Ag, family sciences unite

STAFF REPORT

After two semesters of practice, the Eastern New Mexico University agriculture and family consumer sciences department is preparing for an even better year of teaching children about eating healthy.

Staff photo: Anna George

Darron Smith, agriculture and family consumer sciences chair at Eastern New Mexico University, checks on the bell peppers and spinach growing Monday in the ENMU greenhouse.

The department received a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture last year for the amount of $250,000 entitled Sustainable Food Production, Preparation and Education for the Prevention of Childhood Obesity and Experiential Learning for Undergraduates.

The department has implemented a plan to achieve these goals, using every program under the agriculture and family consumer sciences department. The programs include the culinary arts, early childhood education, family consumer sciences, agriculture and the employees of the child development center, or CDC.

The agriculture department grows vegetables which the culinary arts students turn into delectable and healthy meals. These meals are then analyzed for health by the family consumer sciences department and presented to the CDC students by an early childhood education student.

“I wrote this grant to unify the whole department,” said agriculture and family consumer sciences department chair Darron Smith.

Smith said he has seen a lot of students at the CDC try and enjoy vegetables they had never seen before.

“Kids are funny in that you show them something and they say ‘I don’t like that’ and I ask ‘well, have you tried it?’ And they say no and give it a try and end up liking it,” he said.

The culinary arts program, which Smith said has been getting very creative, have given children the opportunity to try cauliflower tater tots and spinach meat balls.

“Everything about this grant is about healthy eating and sustainable agriculture,” he said.

He said that five ENMU students, mostly of different majors, are directly employed by this grant and assist with the program.

However, childhood obesity prevention is not the only cause the department is bringing to ENMU. They also have their hands and feet in recycling through the grant.

The grant is also paying for a recycling system using fish waste, or fertilizer, to help grow plants, according to Smith.

The program received the permit Wednesday that allows them to have catfish, which they will hold in a tank. The waste from their tank will then be filtered into another system that will have floating plants. This waste will be used as fertilizer to help them grow.

They also are recycling through the childhood obesity prevention program. After the children at the CDC have been educated and taught about healthy foods, the waste from their meals is then transported back to the agriculture department where they turn it into compost using red wiggler composting worms.

According to Smith, the department composted 500 pounds of waste in just two semesters.

“That’s 500 pounds we would have hauled to the landfill in Clovis that is now being recycled and reused,” said Smith.

He said the grant is a two- to three-year grant, so last year they were just getting started and they are really gearing up for next year.

“We were, and still are, doing a lot of preliminary work, getting things up and running but we have a requirement to do what the grant said we’d do, and we plan on achieving that,” he said.

The agriculture department wants to start implementing “field days” to teach parents of children at the CDC about healthy eating, too, starting in the fall semester.

“We plan to do real community education about healthy eating and have some big pushes in the community,” Smith said.