Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys, helped launch Supervalu’s ‘Let’s Grow’ initiative at Scoil Mhuire gan Smál in Inchicore, Co. Dublin today (Wednesday, February 8), and said that it will provide valuable education for children in the areas of “food growing and food literacy”.
The nationwide initiative, which is the collaborative project of Supervalu and Grow It Yourself (GIY), aims to develop food literacy among primary school children.
The three-year partnership between Supervalu and GIY, a non-profit organisation that encourages people to grow food at home, will see homegrown food take centre stage in classrooms across Ireland by giving children the tools and knowledge to grow food themselves.
“This initiative puts growing food firmly back on the table for students, leading to the development of lifelong skills that will support healthier living,” Minister Humphreys said.
“Over 50,000 students across Ireland will have the opportunity to grow their own food, as they will be provided with seeds, compost discs, pots for growing and lesson plans.
“I believe this initiative holds benefits for students far beyond the classroom and look forward to seeing the students’ growing success this year.”
Schools across Ireland can register their classes for the free initiative today. They will receive classroom growing kits.
The growing kits will be delivered to registered classes from early March and will include:
- Five seed varieties (cress, peas, salad leaves, sunflowers and pumpkins);
- 32 compostable pots;
- 32 magic compost discs;
- A resource booklet with growing guides, lessons and activities.
Healthier choices
Founder and chief executive of GIY, Michael Kelly, told Agriland that the initiative would help children make healthier food choices and make them better consumers in the future.
“For a lot of children, I suppose, the only engagement with food they have is eating it,” he said.
“So I think it’s really important for them to try and understand where their food comes from and all the research that we’ve done tells us that getting kids to grow food increases their ‘food empathy’, as we call it.
“They will have a deeper understanding of where their food comes from and they feel more connected to it. They actually tend to make better choices, so they eat more fruit and vegetables once they’ve been involved in growing.”
Supervalu’s managing director, Ian Allen, echoed Kelly’s sentiments and said that “the more involved kids get in food and in producing food and understanding what food is all about, the more likely that they are to make healthier choices when they get older”.
This, he said, is very beneficial for kids but also for the planet, the environment and local communities around the country.
“I think it can only benefit kids to get to understand how food is produced and how it ultimately arrives at their tables,” he added.
“That can only really benefit their own health and wellbeing but also Ireland in totality in terms of what we do – building long term, sustainable and vibrant communities,” he said.