45 schools to get hydroponic systems

SHAS­TRI BOODAN

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

The Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO) is part­ner­ing with 4-H Trinidad and To­ba­go to pro­vide hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tems to 45 schools dur­ing the 2026/2027 aca­d­e­m­ic year at a cost of near­ly $500,000.

Na­tion­al 4-H Coun­cil pres­i­dent Natasha Lee dis­closed the ini­tia­tive to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the first 4-H meet­ing for the new school term at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture’s Demon­stra­tion Sta­tion in Rio Claro on Fri­day.

Lee said the pro­gramme would give stu­dents and teach­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­plore mod­ern agri­cul­tur­al tech­nol­o­gy, par­tic­u­lar­ly at schools where lim­it­ed land is avail­able for tra­di­tion­al crop pro­duc­tion.

“This is be­cause we have lots of schools where chil­dren and teach­ers are in­ter­est­ed in ex­plor­ing tech­no­log­i­cal means of grow­ing pro­duce,” Lee said.

She said the sys­tems would be par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful to schools in ur­ban com­mu­ni­ties, where space for agri­cul­tur­al projects is lim­it­ed.

“We have our schools in ur­ban ar­eas where they don't have land avail­able, and this would be an am­ple op­por­tu­ni­ty for chil­dren to get that priv­i­lege of grow­ing their own crops,” she said.

Lee said 4-H Trinidad and To­ba­go was cur­rent­ly in dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the FAO to fi­nalise the cri­te­ria for se­lect­ing the 45 schools, as well as pro­cure­ment and oth­er as­pects of the project.

The ini­tia­tive is al­so ex­pect­ed to in­clude a com­pe­ti­tion among par­tic­i­pat­ing schools, with stu­dents be­ing en­cour­aged to demon­strate their abil­i­ty to op­er­ate the hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tems and ex­plore their com­mer­cial po­ten­tial.

Lee said sus­tain­abil­i­ty and en­tre­pre­neur­ship were key com­po­nents of 4-H projects.

“A big part of all 4-H projects is to en­sure sus­tain­abil­i­ty and to show that all of these things can be done to earn a rev­enue and en­cour­age the en­tre­pre­neur­ship of the stu­dents,” she said.

The pro­gramme is ex­pect­ed to ex­pose stu­dents to tech­nol­o­gy-based food pro­duc­tion while show­ing how agri­cul­ture can serve as both an ed­u­ca­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ty and a po­ten­tial en­tre­pre­neur­ial op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Fur­ther de­tails on the se­lec­tion of schools and dis­tri­b­u­tion of the hy­dro­pon­ic sys­tems are ex­pect­ed fol­low­ing on­go­ing dis­cus­sions be­tween 4-H Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and the FAO.