Leaders with Northern Illinois University and ComEd are celebrating the successes of a program helping students better understand the future of agriculture.

Two years ago, NIU started its Edible Campus program as a way to fight food insecurity and teach students about agriculture. Leaders say a successful part of that program has been its “Hydropod” vertical farming system.

Amanda Estes, 17, harvests green star lettuce on Friday, Oct. 17, 2025, grown at Germantown High School's Flex Farm, an indoor mobile hydroponic farm from Fork Farms in Germantown, Wisconsin. Estes, a vegetarian, said she has learned a lot about plants' life cycles while participating in this class.

"We can feed the entire cafeteria with the lettuce we produce here. I feel like I'm making a difference in our community.

October is National Farm to School Month, a nationwide celebration of how schools, communities, and foodservice leaders are rethinking what “local food” means. It’s about strengthening food systems, empowering students, and creating a healthier, more sustainable future, one seed, one tray, and one lesson at a time.

At Babylon Micro-Farms, we’re proud to help bring this mission to life. Our indoor micro-farms make it possible for schools to grow fresh, nutritious produce on-site, all year long, with no pesticides, no long-distance shipping, and no growing seasons required.

WARSAW —  Jefferson STEM Elementary recently welcomed Steven Koontz, Indiana Master Gardener and owner of Keep It Watered, for a hands-on learning experience with Jefferson’s six aeroponic tower gardens.

The gardens, made possible through generous donations from Da-Lite/Legrand and the K21 Health Foundation, have become an ongoing part of Jefferson’s STEM program thanks to Koontz’s continued support with materials and expertise.

Science students at Germantown High School hosted a harvest event on Friday to showcase fresh greens they grew inside their classroom.

The students used an indoor hydroponic farming system to grow several varieties of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, mini cucumbers, snacking peppers and micro greens that they then served up at school lunch on Friday.

The district's food nutrition director, Jill Seefeld, said they built the lab this summer.

With a $3.5 million renovation and the launch of a hydroponic farming program, Fairview South School is ushering in a new era of hands-on learning for students with special needs.

The Elmbrook School District facility, home to the Waukesha County Special Education Consortium, unveiled its updated interior during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sept. 26, the first major upgrade since becoming a consortium school in 1984.

Students are growing what they eat in San Jose as part of a nutrition program at Evergreen School District where students learn to farm produce, harvest it, and serve it for lunch.

It’s part of a nutrition program called Fork Farms that encourages healthy eating in students and gets them more interested in STEM learning.

Students at Quimby Oak Middle School are benefitting from an extension of that program with a new hydroponic system.

The Haverhill YMCA is hosting a harvest party to celebrate the second anniversary of its Freight Factory hydroponic farm at the city’s Gateway Academy.

The party is Wednesday, Oct. 2, from 4:30-5:30 p.m. at Gateway Academy, 415 Primrose St., Haverhill. Participants are invited to tour the garden and pick their own lettuce.

The indoor container garden is called a “freight farm” because it is set up inside a 40-by-8-foot shipping container painted on the sides in bright colors with the message “The Y Feeds Kids.” As WHAV reported when it opened in October 2023, it was heralded at the first farm of its kind operated by a YMCA in country.

Jort Maarseveen and Tijmen Blok started as two WUR students who believed that everyone should have access to fresh nutritious food anywhere in the world and ended up with Hippotainer.

Hippotainer’s mission is to design and implement smart vertical farms inside shipping containers to enable people anywhere in the world to access fresh vegetables. “We enable food production anywhere on the globe, regardless of the location, whether it's on the North Pole or in the Sahara Desert, we want to be able to make it possible to produce fresh vegetables”

The concept of Hippotainer began while cofounders Jort Maarseveen and Tijmen Blok were doing their Masters at WUR with backgrounds in biology, business, and biosciences.

An old double-decker bus has been converted into a mobile farm to help educate people where their food comes from.

The Pony Farm Bus, a joint project by The Pony restaurant in Chew Magna and food distributor Arthur David, will take the vehicle out to community groups and schools to run workshops on food and cooking.

The vehicle, donated by First Bus, includes a greenhouse, a hydroponics system, kitchen and dining areas and a demonstration space.

Owner of The Pony, Josh Eggleton, said: "We want to create learning opportunities - but the main thing is to incite a sense of fun and purpose."

