The Urban Agriculture Academy (UAA) at Richmond High School: A year-long accredited course, serving 30 Richmond youth each year since 2010. The UAA has pioneered an immersive and transformational outdoor classroom experience for the Richmond High School students since 2010.
The UAA is the only accredited course at Richmond High School where students venture to the outdoors on a regular basis to experience the wisdom and teachings of our Earth through the cultivation of organic agriculture. Through the UAA, students learn the value of environmental stewardship, knowledge of place, and the reciprocal cycling of resources and information within our natural world.
Over the course of each school year, the UAA facilitates over 4,500 hours of outdoor engagement with Richmond High School students and local community members. We accomplish this through a combination of daily classes, community volunteer events, and field trips to local farms, as well as the distribution of organically grown produce to families, schools, and businesses within Richmond.

The course uses our onsite garden, farm, orchard, and greenhouse as outdoor classrooms to dive into topics such as soil building, water conservation, healthy food choices, botany, and agro-ecology, agricultural economics and history, urban and watershed ecology, climate change, food, and environmental justice.
Students also complete 1 community engagement project each quarter including hosting pop-up salad bars where they grow and sell salad during lunch to their classmates and learn basic business skills in the process.

Our Mission: Grow Food, Grow Minds

The Site

The Richmond High School Farm and Garden include the 8,000 square foot farm and 14 raised garden beds that the school district has allowed us to build and operate on-site at the school, where we also have a tool-shed and a greenhouse.

Accomplishments