lean in for a closer look.
Kristin Duckett, the students' teacher, comes over and explains why roly polys are good for the soil they’re prepping.
“We want to keep them in there so they can take out all the harmful chemicals and help us from getting sick,” Duckett said.
At this explanation, some of the students like Ryhana Rosado Arce start “awwing” in excitement. Now they all want turns holding the gray bug.
Bugs, soil, green thumbs are all part of Allegiant Prep's new urban regenerative farming program. The program, which is open to students in all grades, teaches students about ecology, the science of regenerative farming — which works to reverse the negative impacts of pollution on the environment — and how to create their own gardens in an urban setting.
Many of the around 150 students at Allegiant Preparatory Academy, a K-5 charter school in the Haughville neighborhood, have signed up for the elective course that meets during the school day.
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The program teaches students about regenerative urban farming, which aims to undo years of pollution that has seeped into the soil and water sources in the community by using easily accessible and low-cost materials to create urban vegetable, fruit and herb gardens.
During the colder winter months, students learn about water and soil ecology as well as regenerative farming techniques such as intercropping. Intercropping entails planting two vegetables near one another to prevent bugs from eating either, avoiding the need for pesticides.
“It all started from the idea of me wanting to bring this program to students and allow them to grow food, learn about the importance of growing your own food, and the importance of having nutrient-rich food grown in a way that is balanced for our natural resources,” Duckett told IndyStar.
The program was adapted from the original regenerative urban farming training program created by Stebo Ma’at, the founder and head minister at Ma’at 9, a faith-based organization that Duckett helped found to teach adults how to create their own regenerative garden at Belmont Beach.
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Belmont Beach on the White River is a historical recreational swimming area for Indianapolis' Black residents who used the area when public pools and parks were segregated. The area also served as a dumping ground for pollution from industrial waste facilities and other nearby refineries in the early 1900's. Now, the surrounding Haughville community has transformed the area into a community space with help from groups like Ma'at 9.
Duckett, who grew up in Haughville and began teaching art at Allegiant Preparatory Academy, adapted the regenerative farming curriculum for elementary school students.
The main principle Duckett hopes to instill in the students is “no excuses to gardening,” which aims to teach students how they can use everyday cheap items to start their own garden in their backyard.
Duckett herself used inexpensive materials to build a four-foot-high three-tiered shelving unit outside of Allegiant that holds five-gallon buckets in which the crops grow. In cold weather, the buckets can be moved indoors.
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This year, the program's first, the students planted tomatoes, peppers, collard greens, rosemary, thyme, basil and cucumbers. Duckett uses soil created at Belmont Beach and the school pays for the materials such as plywood and the buckets needed to create the raised beds.
Learning how to grow their own produce is especially important for Haughville area students because they live in a food desert, Duckett said. The closest access to fresh vegetables is a Kroger a mile away from the school.
“Our ultimate goal is to create more areas of nutritional saturation, where people have access to live foods that they can grow in low maintenance structures and help get food directly in front of people,” Duckett said.
At one point during a lesson, Duckett shows the students a "magic trick," grabbing leaves of mint, crushing them on her hands and inviting the students to sniff, exposing them to a new plant they haven't smelled before.
Allegiant Prep’s founder and head of school, Rick Anderson, said the program Duckett created is exactly the kind of thing he hoped to do when he opened the school in 2018.
“I think what's also the biggest piece for me is that we're empowering voices organically in this community and serving the community that we set out to serve, not imposing something on them,” Anderson said. “I think it's very much a partnership.”
Duckett will watch over the crops during the summertime. The school hopes that by next school year, they will have grown enough produce that each student will be able to take some home.
Contact IndyStar reporter Caroline Beck at 317-618-5807 or CBeck@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @CarolineB_Indy.
Caroline’s reporting is made possible by Report for America and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Allegiant Prep students get in dirt to learn regenerative urban farming
