The Hudson’s Bay High School Future Farmers of America chapter has been awarded a $2,000 grant from the National FFA’s Living to Serve: Environmental Grant program. The chapter has developed a yearlong service-learning project to meet a local environmental need.
Under the direction of teacher Steve Lorenz, Hudson’s Bay students will demonstrate and model how school wastepaper can be mycoremediated using mushroom mycelia. FFA members will grow Pleurotus ostreatus mushroom mycelia in their mycology lab, inoculate the wastepaper produced by their school and eventually harvest gourmet pearl oyster mushrooms. The processed paper waste also will be used to form a mushroom compost that will create revenue from both the mushroom bodies and end substrate. The grant money will be applied to the purchase of Vernier Labquest II modules and sensors for student data collection.
The National FFA Organization provides leadership, personal growth and career success training through agricultural education to 579,678 student members in grades seven through 12 who belong to one of 7,570 local FFA chapters throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.