Calling all students: take the H2 Grow Challenge this spring

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Feeding America estimates that more than 50 million people (including 17 million children) live in food-insecure households in the United States. Do you want to find ways to maximize the availability and access to food in communities like yours? Join the Purple Plow H2 Grow Challenge this spring.

What is Purple Plow?
Purple Plow is a special project created by the American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture. It’s meant to encourage students to learn more about food production as well as hunger and sustainability by building their own prototypes to solve specific problems.

Who can enter?
All Purple Plow challenges are open to individuals or teams in grades five through 12. Students can participate as part of an in-school or homeschool assignment, or take on the project with an after-school club, Scout troop, or other groups.

What’s the challenge?
The H2 Grow Challenge invites students to design, build and maintain a sustainable food production system that combines raising fish and growing edible plants. Known as aquaponics, this integrated system should use the waste from the aquatic environment to provide the plants with essential nutrients. It should also maximize food production in the allotted space while ensuring healthy environments for plant and aquatic animal life.

How do you win?
In order to successfully complete the challenge, students must:

• Create and maintain environments that are suitable for plant and aquatic animal life
• Harvest a plant-based food source within 90 days or show the progress of plant growth within a specified timeframe
• Produce a presentation about what they learned and post it on social media

Entries must be submitted to the Purple Plow website by 11:59 p.m. EST on July 31, 2021.

A note for educators
You can find detailed instructions for the challenge, including lesson plans, suggested materials and timeline, a rubric and a student guide with reflection questions online at purpleplow.org/challenges/h2grow-challenge.