Learning how our food is produced helps connect us to the Earth

As time passed, we etched and moulded the Earth to fit our needs. Inventions such as fertiliser enabled our population to swell to 8bn over a very short period of time.

The production of our food continues to shape the land in ever-increasing and, at times, alarming ways. 

As our population and our hunger grew, so too did the damage. The need to mitigate this damage has been dawning for the last few decades because the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss are becoming more prevalent, and more difficult to ignore.

One way to help the next generation to undo some of the things that have been done is through education. Food education is seen as key by many, but what exactly does food education mean?

If we teach a child to cook but do not have a conversation about where the ingredients for the recipe came from we are missing a vital point. 

Children knowing how their food is grown or produced is as important as knowing the skills to prepare it for themselves.

Food education is a great way to teach children that there are tangible things that they can do in regard to biodiversity loss, that actions matter and that they can take positive steps and help find solutions.

There are some vibrant educational initiatives that are supporting schools to teach about the environment and the role food plays within it.

Green Schools is Ireland’s, and Europe’s, leading environmental educator. It provides education within 94% of schools, primary and secondary. Its flags can be seen fluttering outside schools up and down the country.

Those flags are not easy for a school to obtain, the students have to complete a number of steps and make changes within their school over two years to earn the flag. The students focus on topics such as recycling, water, and more recently food.

I worked alongside Green Schools staff to create a pilot programme in eight schools to build a new theme which educates about food and biodiversity.

There was such positive feedback and tangible results that the programme is now being rolled out nationwide. The feedback from teachers and children has been very encouraging. After completing the programme, one teacher said that “the children are now able to bring their knowledge of food, food waste, and global issues into the wider world to be shared”.

Another teacher in Co Louth said the opportunity to eat what the children had sown had a positive effect on all of their pupils. She described the children sampling radishes and varieties of lettuce, experimenting with recipes for potatoes and beetroot, and shelling their own peas.

It is lovely to read that “the children loved getting involved with all the hands-on aspects such as planting, growing, weeding, harvesting, and cooking.

“Children were excited to try the crops that they had grown and were eager to look after the crops that they grew”.

One school said that growing and nurturing food in the garden also encouraged some of their picky eaters to try new fruit and vegetables.

GIY, which is based in Galway, also works with schools around fruit and vegetable growing and help teachers to create an edible garden. A project called Biodiversity in Schools, which is based in Co Longford, helps to support schools that want to create a food garden or an outdoor classroom on their grounds.

Fostering an interest in food and nature at a young age has been proven to enhance relationships with food as children get older.

There is another aspect of food education that is also important and cannot be overlooked. Every child is exposed to food advertising on a daily basis, and much of that is cleverly focused on getting their attention.

This advertising does not generally focus on selling a sprig of broccoli or an onion, it is mainly focused on selling ultra-processed foods which yield high profits and tend not to be sourced from nature.

Companies spend millions on advertising, with budgets that far overshadow Government spending on health messages. The companies would not invest in this way if their tactics did not work. We can help children to navigate this complicated world through education looking at how companies use marketing to entice us all.

Food education has a lot to give, as well as learning about marketing, air miles and how to reduce packaging, children can learn the importance of food traditions to people from different parts of the world. This can engender empathy and create connections across cultures.

Even if children do not share the same language, they can learn together and see that people from different countries host similar meals on celebrated days, use the same ingredients in their cooking, or enjoy sharing sweet treats for a family birthday.

While at home, families may not be able to grow all the food they need to feed themselves. Having a few edible plants in pots on a windowsill shows children that growing food takes time and care and putting your hands in the soil is proven to lift our mood.

Schools are not the only places where we can teach children about where food comes from, there is an ever-growing movement of community gardens and these provide places where families can come together to gain knowledge and enjoy the neighbourly aspect of a shared food-growing space.

A new project funded by the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications called Our Shared Plate recognises the power of connection over food. It is working with communities in the Midlands to increase food security and climate resilience by developing educational workshops and creating shared growing and eating spaces.

It is a hopeful time, young people are very engaged in the debate about biodiversity and caring for the ecosystem in a way they were not when I was younger.

There is a lot of momentum coming from the European Union on local food. This can be harnessed to support more vegetable and fruit growing and to help create a more embedded approach to food education in schools, an education that takes in all of the aspects that this rich and vital subject has to teach us.