Edible School Gardens

Leonie Shanahan has been waging a campaign urging schools on Queensland's Sunshine Coast to dig up part of the school oval and start growing their own fruit and vegetables for the kids to eat.

She feels that children are suffering from a lack of eating healthy fresh food and need to learn about growing their own food.

Leonie has managed to get her "Edible School Gardens" program into seven schools so far but it's an uphill battle to get her program more widely accepted.

Leonnie believes educating our young children to grow their own food is the key to a healthy future.

"We ingest approx 4.5 litres of pesticides & herbicides a year, 2 kgs of addictives ¦ 66 kgs of sugar. Infertility is 1 in 6 couples -if kids live long enough to produce grandchildren for us! And of course there is the much talked about obesity, mental illness, immune deficiency, heart disease, diabetes how many more diseases do our children need to have before people take action?" said Leonnie.

"Kids are eating food not even made from nature it's made in laboratories, stored in jars, plastic and cardboard and has a very long shelf life that is not living food. Food comes to us from all over the world; grapes from USA, carrots from Belguim, green beans from China. Is this what we call fresh food? Why aren't we growing our own food?"

Leonie decided to tear up her suburban green lawn and lead the way in her community by growing all her own fruit and vegetables in her back yard. Her garden has no won all sorts of state and community awards. Leonie is now teaching kids at school to build their own school gardens and eat freshly picked fruit and vegetables. She's also lobbying local politicians to legislate for healthy food practices throughout Queensland. She says if Jamie Oliver can do it in England , maybe she can do it for Queensland.

Article from: "ABC Bush Telegraph"