"We've got loads of schools and grassroots organisations coming here, but it wasn't lost on me that not everybody can get here.

"We wanted to take the growing and cooking on tour into Bristol and Somerset.

A local school celebrated the opening of its on-campus wellness farm with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The Wellness Farm at UMass Chan Medical School was officially unveiled on Friday. It's a 40-foot hydroponic container farm that can produce up to three tons of produce every year.

UMass Chan hopes that the farm will help fight food insecurity in the community. It will provide food for Worcester Public Schools’ North Quadrant schools and the Max Baker Resource Center, a student food pantry located on UMass Chan’s campus, as well as support staff members in need.

FENNIMORE, Wis. (WMTV) - Fennimore High School is one of 22 area schools receiving a hydroponic indoor flex farm, a compact system to grow plants and produce. Southwest Wisconsin Technical College funded the farms to support learning experiences in K-12 schools.

Executive Dean at Southwest Tech, Kim Maier, says the partnership to provide flex farms to school districts supports their goals to support agriculture education.

Fennimore High School is one of 22 area schools receiving a hydroponic indoor flex farm, a compact system to grow plants and produce.

What happens when a Boys & Girls Club starts container farming? In Boston Metro South, two Freight Farms hydroponic container farms are doing far more than just growing food.

They are creating hands-on learning opportunities for kids, engaging community volunteers, attracting major donors, and supporting local nonprofits.

Discover how these farms became teaching tools, hands-on labs for youth programs, and a powerful way to bring the community together.

Makers Row, a food and beverage hub in West Allis, has secured a partnership with a Green Bay-based agriculture technology that will bring one of the largest hydroponic farms to the area.

Fork Farms plans to open a farm within the Makers Row development, at the corner of West National Avenue and 66th Street, Fork Farms said in an Aug. 25 news release. The farm will be able to grow up to 34,000 pounds of fresh produce annually.

This site will also serve as Fork Farms' new Milwaukee-area headquarters and would feature a hydroponic showroom.

The farm will occupy more than 5,000 square feet and will use Fork Farms' vertical growing systems, stacked indoor setups that grow plants with water and nutrients.

Fox Urban Farms, which grew produce at 1001 S. Loudoun St. using a hydroponic system inside two specially accessorized trailers, has closed due to what owners John and Ann Fox say was a disappointing lack of support from local shoppers.

"Last year, we really looked at it and it wasn't making the money it needed to make," John Fox said on Tuesday. "We didn't have the people that we needed to have, and some of that was due to market fit. Winchester is not a big foodie town."

But there is a silver lining. The Foxes sold the two hydroponic trailers — each valued at $150,000 and each capable of growing plants in nutrient-enriched water rather than soil — to Frederick County Public Schools.

Southwest Wisconsin Technical College is launching a new initiative that places hydroponic indoor farms in 22 K–12 school districts across its five-county region. The project officially kicked off during an event Aug. 13 on Southwest Tech’s campus. Each school district will receive a state-of-the-art indoor vertical farming tower from Fork Farms, valued at $5,000.

The farms were funded, in part, with a grant from Cummins. Southwest Tech provided funding for the remaining farms. In addition, Rockwell Automation is supporting the project’s technological and automation components.

At Fork Farms, we believe everyone deserves access to fresh, nutritious food, no matter their zip code. As a planet-and-people-first company, we’re building a future where food is grown locally, sustainably, and equitably. Our hydroponic growing systems – the Flex Farm and Flex Acre – enable schools, hospitals, nonprofits, and businesses to grow food on-site with 98 percent less water and land than traditional farming. They’re compact, efficient, and built for controlled-environment agriculture, making it possible to grow fresh produce year-round, anywhere.

As we grow our company and continue to innovate on our systems and mission, we are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) not as a novelty, but as a critical tool to scale impact, remove barriers, and democratize access to fresh food.

What does it take to make the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S.? Phenomenal growth for one. A laser focus on your value proposition also helps.

Richmond, Va.-based vertical farming company Babylon Micro-Farms was founded in 2017 and has achieved 423% in revenue growth, making the 2025 list at No. 1,009.

Babylon Micro-Farms offers turnkey, on-site hydroponic farms that allow businesses and institutions from restaurants and hospitality to health care and schools — and even cruise ships — the ability to grow flavorful and nutritious greens indoors, year-round.