Use this thread to share articles that have been written about your school! I’ll do the same, by continuing to share relevant press releases as they come out (and some historical!) for us or any schools that are using equipment we’ve manufactured.
To kick things off, I’ll share this article I stumbled across on the Association for Career & Technical Education website. I was reading a blog post in their monthly Techniques: Technological Transformations. blog when @Surendra’s students were described as learning in “lab spaces that have become Controlled Environment Agriculture Classrooms” - what a great description!
Recent article created by STLMADE - which is an initiative created by the St. Louis Economic Development Group. It’s the best summary and visual showcase of MARSfarm as a business.
Also, special shoutout/thank you to @regina.smart and @DrDonnaJ - who spent hours in our booth answering questions from teachers / principals / administrators - they are true MARSfarm super-users!
Jaime Travers is the meteorologist for the local Fox 2 news station came to our St. Louis facility in November. She wrote this article and as a meteorologist, was really able to understand our vision for climate recipes!. As part of the feature, they also came out and filmed this segment which was shown on the St. Louis evening news.
We’ll be engaging in conversations to hopefully begin work on a secondary certificate for ‘agricultural applications of artificial intelligence’ for students using datasets created by the MV1s.
Sharing a link to this older thread by Nathalie with a link to the 5-minute talk I gave at the annual conference for the ‘National Geographic Society’, which was focused on agriculture this year.
Our friends at John Hardin FFA in Kentucky had two articles come out about their ag program this Fall. It looks like @jeremy.hall even made it on the local news!
Jeremy learned about MARSfarm at the ACTE Vision Conference in Las Vegas back in 2022. After teaching for 20+ years, it’s safe to say that Jeremy knows what he wants. After acquiring funding, Jeremy purchased two MARSfarm Version 1 units for the Fall 2023 semester and is planning to buy two more in 2024. Jeremy’s students are also now contributing the data collected from their experiments to scientists at NASA through the citizen science program ‘Growing Beyond Earth’ - we can’t wait to see what they do next!
Jeremy Hall setting up the irrigation system in his MV1 greenhouse.
Freshmen Harlee Denney and Mckinley Leasor help Mr. Hall assemble the school’s new MV1.
Side note:@jeremy.hall recommends purchasing ‘Fork Farms’ equipment over the ore popular ‘Tower Garden’ alternative. There is a bit of a price premium, but they’re committed to supporting schools (especially FFA’s!) and his students grow 50 lbs of lettuce a week using their five Fork Farms units! John Hardin High School FFA is Building Community with Hydroponics
Great article for St. Louis Magazine featuring one of our very first customers - Dr. Katie Lodes at St. Joseph’s Academy. They purchased two of the ‘MARSfarm Mini V0.21’ (prototype of the MV1) three years ago. They also have been an active participant in Growing Beyond Earth as well - presenting their research to NASA at the annual science symposium!
Throwback to 2016 when Bill Clinton came to St. Louis, I got asked to bring an early MARSfarm prototype (at the time it was called a ‘Food Computer’) to an urban farm he was touring. In the first photo is Bill Clinton, James Forbes (from Good Life Growing, a good friend who runs the urban farm), and me with my prototype - you can barely see the pink glowing lights!
