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Waitrose has delivered growing kits to 14 primary schools across Jersey to promote healthy eating among children and help them understand where their food comes from.
The kits contain equipment for growing a vegetable patch as well as step-by-step growing instructions provided by the retailer.
Waitrose relaunched the ‘Grow and Sell’ scheme in 2016 to celebrate its fifth anniversary in Jersey. The initiative, aimed at seven to 11 year olds, encourages local schools to develop their own vegetable patches and grow their own produce; this can include mange tout, beetroot and basil. The packs also contain badges for the children to assign themselves roles for each food growing and selling activity to ensure everyone in the class gets to experience ‘growing’ and ‘selling’.
The produce grown by each school will be judged by a Partner (as Waitrose employees are known) from each branch in later this month, and the three winning schools will be chosen to visit Woodside Farm in July. Woodside farm, based in Trinity is the main local produce supplier to the Waitrose branches across the Channel Islands, with four smaller producers feeding into the Farm; they supply over 125 lines to the supermarket throughout the seasons. During the visit the school children will get to experience and understand the journey their food takes to get from the plant to their plates.
Darren Le Quelenec, department manager retail support Waitrose St Saviour, said: “
This scheme is important as it’s educating the next generation about the food they eat and where it comes from. The number of schools involved in this scheme has grown from nine to fourteen, we hope to continue to ‘grow and sell’ the scheme to even more primary schools next year!”
The retailer will once again be partnering up with Caring Cooks of Jersey, a charity that supports families to ensure that nutritious and tasty food is a part of a child’s daily life, so that the winning schoolchildren can all have a healthy lunch when they visit the farm.
To accompany the kits a specially designed ‘Grow and Sell’ app is available to advise teachers, parents and children about when to plant their crops and how to care for them. The app also provides information about where food comes from, how it’s produced and environmental issues such as the importance of seasonality and sustainability.
