This inspirational video highlights young adults implementing restorative agriculture techniques on a farm in the Midwest to help fight climate change.
The video describes an innovative approach to carbon capture in which farmers apply mining waste products as fertilizer to help their crops and trees grow.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This video acknowledges the grief young adults feel related to climate change, while highlighting ways some youth are taking action.
The video is short but describes farming techniques that are sustainable and innovative.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be familiar with basic farming operations such as planting, tilling, and fertilizing crops.
Differentiation
Consider having students research a variety of sustainable farming techniques and report on their pros and cons.
Social studies classes may consider using this video to discuss the topic of resilience in relation to food production and human resilience in the face of challenges.
Chemistry and biology students could watch this video after learning about nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon. Have students research the mining material that the video mentions to see what elements may be present and how they help plants grow.
This video gives an overview of Zumwalt Acres, a sustainable farm in Illinois and gives an overview of how they are farming differently to create a more climate resilient farm. Two sisters talked about why they wanted to do this work, climate grief, and general feelings young people have about climate change. They do instill messages of hope and encouragement. Links in the description have all been vetted. The link to the farming site includes more information on their involvement with research with Yale University, links to relevant research papers, and resources and information on how their farming intersects with Judaism have been reviewed. The resource does briefly mention carbon capturing and is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS2: Earth's Systems
HS-ESS2-2 Analyze geoscience data to make the claim that one change to Earth’s surface can create feedbacks that cause changes to other Earth systems.
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-4 Evaluate or refine a technological solution that reduces impacts of human activities on natural systems.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.9-12 Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Speaking & Listening (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.11-12.3 Evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used.
