Challenge Accepted?

Students locally can contribute to the impact of problems of population growth, access to resources, limited space for growing food, and year-round plant-based food production. After thoughtful research to evaluate how these challenges exist globally and locally, students will design, build, and utilize a growing structure that can be used in their unique location or situation to help maximize the availability and access of food, given the extensive growth in population and limitations of space. The final product will be a functioning greenhouse structure with crop yield being analyzed.

Identify a Problem

The world population is growing at a rate of 1.13% per year. The current average population change is estimated at around 80 million per year (www.worldometers.info). The expanding population is creating less and less growing space, and there is a need for year-round production. There are limitations of available resources due to the factors of this growth. Around the world, there are remote locations with limited resources to allow for climatically controlled growing. Individuals in large urban areas struggle with finding the space to grow food.

Response to Problem

How can you contribute locally to the impact problems, such as population growth, limited space for growing food, access to resources, and year-round plant-based food production? What type of growing structure would help reduce the effects of a global or national problem, such as the ones listed above?

Design, build, and utilize a growing structure that can be used in your unique location or situation to help maximize the availability and access of food.

This system must address the following needs:

• Produce a plant-based food source
• Maintain an environment that is suitable for plant life for a maximum of 90 days
• Must maximize production per square footage

Success will be determined by:

• Harvest an edible food product within 90 days or show progress of plant growth within the timeframe allotted for your specific situation
• Create and maintain an environment that is suitable for plant life
• Produce a presentation and post to social media