Feature: Argentina's school gardens teach kids to care for environment, eat right

Argentinian schoolchildren are learning where the lettuce in their salads comes from, because they helped to plant and pick it.

But that's not all.

By caring for organic gardens set up at their schools and similar projects, kids are also learning about environmental sustainability, proper nutrition and even earth sciences.

The innovative program, called Green Schools, has created nearly 500 organic gardens at schools throughout the capital Buenos Aires.

The program is a departure from the traditional school field trips to farms or greenhouses to teach urban schoolchildren about where foods come from, said education official Damasia Ezcurra.

"Via the Green Schools program, we promote everything having to do with sustainability at the school itself," Ezcurra told Xinhua.

Ezcurra, who heads the Special Projects Unit (UPE) for Sustainable Education at the city's Education Ministry, said the program instills interest in preserving the environment among elementary school students.

To see the program at work, Xinhua reporters visited the Hermanos Latinoamericanos public school No. 19 in the city's southern Villa Lugano district, which established a hydroponic garden in September 2015.

"We maintain about 470 school gardens," said Ezcurra, adding the program provides "guides and training with three levels of complexity."

Children learn everything there is to know about growing your own vegetables, from planting the seeds to caring for the plants, the need to rotate crops and, finally, harvesting.

They also learn about different types of soil, recycling organic waste and composting, and how to naturally protect against pests.

Kids at the school said they additionally learned "to eat different kinds of vegetables."

Once the vegetables, including lettuce and other leafy greens, are ready to consume, "we take them home, prepare them and we know where they came from, because we picked them," the children said.

Rosana Ursino, who heads the school since it was inaugurated in 2011, said the initiative "happily turned out to be important for the kids, the families and the teachers.

"The kids can learn about science" through hydroponics, "where they see the plants grow from a seed," she said.

"The lower grades observe like scientists, they draw and write down the names (of the plants), and the older students take care of maintaining" the garden, said Ursino.

Parents are invited to take part as well.

Some 476 Buenos Aires schools have created similar gardens, and more than 1,670 teachers have received training in setting them up, while as many as 10,000 students take part in their upkeep. Enditem