High tech agriculture container unveiled at Madison Southern

Mar. 11—BEREA — AppHarvest, Inc. introduced final week the growth of its AgTech Education Program with the set up of a high-tech classroom farm at Madison Southern High School.

The Madison Southern container farm was funded by main monetary companies agency Cowen, Inc., in collaboration with the AppHarvest Foundation, which goals to offer direct aid to the Appalachian communities by which AppHarvest operates.

“Cowen embraces the sort of innovation that adjustments how issues get accomplished,” Cowen Chair and CEO Jeffrey Solomon stated. “That’s why we’re proud to companion with AppHarvest within the growth of its neighborhood initiative to offer AgTech education schemes for highschool college students in Eastern Kentucky. This is the center and soul of sustainable job creation and workforce growth and is grassroots collaboration at its greatest.”

The Madison Southern container farm is about fifteen minutes away from AppHarvest’s 15-acre salad greens facility in Berea. Construction on the Berea facility is about 80% full and the farm is anticipated operational by the tip of 2022.

“We anticipate to start out delivery truckloads of recent salad greens from our Berea farm to prime nationwide grocery retailer and restaurant chains by the tip of this 12 months,” Jonathan Webb, AppHarvest founder and CEO, stated. “With this high-tech rising classroom, college students at Madison Southern High School will discover ways to develop way more meals with far fewer sources—a problem all of us should decide to with a rising world inhabitants. We anticipate college students graduating from this program will be a part of us with revolutionary concepts about how we proceed to enhance agriculture.”

Cowen Chair and CEO Jeffrey Solomon, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Senior Adviser to the Governor Rocky Adkins, AppHarvest founder and CEO Jonathan Webb and Berea Mayor Bruce Fraley attended the occasion to have fun set up of the hands-on classroom and to eat some recent salad already grown by the scholars.

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Launched in 2018, the AppHarvest AgTech Education Program supplies Appalachian colleges with delivery containers retrofitted with high-tech gear to function hands-on agricultural school rooms, the place college students develop recent salad greens to distribute to their classmates and people in want of their communities.

AppHarvest has opened AgTech school rooms in Central Kentucky at Carter G. Woodson Academy in Lexington and in Eastern Kentucky at Madison Central High School in Richmond; Breathitt High School in Jackson; Shelby Valley High School in Pikeville; Elliott County High School in Sandy Hook; and Rowan County Senior High School in Morehead, the location of AppHarvest’s flagship farm.

The Madison Southern AgTech classroom is this system’s eighth academic container farm thus far and the primary container farm offered by means of help from the AppHarvest Foundation.

The Madison Southern High School classroom can develop as much as 2,760 seedlings and a pair of,960 mature crops at a time by means of a nutrient movie approach (NFT) system, equal to yields of about three-to-five acres of open-field agriculture. The NFT saves water as plant roots are repeatedly fed all crucial water and vitamins in a shallow stream (or “movie”), and the system recirculates any extra water.

“AppHarvest is a useful member of Team Kentucky as a result of we share so lots of our values: placing training first by investing in our college students’ potential, constructing a greater Kentucky for all of our households with modern, new jobs and expertise, and making certain our state stays an agricultural chief by means of the subsequent era of farming, and the subsequent,” Gov. Andy Beshear stated. “Now, with Cowen’s help, the scholars at Madison Southern can even profit from AppHarvest’s dedication to our state.”

Agriculture trainer Janna Clark will lead Madison Southern High School’s AgTech Education Program. Curriculum will embody matters reminiscent of high-tech hydroponic rising, provide chain and meals manufacturing evaluation and an introduction to native meals programs.

“Madison Southern High School is dedicated to supporting college students exploring faculty and profession alternatives. The donation of this container farm will assist these college students engaged in our AgTech pathway higher perceive the present applied sciences and course of the sphere,” Madison Southern High School Principal James Ray stated.