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Northeast High School plans to grow and sell food in a brand new greenhouse for agriculture program
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BATON ROUGE — There's a new greenhouse at Northeast High School for its agriculture program.
"When I found out that we were getting a new greenhouse. I said that's one of the best things that could've happened here at Northeast," senior Tahj Turner said.
Turner said he enrolled in the class during his junior year.
"I realized during my 11th grade year that I'm going to further this education and go into the veterinarian field. And when I met Miss Terrell, she said this would be the place for me, and ever since then, I've been with Miss Terrell and the Ag," Turner said.
The old greenhouse was not equipped to handle a large growing scale. It did not have running water or climate control.
"The greenhouse we had last year it was basically a storage. It was full of bugs, lumber, old tables, wood, pipes, it was mildew, it was just a storage a complete mess," Turner said.
The circumstances made it difficult for the students to use it. That's why the agriculture teacher, Sharon Terrell, applied for a grant to pay for the new greenhouse.
"We were very limited with what we could grow. Now we can grow anything that we want, and they understand the importance of it," Terrell said.
Now, with the new greenhouse, she can grow her lesson plans the students can grow a wide range of plants and food year-round.
"They want to know how watermelons grow, they want to know how the strawberries grow. They want to know how this happens, they want to know the physiology of plants," Terrell said.
Now they have the chance to learn all of those things. Plus, they have a plan to generate revenue for the program.
"We're going to start a school enterprise where we can actually sell our products to earn money to help with the FFA travel expenses," Terrell said.
This will help the students, especially ones like Turner, who plan to make a career out of this in the future.
"After high school, I am going to enroll in Southern University and major in animal science, pre-vet," he said.
Turner says he is still deciding on where he will attend veterinary school; it's either going to be at LSU or Tuskegee University, which is the only HBCU professional vet program in the country.
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