The YES Program’s Agriscience Component Highlights the Intersection of Health and Agriculture

Header image photo credit: Harmony Cooper, YES Teen

It was a sunny Saturday on September 24—perfect weather for a collaborative project and a special moment in the Youth Exploring Science (YES) Program’s Agriscience component. Working together with staff members from Seed St. Louis, the Agriscience teens built four new gardening beds along the side of the Taylor Community Science Resource Center.

The day’s activities involved both demolition and construction, with the YES Teens tearing up the old garden beds with hammers and crowbars, doing cleanup work, and then going hands-on to help assemble the new beds. Each of the teens was able to help, moving wood, lining up corners for the beds, and drilling holes and assembling.

Over the course of a couple hours the YES Teens grabbed shovels and wheelbarrows, moving dirt and filling in the beds so that they were ready for the day’s next activities: planting lettuce, as well as refilling the rain barrels and trimming back the irises.

But the day also marked the return of the Agriscience component—one of seven STEAM-focused components in YES—after two years. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Agriscience was combined with the program’s Entrepreneurship component.

For the YES Teens, the fresh air and the sunshine weren’t just bonuses for the day. In fact, they’re a central part of YES’s Agriscience component, which investigates the intersection of health and agriculture.

In the component, teens explore plants and the outdoors as preventative medicine through activities related to gardening, cooking and nutrition, and access to nature. In addition to learning about careers and technology in agriculture, the teens work with a variety of subject matter experts to complete projects and hone their skills, and through improved nutrition and a connection to the outdoors help spread the word about how plants contribute to our health.

In true YES fashion, the day was a chance for other components in the YES Program to collaborate. Teens from the Media Arts component chipped in to help with breaking down the old beds, shoveling dirt, and building the new garden beds, in addition to capturing photos of the day. (In fact, the photos in this story all come from the YES Teens.) Plus, teens from the Engineering component took turns helping shovel dirt in between driving a go-kart.

In 2023, the Agriscience component isn’t stopping, with plans to collaborate with the Media Arts Teens to create YouTube videos about healthy, simple, and delicious recipes for teens. And in the summertime, the Agriscience YES Teens will take kids and community members from the Science Center’s community partner organizations to outdoor nature centers to experience the healthy effects of being outdoors, including improved sleep, lower blood pressure, help in increasing focus for kids with ADHD, and increased levels of Vitamin D.

As for the garden beds and the day’s plantings, the Agriscience component plans to utilize some of the produce in the upcoming YouTube cooking videos, as well as some healthy, homegrown snacks.

Learn more about the YES Program’s Agriscience component here.

STEAM programming delivered by the YES Teens both at the Science Center and in collaboration with the Science Center’s more than 60+ community partner organizations typically helps connect thousands of St. Louis community members with science and technology education programs each year.

Want to help support the YES Program? Consider making a gift to YES here.