Luodong Vocational High School Promotes Food and Agriculture Education to Cultivate a New Generation of "Food Gods" Students Passionate About Food

A commercial vocational school promoting food and agriculture education? That's right! The food and agriculture education project quietly carried out by Luodong Vocational High School in Yilan County has now been running for 5 years. I only learned about it in 2014 when I was invited to Luodong Commercial to share the Homemakers United Foundation's green food education philosophy and the results of the experimental program at Taichung Liming Elementary School. At that talk, not only the workshop teachers but even the principal listened from beginning to end. Full of curiosity, I wondered why they had sought me out to speak to the teachers. The driving force behind it all, Director Jian Yingxin, told me with eyes shining that they had already established a "Agronomy Workshop" teacher community spanning food and beverage, history, geography, Chinese language….. and continuously inviting teachers from various subjects, conducted in the format of a reading group (the book they were reading together at the time was Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma").

Teachers in the food and beverage department took students to find local ingredients in Yilan to use as culinary elements, history teachers took students to conduct local agricultural surveys, and Chinese language teachers took students to interview and report on agriculture and agricultural specialty products….. Later, feeling a strong need for further study on these issues, they searched online for the promoters of food and agriculture education and related social enterprises in Taiwan at the time to come and speak. Only then did I realize how extraordinary the Director Jian before my eyes was as a champion of food and agriculture education! How forward-looking a vocational school Luodong Commercial is!