A vending machine for microgreens: The school with a farm in its canteen

Edible gardens are popping up in schools all over the country but a high school in Broadmeadows has gone one step further and installed a no-waste indoor farm in its canteen. It looks like a vending machine but instead of being stocked with Coke and crisps it contains microgreens, mushrooms and tropical fish.

In this lit-up box, 87 secondary students are growing broccoli and radish microgreens in pots of hemp fibre. The roots are irrigated with nutrient-laden water recirculating from a fish tank and the shoots bask in the glare of full-spectrum LED lights. There are also recycled plastic buckets filled with straw and four different varieties of oyster mushrooms.

Typical farm life this is not. It is a carefully controlled, highly manipulated system that is dependent on neither the vagaries of weather nor the fertility of soil. It feels more sci-fi than bucolic countryside.

Geert Hendrix, the founder of Farmwall, the business that installed this soilless set-up, says the farm taps into aspects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics as well as how to grow nutritious food that is good to eat.

Since establishing Farmwall in 2017, Hendrix has been working with engineers, scientists, designers and horticulturalists to come up with a variety of new ways to grow food. While he has introduced indoor growing systems into offices and restaurants, this is the first time he has put one in a school.

“The idea is to get students interested in food from a new angle,” Hendrix says. “How we produce food in cities is changing and farmers in the future will need to know about technology, data, nature and biology. Climate anxiety is a real thing with young people at the moment and this helps to show them about the exciting times coming up, and how they can be part of the solution.”

The farm had only been up and running at Hume Central Secondary College’s Dimboola Road campus for little more than a week when we visit but year nine students Chase Smith and Rosie Alaese, who are both 14, are already fans. They sowed radish seeds on “nests” of hemp fibre in a food technology class, covered them with a tray to give the seeds the required “blackout” period, and when they germinated about three days later transplanted them into a pot in the Farmwall system. Any day now they will begin harvesting their microgreens for their lunches.