Sustainable food systems program activities include greens to eat, greens to plant

On Earth Day this year, the sun was shining, Aggies were filling salad bowls and faculty member Odile Huchette was admiring a raised bed of kale and arugula that was ready to be picked and eaten.

“Look at it! Is it not pretty?” said Huchette, a horticulture lecturer. “It’s beautiful and very healthy.”

Earth Day – the annual celebration of the environment – was April 22, and students from the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Design commemorated the occasion by sharing what they had learned and grown.

“I just like to get the students to talk about nature, about sustainability, about food,” said Huchette, who serves as director of the Reid Greenhouse on campus and as coordinator of the Student and Community Farm at the N.C. A&T University Farm on McConnell Road.

Earth Day, Huchette added, “is a chance to celebrate and connect and have a broad conversation not only in our program but with everyone.”

For this year’s CAES Earth Day celebration, Huchette and her students brought back an old favorite: the pick-and-serve-yourself salad bar. A staple of prior Earth Day festivities, the salad bar hasn’t been done since 2019 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Three new Earth Day events, all held at the Student and Community Farm, were added for 2022.

After lunch, students in Huchette’s Practice in Sustainable Horticulture class led a workshop on plant propagation.

Later that afternoon, students planted a sugar maple tree alongside the Student and Community Farm Building. Huchette credits Bill Randle, Ph.D., professor and coordinator of the CAES Sustainable Land and Food Systems program, with the idea of planting a tree each Earth Day starting this year to honor graduating seniors.

After the tree planting, some students stayed outside to enjoy a beautiful spring day. Others gathered inside the Student and Community Farm Building to watch “The Lorax,” the environmental-themed film based on the Dr. Seuss book of the same name. Afternoon snacks included popcorn harvested at the University Farm a year ago.

The CAES Earth Day celebration gave students a chance to get together outside of class. But it was also designed to give horticulture students a little attention for all of their hard work.

Breanna Davis, a junior, said other A&T students have glanced at her while she’s tending to the crops at the Urban Food Complex, a collection of raised beds, fruit trees and a pergola that lies between the Reid Greenhouse and the Academic Science Building.

Markevius Hawkins, left, finds a good cutting for CyHeim McRae, as Hawkins helped lead a cuttings workshop at the Student and Community Farm Complex at the University Farm

On Earth Day, visitors to the Urban Food Complex saw plenty to see and eat: healthy and mature spinach, kale, arugula, mustard greens and 18 varieties of green- and purple-leaf lettuce. Davis and other students in Huchette’s Plant Propagation class had raised these vegetable crops from seeds, which they had planted in the greenhouse in February, transplanted them to the raised beds of the Urban Food Complex in late March and harvested them on Earth Day.

For the salad bar, A&T students, faculty and staff members cut their own salad leaves right from the plants. Some topped their salads with microgreens grown by students in Huchette’s Specialty Crops class.

Davis, who’s majoring in sustainable land and food systems, said this seed-to-salad exercise helped her appreciate the fact that there are “other varieties of produce other than store-bought.”

By showing other Aggies that so much healthy food can be grown in such a small space, Davis added, “I can share my knowledge with the community to let them know we can end food insecurity.”

Out at the Student and Community Farm, the plant propagation workshop was a testament to the power and ease of recycling.

The containers used to hold the new plants were plastic soda and juice bottles collected from students and from A&T’s on-campus coffee shop. The dirt scooped into the plastic planters was a rich mix of leaf mulch, chicken run and potting soil recycled from the Reid Greenhouse. The new plants were cuttings from mature plants — basil, mint, lavender and parsley — that had been grown in A&T’s greenhouse or donated by Guilford County Cooperative Extension.

Kennedy Wimbish, a senior who’s majoring in sustainable land and food systems, said one aim of the workshop was to make raising herbs and other plants a little less intimidating. Once a plant has a pot and some dirt, she said, all it needs is sun, water and a little love.

Wimbish said she hoped students took away from the workshop not just a new plant but an important lesson.

That lesson: “You can make a difference,” Wimbish said. “You can educate your friends and larger community about the amazing things you can make from the Earth.

“Agriculture and horticulture are amazing things.”