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Taste-Test Proposal Project for Students in High School Lesson 1 Title: Food systems over time – Feeding people throughout history Objective: Students will begin to explore the method of interdisciplinary thinking through the concept map activity and have an initial baseline idea of how different topic areas are related to their hydroponics system. Students will be able to explain what a food system is and what factors and people are involved. They will also be able to map out changes in agriculture and food systems over the course of history and pick various human health and environmental impacts that were present if different food systems over time. Topics: History, Agriculture Grade Level: 9th-12th Grade Time: 84 minutes External Materials Needed: chalkboard/wipe board, projector, computer, writing utensils, large sheets of paper Teaching Tips: Apart from meeting the lesson objectives, this lesson aims to introduce students to the complexity of food systems and how as the world changes and develops, so do our food systems. It is important for the students to begin with this background knowledge of food systems because it sets up a platform for their project – as technology continues to advances and our population continues to grow, new methods of agriculture may need to be explored to feed over 7 billion people while protecting the integrity of our environment. The introduction should be brief as it is simply introducing the overall project to the students. The concept mapping activity is necessary for teachers interested in tracking students’ abilities to think in an interdisciplinary manner. This activity is correlated with the final presentation at the end of the series. Teachers who are only interested in teaching about food systems, and are not interested in doing the project proposal portion, will not need to include this activity. If short on time, the discussion questions included in this activity can be cut down to #1, #2, and #4. The following lecture/discussion on food systems can be shortened by omitting the discussion about relationships between culture and food. Additionally, the “Think, Pair, Share” activity can be taken out and integrated into the lecture portion to save time – this would involve the teacher prompting the students to think about trends in today’s food system and how they fit into the categories of production, processing, etc. The group activity on food systems is very important to the lesson. Cutting out the portions of the lecture mentioned above to allow more time for this activity is acceptable. If time is still an issue, you can skip the Greece example and go straight to handing out the different time-periods for students to investigate. Give them at least 10 minutes, leaving at roughly 5-7 minutes to discuss what they found. The reflection exercise can be reduced to 5 minutes if needed, or turned into a homework component. If a teacher is not interested in gauging student learning outcomes, this section may be omitted. Lesson Plan and Activities: Introduction 4 min Introduce to the class that we will be starting a short lesson series that will focus on innovative agriculture, like hydroponics, and food procurement into their school cafeteria. First, ask the students if they know what food procurement means. - Procure v. meaning to obtain something, or gather things with care and effort. Synonyms include: acquire, get, find, secure, and pick up1 - Food procurement – how and from whom food is purchased by an organization or institution2 o Example: a local restaurant wants to buy local foods to use when cooking their dishes o For this lesson series, we will be investigating how to procure food grown on the hydroponics system into the school cafeteria Ask the students why they think it might be important to think about where our food comes from? Ask the students what they think could be benefits of procuring their grown produce into the cafeteria. Any challenges associated with this? Start making a list of student answers on the board. Broadly introduce to the students that we are going to be working on a class project to develop a proposal that will be presented to their principal about how and why we should procure the food. We will do an exercise today that will get them thinking about the project, but we are primarily going to take the first two lessons to gain some background knowledge on agricultural advancement overtime and its environmental and health impacts. Concept Mapping Activity 30 min To start this activity, ask the students to brainstorm a list of topics that they think they will need to investigate to make this project possible. Once the list is completed, you may choose to add in the following topics if they were not already mentioned: history, health, environmental science, politics/policy, biology, math, economics/business, marketing, psychology, English and public speaking. Tell the students that we are now going to begin an activity called concept mapping. The goal of concept mapping is to determine how different pieces of information, in this case our topics, are related to one another. This exercise will help us think about what is important to know as we start our project. It will also help us develop the best proposal possible as it shows we thought about it from many angles. Have the students pair up with someone next to them and begin drawing out a concept map. Each topic should be accompanied with a brief statement justifying how it is connected to another topic and the project. With the students, but on the board, draw a circle and inside write “food procurement”. This is where the students should start their map. Give them 10 minutes with their partner, to draw a concept map on a large sheet of paper. If students are having a hard time 1 Dictionary.com. (2016). Procure. Retrieved from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/procure 2 Policy Link. (2015). Equitable development toolkit; Local food procurement. Retrieved form http://www.policylink.org/sites/default/files/edtk_local-food-procurement.pdf grasping the concept, provide an example on the board linking two of the topics together (ex. math – calculate yields to know how much the system can produce). Once the maps are drawn, ask the following discussions. Discussion Questions: 1. Were any of the topics hard to connect with our project? Which topic was the hardest to connect? 2. Which topics were the easiest to connect to the project? 3. Which topic are each of you most excited about working on or learning more about? 4. Which topic is the most important? Is there one? a. We want students to realize the importance of including these topics into the project to get the most cohesive proposal 5. Is there a topic you think we should start with first? Though question five may raise some answers that do not align with the topics covered in this lesson, it is important to hear what students believe is the right path for starting this project. If their answer is something other than history, tell them that we are going to initially start with history as it will provide a good foundation and background for the project, but will move into those other topics over the course of the 9 weeks. History of Food Systems Lecture 10 min Start by asking the students if they know what a food system is. After you hear their answers, tell them that a food system encompasses all the activities that go into producing, processing, transporting, and eating foods3. Write the follow words on the board: Production, processing, transportation, consumption. Ask the students to start shouting out people, things, and actions that are involved under each category. They should be thinking about the various people/industries/business/activities/processes that are part of making each step possible. Students can copy down answers in their notebooks. Here are some examples to share if needed: Production: Farmers, farm workers/farm hands, planting seeds, watering, fertilizers, using pesticides, picking/harvesting, washing, selling, etc. Processing: Factories, factory workers, chemicals, machinery, additives, food safety measures (FDA, USDA), etc. Transportation: truck drivers, trucks, gasoline; food taking to wholesale distribution centers then to processing plants or straight to the grocery store. Consumption: Grocery stores, workers, farmer’s markets, food trucks, bake sales, selecting foods based on appearance, buying, preparing, cooking, freezing, storing, eating, etc. 3 University of Oxford. (2016). What is the food system? Retrieved from http://www.futureoffood.ox.ac.uk/what- food-system ***The food system also includes governance, economics of food production, food production sustainability, and how food production affects environmental and human health. Food is linked with our well-being concerning nutrition, obesity, and food safety. Culture and food: A food system can also have cultural roots. Ask the students if any of them can think of how culture and food could be related. If they are struggling to come up with answers, you could explain how countries in Asia eat rice with almost every meal, or in India they typically sit on the floor and eat with their hands, sometimes off a banana leaf! In European countries, portions are a lot smaller than in the US, but you are expected to order multiple courses. Each of these dining styles differs because of the people who live in these countries and the history and cultures they’ve grown up in. Think, Pair, Share Activity 5 min In groups of 2-3, have students discuss the following questions: How would you describe our food system today? What things stand out? What does farming look like? (This should dig deeper than the parts listed on the board) What is the culture of our food system in the United States? Give students 5 minutes to discuss in their small groups and then have them share their thoughts to the entire class.

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