Shawano FFA growing its own food

SHAWANO — High school agriculture programs focus on the importance of and how to produce food.

At Shawano Community High School, students are also producing food to help feed fellow students and community businesses by raising fish like perch and vegetables like lettuce and tomatoes.

In one of the rooms in the school’s agriculture wing, several tanks hold more than 200 perch, a type of fish that is popular at area fish fries but is also very pricy, according to Steve Stomberg, a longtime ag teacher at SCHS and one of the advisers for the Shawano FFA.

“That’s kind of the industry right now. If you want to go out for a fish fry on Friday night, one of the main fish items is perch, but perch is so expensive because getting them out of the lakes is very hard because their population is going down,” Stomberg said. “They’re very hard to find.”

The fish program started when Shawano helped an FFA chapter in Black Creek with a study, according to Stomberg. Fish were brought to Shawano along with adequate amounts of feed, and students had to track their growth. The fish were then harvested and taken to a restaurant in Oshkosh.

Stomberg hopes to do something similar with local restaurants and supper clubs once the perch mature. One of the tanks has year-old perch that are almost fully grown.

Raising the fish through aquaculture is economical, according to Stomberg, and having them in a controlled environment means lower risk to the fish because there are no predators that could eat them.

The water to raise the fish is recycled to use on the ag program’s vertical growing system. There, students are growing lettuce in tubes at an incredible rate and providing the harvested crops at least once a month to the Shawano School District’s food service program, Taher, where it can be used as something that can go on top of burgers and a necessity for most salads.

“Taher, they purchased this system for us to grow this lettuce,” Stomberg said. “This lettuce was started Oct. 30, and this will be our second harvest.”

Because the vegetables are being grown in a soil-free environment, students have to do more than water them. Stomberg said students monitor the crops and add nutrients that are commonly taken in through dirt to keep the lettuce growing apace. It takes about 21 days to grow a mature crop of lettuce, and it lasts the schools about a week, he said.

“The kids are always looking at pH,” Stomberg said. “Lettuce needs a lower pH, and the water coming out of (the tanks) is at a pH of seven or higher, so they take pH samples.”

This type of work helps to incorporate more mathematics and science into the program, Stomberg said.

Also growing in the building are tomatoes. Sprouts appeared on the plants just last week, Stomberg said, and they will be added to a vertical growing system in the school’s original greenhouse.

“If we get an abundance, we can donate to nearby food pantries,” Stomberg said. “That’s our ultimate goal — we’re going to take what we’re learning here, take it to our food service and also give back to the community.”

Stomberg is hoping that the efforts to raise fish and vegetables will help make the FFA program more self-sustaining in the future. If there is enough success in selling the perch, Stomberg might try to purchase larger tanks to raise even more and make it easier for local restaurants to get their hands on the fish.

The lettuce appears to be a hit with students. Stomberg said he was in the commons during lunch period one day and noticed a girl was fiddling with the lettuce on her meal.

“I asked her, ‘What are you doing?’” Stomberg said. “She said, ‘I’m picking out your lettuce here.’ I asked her why, and she said, ‘This lettuce tastes better than this other stuff that they mix with it.’ She didn’t realize that the lettuce was grown in the ag department.”

lpulaski@newmedia.com