Urban Agriculture

Sustainability Education Resources

Online Garden Based Learning Lessons (Life Lab)

Topic/Subtopic: Urban Agriculture

Content Type: Curriculum

Topics Covered: This list, maintained by Life Lab, includes hundreds of garden and nutrition-based lesson plans and classroom activities from numerous garden-based education organizations.

Target Audience: Grades K-5, 6-8

School Garden Curriculum! (California School Garden Network)

Topic/Subtopic: Urban Agriculture

Content Type: Curriculum

Topics Covered: The site provides easily accessible, useful classroom activities that relate agriculture, health, and nutrition topics. By integrating farm and food education into daily lesson plans, students learn to make healthy food choices and become stewards of the environment.

Target Audience: Grades K-5, 6-8, 9-12

School Garden Curricula (National Environmental Education Foundation)

Topic/Subtopic: Urban Agriculture

Content Type: Curriculum

Topics Covered: The National Environmental Education Foundation assembled this collection of lesson plans and classroom activities to help teachers engage students in topics related to their school garden.

Target Audience: Grades K-5, 6-8, 9-12

Detroit – Building the Green City (Mark Tokarski)

Topic/Subtopic: Urban Agriculture

Content Type: Video

Topics Covered: Detroit is a city that is shrinking in population. By replacing vacant urban land with organic urban farms, Detroit can become a model of sustainable planning for cities with falling populations.

Target Audience: Grades 6-8, 9-12

e2: Transport Food Miles (PBS)

Topic/Subtopic: Urban Agriculture / Local Food production

Content Type: Video

Topics Covered: On average, food travels more than 1,500 miles before it reaches your plate. Industrial food production requires an enormous amount of fossil fuel for transportation. Local food production lessens our fossil fuel demands and is therefore better for the environment.

Target Audience: Grades 6-8, 9-12

Urban Agriculture Blooms (Discovery Channel)

Topic/Subtopic: Urban Agriculture

Content Type: Video

Topics Covered:The Science Barge is an urban farm that floats on the Hudson River in New York City.  This documentary highlights how the farm produces fish and plants while helping keep the river clean.

Target Audience: Grades 6-8, 9-12

Urban Farming Grows Up (Discovery Channel)

Topic/Subtopic: Urban Agriculture 

Content Type: Video

Topics Covered: Columbia University helped develop the concept of vertical farming, which uses the exterior walls of skyscrapers for urban agriculture. By decreasing the distance between food producers and consumers, vertical farming could help the environment by reducing fossil fuel consumption, air and water pollution, and food costs.

Target Audience: Grades 6-8, 9-12

Urban Food Growing in Havana, Cuba (BBC)

Topic/Subtopic: Urban Agriculture

Content Type: Video

Topics Covered: After the withdrawal of Soviet support in the 1980s, Cuba was left without a reliable source of food. Organic farms developed within the urban fabric of Havana, providing a sustainable food source for the urban population without the use of fertilizers or pesticides.

Target Audience: Grades 6-8, 9-12

We Are All Workers: Urban Farm (Levi’s Ready to Work)

Topic/Subtopic: Urban Agriculture

Content Type:Video

Topics Covered: Braddock, Pennsylvania is an economically depressed steel town that has turned abandoned parcels of land into urban farms. Amidst the closed steel mills and abandoned homes, urban farming creates a stronger, healthier community through productive land use; affordable, organic food production; and the creation of new green jobs.

Target Audience: Grades 6-8, 9-12