Why Children Should Learn to Grow Food at School

Should children learn to grow food at school? There is a good case for it. Growing even a few plants teaches children where food comes from, gives science lessons something real to observe, and can make them more willing to try vegetables. Studies of school garden programmes suggest benefits for children's attitudes to fruit and vegetables, though researchers are careful to say the evidence on long-term health is still limited. The good news for teachers is that it does not take a big plot: a windowsill of seed cups is enough to start.

Here is what school food growing involves, what the research does and does not show, and how a class can get going without a garden or a green-fingered teacher.

An old idea with a long history

School gardens are not a modern trend. In Europe they go back at least to the early nineteenth century, with records of them in Schleswig-Holstein from 1819. Austria and Sweden made them a legal requirement in 1869, Belgium followed in 1873 and France in 1880. By the early twentieth century, tens of thousands of schools across Austria, France, Russia and Sweden kept gardens, and American universities such as Cornell were promoting school agriculture.

The idea came back strongly in recent decades. In 1995 the chef Alice Waters helped set up the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California, turning roughly an acre of vacant land into a garden and kitchen classroom where pupils plant, harvest and cook. The network that grew from it listed more than 6,200 programmes worldwide by 2023. In Ireland, the non-profit GIY (Grow It Yourself) has run classroom growing campaigns that reach tens of thousands of children every year.

What children actually learn

The obvious lesson is botany, but a growing project touches almost every subject:

• Science. Seeds, roots, light, water, soil, insects, weather and decomposition all become things children can see rather than read about.
• Maths. Measuring growth, counting seeds, spacing rows, charting results and comparing harvests.
• Cause and effect. A plant that is not watered wilts. Weeds crowd out seedlings. Children learn quickly that results depend on care.
• Responsibility and teamwork. Watering rotas and shared beds give everyone a job, and the plants show plainly when a job was skipped.
• Patience and confidence. Waiting weeks for a pea pod and then eating it is a small but real achievement.
• Food and nutrition. Children see that a carrot is a root and a pea is a seed, and that fresh food takes time, work and space to produce.

GIY founder Michael Kelly, writing in Ireland's The Journal, argues that children who grow some of their own food develop "food empathy", which he describes as "a deeper connection with food". It is a useful phrase for something many teachers notice: children are more curious about food they have raised themselves.

What the research says

The evidence is encouraging but not a miracle cure. Several studies have found that school gardening programmes increase children's preference for, and willingness to eat, fruit and vegetables. A 2016 systematic review by Ohly and colleagues found that school gardens appeared to bring a range of health and well-being benefits, while also noting that much of the evidence was qualitative and that stronger quantitative studies were needed.

Educators have raised fair questions too. Education researcher W. Steven Barnett has pointed out how little rigorous research exists on garden-based curricula, and the writer Caitlin Flanagan argued in 2010 that edible schoolyards can take time away from core academic learning. Supporters respond that a well-designed garden supports maths, science and literacy rather than replacing them.

A balanced reading is this: growing food is a strong, hands-on way to teach many subjects and to build healthier attitudes to food. It is not, by itself, a solution to childhood obesity or diet-related disease. Those problems also depend on family income, school meals, the wider food environment and much more.

Myths worth dropping

• "You need a big garden." You do not. GIY's classroom programmes have children sow seeds in cups on a windowsill, so no garden or expert teacher is required.
• "It is about survival skills for a collapse." Some articles frame food growing around disaster preparedness. The everyday reasons are better ones: curiosity, science, health and understanding the work behind what we eat.
• "Kids will automatically eat their greens." Growing helps, but tasting, cooking and eating together matter just as much.

How to start growing food in a classroom

The simplest route is to start small and build up. A sensible first year might look like this:

1. Pick fast, forgiving crops. Cress, pea shoots, salad leaves and radishes show results within days or weeks. Sunflowers and pumpkins are slower but dramatic. Ireland's 2023 Let's GROW classroom kits, for example, included cress, peas, salad leaves, sunflowers and pumpkins, with compostable pots and compost discs.
2. Use containers before digging beds. Pots, grow bags and recycled tubs work on windowsills, balconies and playground corners.
3. Give every child a role. Some sow, some water, some measure, some record in a class diary or photo log. Children who prefer not to get muddy can still observe, draw and label.
4. Plan for the holidays. Summer is peak growing season and also when school is empty. Choose crops that finish before the break, or arrange a family watering rota.
5. Close the loop with food. Tasting the harvest, even a handful of leaves in a sandwich, turns the project from a science experiment into a food lesson.
6. Keep it safe. Use child-sized tools, wear gloves for compost and soil, wash hands afterwards, and check that plants are safe to eat before tasting anything.

How parents can help at home

Families do not need to wait for a school programme. A pot of herbs, a tray of cress on a kitchen windowsill or a tomato plant on a balcony gives children the same lessons in miniature. Let them choose a vegetable, take charge of watering and decide how to eat it. Children are often more willing to try something they have grown and cooked themselves.

Interest is broad. A household survey commissioned in Ireland found that almost everyone asked thought learning to grow food at school was valuable, and nearly half had grown some food at home in the previous year. Chefs have joined in as well: Raymond Blanc, who runs a gardening school at his Oxfordshire hotel, has reportedly called for gardening to become a compulsory school subject in the UK.

The bigger picture

Most children today will never farm, and that is fine. But understanding how a seed becomes a meal changes how people value food, how much they waste, and how they think about the people and land that produce it. A school garden, or a row of yoghurt pots on a windowsill, is one of the cheapest and most memorable ways to teach that. The aim is not to turn every pupil into a self-sufficient grower; it is to make sure every child has, at least once, watched something grow and then eaten it.

Sources: The Journal: Michael Kelly on children, food growing and "food empathy"; Agriland (February 2023): Let's GROW initiative for food literacy; Wikipedia: School garden; Wikipedia: Edible Schoolyard; original reference: Healthy Food House.