AG STEM Program @ Booker T. Washington High School, Atlanta, Georgia

Having made field trips to several Atlanta farms in the past decade, we recently visited Ty at his unique farm at Booker T. Washington High School. They had a little bit of everything from raised garden beds and a crop wash station to aquaponics. I was astonished.

Stacy: So, I believe we should start with where we are — here in west Atlanta. Booker T. Washington High School is located in the West End community and rests in a food desert.
What do you know about Booker T. Washington High School?
Ty: I know it was the first all African American high School in Atlanta and Georgia.

Stacy: Impacting agriculture in STEM is an acronym for the fields of science, technology, engineering and math and embodies the legacy of your school’s namesake.
Talk to me about the AG STEM program?
Ty: The AG STEM program is amazing. We just became a STEM certified school, so that was a great thing, ‘cuz it was my first year in high school. I feel like it brought a great school year out of everything and taught us a lot more than what we would have learned if we weren’t AG Stem certified the first year.

Stacy: About how many high school students are part of the AG STEM program?
Ty: Half if not all the ninth grade students, but I think next year it will be a school wide thing.

Stacy: At the farm, I saw students collecting fresh produce to take home for supper.
Who are the adult coordinators?
TY: There is a farm manager, two teachers named Mr. Boykin and Miss Sinclair, and a farmer/teacher named Trinity.

Stacy: I remember 7 year old Tyrese Amos planting red peppers in my flower bed at God’s Farm. Now, Tyrese Amos is a freshman and has accepted a leadership position as president of the Future Farmers of America (FFA). How did this minority representation happen?
Ty: I was voted by my other classmates. We had officers so each position had to be voted on. I had much, much experience with farming, so why shouldn’t I be a part of it? I know more than these city kids since I worked with you guys.

Stacy: I find it interesting that you continued to pursue farming.
What is your level of involvement as FFA president?
Ty: I have to help with a majority of everything that has to do with agricultural STEM. I have to help with the farm across the street and the high school farm. I have to take part and I have to show up to conferences.

Stacy: Farming does require full participation.
When did farming take up space in you, this fascination with farming and your life in community?
Ty: I never thought that I would get into farming until I met Mr. Sweeney. I feel like he made it super fun and something that was interesting instead of something that was, you know, boring. Of course, we had to work hard, but he also made it fun. So, I saw interest in that.

Stacy: I want to ask the question this way — what was it like the first time you met the Sweeney’s?
Ty: It was crazy. I’m trying to find the word to describe it all. I saw little kids with long hair floating around and the house full of mixed races with the door wide open and a garden snake in a box. That’s when I knew the kids were not girls because only boys would have captured a live snake in a box.

Stacy: Crazy. OK, got it. Do you have a name for that urban farm of yours?
Ty: Truly Living Well

Stacy: It’s Truly Living Right on so many levels.
If one picture could describe the urban school farm, what farm landscape would you point out?
Ty: The compost bin. We add lunch leftovers from the elementary school and the high school. The compost is the life of the soil and the farm.

Stacy: Good answer! You’re like a local food ambassador conducting a food waste reduction initiative.
Talk to me about aquaponics?
Ty: Aquaponics is a way to preserve land or use no land at all while farming. You can produce way more with aquaponics than you probably can with land or on land with occupants.

Stacy: Say some more.
Ty: You can recycle the water. You can put the water to the right temperature or have it have the right fibers for the plant to grow.

You can also reuse the water over and over so you wouldn’t have to switch land or nothing like that.

You can do it in your house, you can do it in a small container, you can do it in a trailer, you can do it in your backyard, you can stack aquaponic systems on top of each other, so you can have up to like an acre of aquaponic systems but it will produce three to four times of the produce only using an acre of land.

You can harvest straight out of the aquaponic system, you can germinate and take them out of the aquaponic system and put them in soil or you can leave them in the aquaponic system and let them just grow until they’re ready to harvest.

The drip system is a part of the aquaponics system. The drip system is a big bucket of water with a cylinder attached to it and you put in mesh cubes and put the seeds inside the mesh cubes and the water will drip and help grow the plants through the mesh cubes. So, you can keep the plants and produce inside of the aquaponic system as it grows.

Stacy: So what you just described about aquaponics is innovative.
You straddle the Georgia Aquarium and Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Describe the partnerships the AG STEM Program has with each?
Ty: With the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, we have a good partnership with them because they gave us special seeds to take care of and to germinate. These seeds are like one of a kind so they’re pretty hard to find and they trusted us with them after they saw what we can do because we germinated other seeds for the Georgia Aquarium.

The Georgia Aquarium gave us a special behind the scenes tour of their aquaponic system because, even though it’s the Georgia Aquarium, they also have many plants there, so they gave us a partnership to help us work on our knowledge with plants and how to germinate plants and how to use aquaponics as well.

Stacy: I’m proud of you. Thank you for inviting us to experience another Georgia farm.

Urban Community Life