In rural Saskatchewan, remote Labrador, and a Mi’kmaw community in Nova Scotia, students are proving that fresh food doesn’t have to travel thousands of kilometres (and emit a ton of emissions) to reach a plate.
Food insecurity is not an abstract policy problem for many students across so-called Canada. It is the wilted lettuce that arrived after days of trucking through remote terrain, the 45-minute drive to the nearest grocery store, and the school with no cafeteria, where students are bussed home for lunch because there is nowhere to eat.
For young people living these realities every day, hydroponics, or the practice of growing plants in nutrient-rich water rather than in soil, has emerged as a surprisingly powerful solution. Three schools, supported by N:OW for Net-Zero, are showing what is possible when students take food systems into their own hands.
In the small rural town of Dinsmore, ironically surrounded by farmland but facing fresh produce scarcity, students at Dinsmore Composite School installed six hydroponic tower gardens to supply their school cafeteria directly. Within the first two months, the towers produced 40 heads of lettuce and four large bags of kale, enjoyed by all 82 students through the school’s breakfast club.
Today, the towers are bursting with tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeños, kale, and a full herb garden including basil, oregano, sage, dill, and peppermint, with students in their upper biology and food studies courses putting the harvest to direct use in the classroom.
Students at Dinsmore Composite School welcome Member of Parliament Jeremy Patzer to their school to show him the tremendous work they’re doing to address food insecurity and climate action in the classroom. Photo courtesy of N:OW for Net-Zero.
The project caught the attention of Global News and earned a visit from Member of Parliament Jeremy Patzer in May 2026, a recognition of what student leader Sierra Tully described as a transformative experience: “It was so cool to find another way to garden without soil, and relying solely on water and nutrients. It was so exciting to see the vision for the project we had come to life.”
Principal Dakota de Caux captures the everyday magic simply: “Students often sample the produce when we are working with the tower garden—eating lettuce, kale, or fresh dill right off the tower.”
In the remote coastal community of L’Anse aux Loup, Labrador, fresh produce is both expensive and easily perishable, often not surviving the journey. Lettuce regularly wilts before it reaches store shelves, and prices routinely run double the national average. For students at Labrador Straits Academy, a hydroponic garden was a direct response to a lived reality.
Integrated into the science curriculum, the project reached all 140 students and teachers in the school, with over 300 community members engaged through educational handouts and social media. The project also surfaced a telling lesson about life in remote Canada: it was ultimately cheaper and faster for a community member to drive to a port near Newfoundland to pick up the hydroponics equipment than to have it shipped directly. As teacher-lead Kate Burden put it: “We didn’t anticipate the challenges we would face in getting our hydroponics, but we know that’s a short-term problem for long-term gain.
Through this initiative, we will be able to establish a sustainable, climate-resilient agricultural system that allows us to grow fresh produce within our own school environment.”
At Allison Bernard Memorial High School, located in the Mi’kmaw community of Eskasoni, the nearest grocery store is a 45-minute drive away. The school has no cafeteria while awaiting a new building, and students are regularly bussed home for lunch. Against this backdrop, two hydroponic towers now supply produce for the school’s breakfast and lunch programs, reaching over 264 students and 21 teachers.
With a new hydroponic tower installed, there is so much growing potential on the horizon for these students at Allison Bernard Memorial High School. Photo courtesy of N:OW for Net-Zero.
The project was featured in a PNI Atlantic News article in December 2024, and its ambitions extend beyond the towers themselves. An old greenhouse sits unused on school grounds, and the hope is that as students build confidence and expertise through hydroponics, they will eventually begin transferring seedlings outdoors, expanding the school’s food production even further.
Student lead Aveda articulated what project-based learning means to their generation: “It lets you work on real problems and projects that you find interesting. You get to think critically, work with others, and be creative. It makes learning more fun and helps you use what you learn in real life.”
Across three very different communities, the same truth emerges: when young people are given the tools to grow their own food, they change how their communities think about what’s possible.
