A Sydney-based non-for-profit specialising in rolling out greenhouse technology in Australian schools has launched a new partnership with IBM to integrate AI into its educational programs, ensuring more student-centred learning and time-saving planning for teachers.
Food Ladder, an organisation tackling food insecurity by providing schools with climate-controlled, hydroponic greenhouses to grow fresh food, currently has more than 40 greenhouses operating in schools across the nation. It now plans to expand to more than 1,000 schools by 2030, engaging more than a million students and supplementing 25 million meals for young Australians annually to contribute to a more sustainable, self-sufficient global food system.
Kelly McJannett, CEO and co-founder of Food Ladder, said that despite food security being an existential threat, we have the tools available to solve it.
“With the right partnerships, like the one we’ve formed with IBM, we can create a future where no child goes hungry, and no ecosystem is destroyed for food production,” she said. “This is just the beginning.”
“The partnership with IBM complements Food Ladder’s broader mission – our goal is to build a world where every child has access to nutritious food and communities are empowered to grow their own fresh produce, regardless of geographic or environmental challenges,” she continued.
“We’re already doing this through our innovative greenhouse system in schools, and with IBM’s AI, we can take that impact even further, faster.”
IBM’s AI-powered solution will streamline the task of lesson plan design as part of Food Ladder’s program, creating custom content that matches local curriculum requirements while tailoring lessons for students with disabilities or learning and support needs.
With the use of IBM’s watsonx.ai – an enterprise-grade AI studio created to help develop AI solutions, teachers can benefit from time-saving automation, enabling them to focus on providing individualised support for students.
“The technology is completely intuitive, so there’s really no training required,” McJannett explained to Women’s Agenda. “Any teacher at any school in Australia can now access this technology. It’s literally just a matter of selecting the year you teach, the subject area and the AI will automatically tell you what the course codes are for that particular subject and the learning strands.”
“From there, it will suggest learning intentions which you can edit as a teacher and then produce a completely nuanced lesson plan to be delivered in the greenhouse. Teachers can edit it if they want, but they have in seconds a process that would normally hours. And of course, it’s not just lessons —whole units of learning can be created in seconds.”
“Teachers have said that it’s like having a best friend in a computer and it completely transforms their practice, taking out the time consuming work and allowing them the time back to spend more time doing what they love, which is teaching kids.”
“By integrating IBM’s AI technology, we’re significantly enhancing the effectiveness of our program while ensuring it’s scalable initially through regional and rural Australia, with the scope to expand worldwide,” McJannett continued. “This represents a major leap forward in our ability to support educators, reduce teacher workload, and create lasting educational and health outcomes for all types of students.”
Globally, food insecurity remains one of the biggest challenges, with 733 million people facing hunger and half of all child deaths related to hunger.
In Australia, 94 per cent of children are not meeting the daily requirements of fresh food and vegetables, while half of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households in remote regions are not getting enough healthy food.
McJannett hopes that her organisation is transforming the way communities can access healthy food and teaching the next generation of leaders about the importance of sustainability and self-sufficiency.
“Food security is an existential threat, but we have the tools to solve it,” she said. “With the right partnerships, like the one we’ve formed with IBM, we can create a future where no child goes hungry by bringing sustainable, nutritious food production into schools and the broader community.”
The organisation has been overwhelmed by demand—over 400 schools have been calling on Food Ladder to participate in the program. McJannett said it was for this reason that she made the decision to lean into tech and AI.
“I could see that if we were going to scale to meet the huge demand we were going to have to actually automate everything that we do at Food Ladder,” she said.
Existing Food Ladder programs have already proven vastly effective in improving student attendance, engagement, standardised learning outcomes, and community engagement.
Tanya Thompson, Deputy Principal at Radiant Life College in Queensland, which has a 100 per cent Indigenous student base, called the new collaboration with IBM “a game-changer for teachers and their programming.”
“One challenge for us is our remoteness,” she said. “Using a tool like the Food Ladder AI allow us to create individualised plans that support those students. Previously we spent hours of our own time and our release time developing lesson plans.”
“This will help not just our school but schools everywhere. It can be rolled out to not just science and maths but all curriculum areas. Creating engaging lessons that haven’t taken hours and hours to create. It’s like having a best-friend in the computer that is going to be a great help to all teachers in Australia.”
In Western NSW, the principal of Wellington Public School said that no program since Food Ladder has made as big an impact on his school.
“To put it simply, you can’t teach hungry, disengaged kids, and we were witnessing that in real time,” said Darryl Thompson. “Participation in the program has seen students lift their attendance rate from 30 per cent to above 90 per cent and we’ve also seen significant growth in literacy and numeracy skills due to improved attendance and class focus – with all students identifying Food Ladder is the main reason they come to school every day.”
“Having automated and bespoke lesson plans for any subject, any year, and all types of students means our educators will have more time to connect with our kids and steward them on their learning journeys – we couldn’t be more excited for the impact this will have on schools all around the country.”
Jonathan H. Adashek, IBM Senior Vice President Marketing and Communications said the company’s work with Food Ladder is a perfect example of how AI can drive social good.
“By combining cutting-edge technology with hands-on agricultural education, we’re not just addressing food insecurity – we’re also creating a sustainable and scalable solution that can be implemented in schools around the globe,” he said.
“IBM looks forward to working with Food Ladder to scale this innovative education program across Australia from 40 schools to 1,000. Our watsonx AI technology will reduce the administrative burden on teachers and allow more programs to be effectively deployed across the nation.”
Participating schools join a membership program at Food Ladder, paying an annual membership to have access to all AI and professional development and training. Some schools have even been paying the membership fee for other under resourced schools — “because they see so much value in it,” McJannett said.
Reflecting on the legacy her organisation has achieved since its launch over a decade ago, McJannett said that initially, the most challenging aspect of launching was identifying where they were going to have the greatest impact.
The organisation started with commercial scale projects, testing the model at scale in India before bringing it back to Australia.
“Ultimately we found that the most effective way to scale Food Ladder was to work in partnership with schools,” she said. “ — to install the greenhouses into schools where they could be maintained and be integrated fully into the education system. That’s what led us to develop our education platform, which was the precursor to what we launched this week with IBM.”
Last year, Food Ladder won the Australian Financial Review’s BOSS 2024 Most Innovative Companies Award. Today, it is looking to engage corporations and businesses to get involved and support the work, as it endeavours to launch the program globally.
“As we expand into other geographical regions, we can adapt the AI to suit different curriculums, in different countries and different languages,” McJannett said. “[We want to] tackle not only food security here in Australia, but ready ourselves to tackle food security on a global level.”
Image credit: Food Ladder Instagram @foodladder