Growing Food and Nutrition Security
by Elora Bevacqua, Sam Harris, Jasmine Amoako-Agyei, Kaylee Barrick, Libby Carr, Bryce Whitcomb, Brooke Bennett
by Elora Bevacqua, Sam Harris, Jasmine Amoako-Agyei, Kaylee Barrick, Libby Carr, Bryce Whitcomb, Brooke Bennett
We are a group of ASU students tasked with creating a vision: what should school gardens look like in Arizona in 2042? What components make for a successful garden and what are its benefits in the first place? This story map takes users through the critival components needed to ensure sustainable Arizona school gardens. Implementing these elements into local, district, state or even federal policy is vital for ensuring the success of school gardens.
Food Deserts:
School Gardens in Arizona:
School Gardens in Maricopa County:
This diagram displays the locations of schools across Maricopa county with a color coordinated to their school rating as well as the locations of every school garden in the area, shown in blue. A rated schools are light green, B rated schools are dark green, C rated schools are yellow, D rated schools are orange, and F rated schools are red. This map shows a positive correlation between higher school ratings and shorter distances to school gardens.
The Benefits of Teaching the Garden in the Classroom:
The Benefits of the Classroom Teaching in the Garden:
Who is benefiting from school gardens?
Students in the gardens...
Teachers in the gardens...
A school garden support team is vital for maintaining the garden long-term. This can include the following:
Why build a support team?
Gardens are a lot of work, but they also have a lot of benefits! Creating a support team helps ensure that they will be used by all to benefit all. Providing teachers the knowledge and insentive to use their school garden benefits the students they teach and the parents they can bring the knowledge home to. Involving community members such as farmers or those with garden experience helps expand the capacity of the garden Since gardens are a lot of work and teachers might not know how to use them or have the time to learn...
Why is this important?
Barriers, Strategies, and Resources to Thriving School Gardens, a 2021 study found that having a paid garden coordinator is one of the best ways to sustain a garden. It is a common narrative for school gardens to fail because there is not enough support or knowledge on how to use them. Having a paid garden coordinator bypasses this barrior to create a sustained thriving garden.
Kelly Hedberg at Rover Elementary
Did you know it is legal to collect rainwater that falls onto your property in the state of Arizona? This is something not all states allow and can help reduce a household's water usage by a large amount. For example, using harvested rainwater to water a garden or lawn. Some uses of rainwater may require treatment to kill any bacteria that could be harmful so make sure to check online for tips on proper and safe use.
Lake Mead Elevation (Feet)
There are many ways to be efficient with your watering at home and in your garden. The basics are things like watering your plants and lawn at night so you use less overall, upgrading sprinkler heads and irrigation systems to more modern efficient models, and trying to have natural shade in the areas you are growing to lose less water to evaporation.
Ways to be more water efficient that are a little more in-depth can be found on the Arizona Department of Water Resources ’s website. This includes choosing specific plants that don’t need as much water as others, calculating how much water your garden needs to not over-use, and irrigation system design and building that produces the most efficient water usage.
What will water access look like in 2042:
Arizona's Water Supply
If nothing changes and we stay on the trajectory we are on now the future looks bleak for Arizona's access to water. Currently, there are predictions that the population will increase by 40% by just 2035. That means that the expected increase in water demand could be up to 22%. This will make the state rely more on groundwater until that can’t keep up with demand and then the state could face a problem it may not recover from with a mass exodus due to higher temperatures and lower amounts of water provided to the population. If we change the path we are on by finding and adopting new water practices we could have a much better future where we create a sustainable format for large populations in desert climates.
Why is this a problem for food:
Overall this is a problem for food because water is one of the most important building blocks of growing produce. With a water crisis on the horizon and no sign of it stopping on its own soon we risk a major collapse of Arizona’s farming industry and like a domino effect many other issues to rise from it. Arizona could see a decrease in foods provided to the state by local farmers and need to pay to have outside crops brought from other states. This could affect families who receive help from organizations in the amount provided to those in need and the variety of options. In the big picture, you also risk an economic hit for the state from loss of revenue from local businesses and loss of tax dollars collected by the state.
Our Vision is that by 2042...
Communities in Arizona are using water sustainability practices to reduce their water use on a day to day and personal level. Another step is to update all local sprinkler systems with the new and water saving sprinkler head designs. To see a decrease in overall usage by the state and less of a demand on the Colorado River would be a huge step to fight this issue.
Blue Flax Lily
Davidson Plum
Image: Children working in the school garden at Rover Elementary
The gardens currently utilize simple garden beds made from wood that section the various crops by type. The garden beds are kept low to the ground in order to make it more accessible and to give each kid an opportunity to experience the garden from any height and angle.
Source: Homestead and Chill
The current design used for garden irrigation is a hose that wraps around the interior of the garden beds. The hose has micro holes throughout so the water can reach various parts of the garden bed. The challenge is regulating the water supply to reduce waste as much as possible. These irrigation systems are susceptible to high amounts of evaporation that prevent the crops from receiving sufficient water in less time and also lead to significant water loss.
The capacity of communities in Arizona to thrive 20 years from now is largely reliant on a shift in the approach to irrigation practices specifically in the agricultural sector.
To address and mitigate issues of obesity and malnutrition, improve education outcomes, and increase engagement among students, school gardens not only need to be implemented on a statewide level but will also require an innovative approach to irrigation within that implementation.
Image Source: Farmers' Almanac
In 20 years, irrigating school gardens could look quite different. One such change is the transition to rainwater harvesting as a primary source of water. “As population growth and development continues to strain water resources, landscape water conservation is not just an issue but a necessity,” (Woodson, n.d.).
Rainwater harvesting has the potential to reduce the strain on the water supply in Arizona while also contributing to the development of sustainable infrastructure. Furthermore, it will also reduce flooding, erosion, and stormwater contamination (Woodson, n.d.). This process involves setting up cisterns on hard, impervious surfaces such as roofs and then connecting them to drip irrigation tubing for collection and distribution.
Design created by J. Amoako-Agyei & C. Johnson
We aim to: