MARFA — On Tuesday, summer school students at Presidio Elementary made the long trek to Marfa to see hydroponic farming — in other words, growing food without soil — on a large scale at Village Farms. Over the past few years, Presidio kids have been experimenting with the technique in class. Ruby Hermosillo’s third-grade class is currently tending to lettuce, which was originally sprouted in a tray and then transferred to the school’s vertical “Flex Farm.”
Thanks to the Big Bend Conservation Alliance (BBCA) and Amerigroup, there are now Flex Farms in schools across the region, including Presidio, Marfa, Fort Davis, Alpine and Terlingua. In Presidio, regular school year students have been switching off with summer school students in farming and then using the products grown by their classmates. The goal is exploring different scientific concepts — like parts of plants, the pH scale, the nitrogen cycle — while also encouraging students to eat healthy and consider planting their own gardens at home.
This year, the BBCA decided to give kids from different school districts the opportunity to see industrial hydroponic farms in action. It was Presidio ISD’s turn this week, and the kids were bussed to Marfa to meet with Facility Manager Abby Lange, who offered a tour of the sprawling 20-acre greenhouse.
Third-grader Bianca Grandillo was wowed by the size of the structure, which houses rows upon rows of vertically-grown tomatoes fed by drip irrigation. The seedlings are sprouted in a material called rockwool and then transferred to the system, where the plants eventually grow enough to tower over workers’ heads. “When you look at the plants it feels like an endless maze,” she said. “It was so cool.”
The kids were particularly interested in a team of bees that share the Village Farms floor with its employees. The bees spend some of their time in industrial bee boxes and some of their time among the plants, pollinating the tomatoes to help keep the growing cycle going.
The students also got to explore the pack house, where employees — some of whom were friends and family members — gingerly fill boxes of tomatoes for distribution across the state. Tomatoes that leave Village Farms are ready for customers to pick out from grocery shelves the following day.
Tuesday’s visit won’t be the end of the program for the Presidio students — they’ll continue to tend to their garden in hopes of having their own lettuce harvest by the end of the session. Village Farms has pledged to provide tomatoes to pair with the Presidio ISD lettuce for use in a burger cookout later this summer. “It’s a good lesson in innovation, conservation and sustainability,” said BBCA Program Manager Elvira Hermosillo.