00:00In this age of urban living, frozen foods, rushed parents who have less and less time to cook,
00:06how to get the young in touch with what it takes to get food from the farm to the table.
00:12Well, Henri Landès and the folks at Landestini, a non-profit organization
00:17that works on educating young people about sustainability, joins us now.
00:23You had an idea. Fourth edition of the Vegetable Garden World Cup.
00:29Tell us what that is.
00:30It's an initiative that gets kids, teachers, parents, people of all ages getting their hands dirty,
00:37but in a good way to produce food and to learn about food that is sustainable, that is healthy,
00:43because we all need to reconnect with nature.
00:45We all need to reconnect with our health, eat as many vegetables as we can.
00:50And one of the best ways to do it is to start creating a vegetable garden.
00:54And it's a great way and it's an accessible way to do it.
00:57And that's what we created, a world contest that gets people encouraged
01:01and that helps them technically create a vegetable garden.
01:04Create a vegetable garden, which in an age of short attention spans is something that takes a bit of time.
01:10And yet, France 24's Stella Elsa Garama went out to the eastern suburbs of Paris.
01:19It's a report read by Antonia Kerrigan.
01:21It's planting time at the Victor Solskjaer Middle School in Torsi, 30 kilometres east of Paris.
01:33So now we're going to take off the leaves we put down during the winter to prevent the flowers from catching cold.
01:40At the same time, we're removing the weeds that grew during the winter so that the plants can recover.
01:45We have a lot of students who didn't know where peas or carrots and potatoes came from until they ate them.
01:55And they've discovered how to grow them, pick them and enjoy eating them.
01:59The focus is next June's Gardening Front and World Cup, yet it seems last year's competition still bearing fruits.
02:12The price-giving is end of June, but the pupils start to lay the groundwork long before spring.
02:23The class, with pupils aged 11 to 15, meets every two weeks, even in the dead of winter.
02:31We tested it a little. We'll see how it goes.
02:35It works, yes.
02:36In the garden club, what I like to grow is just about everything.
02:43When we go out into the garden, it's always great to see the plants evolving and all.
02:47When it's raining or cold, we stay indoors and do activities so we don't get bored.
02:53It's the fourth time competing in the Vegetable Garden World Cup for this public school in Disneyland Paris.
03:00In the first edition, we won the jury's choice for a short video that we presented.
03:04This year, they're aiming for first prize, having learned that patience, teamwork and muddy hands make great things grow.
03:14Henri Landès, fourth edition. How has the competition evolved?
03:19And those kids, what are they vying for here? What kind of prize are they looking for in this World Cup?
03:25Well, we have prizes for when there's great biodiversity on the vegetable garden, when there are chicken coops, when there's a great attention to the soil quality, when it's very productive.
03:37But ultimately, everybody wins when they participate.
03:40So we have lots of prizes. We launch little challenges.
03:43We do a lot of moderation of the contest during the school year.
03:47But ultimately, we have kids that, for some, never see nature, that for the first time understand where food comes from and where vegetables and fruits come from.
03:56And that's fundamental because we have a lot in urban cities and big urban areas.
04:01We have a lot of kids that don't know anything about where their food comes from, and that's a crime.
04:05We need to have everybody understand where their food comes from.
04:08Thanks to this initiative of the Landestini Fund, we have an organization where people have fun, are challenged, and meet people around the world with this project of the vegetable garden.
04:20And thanks to our partners, it's free for all schools, and they can just sign up, and they have a great experience.
04:26Some kids that don't do well in the classroom do a great job in the vegetable garden because it's another way to learn.
04:32It's a hands-on and a concrete way to learn, and we think that's very fundamental.
04:35And this challenge when it comes to getting acquainted with the soil, with the earth, with agriculture, is it the same all over, in all the 25 countries?
04:44So, as you mentioned, we have different climates, we have different access to water, we have different infrastructures.
04:51And so what happens? We look at, evaluate, and try to help each school as individually as possible, and we don't compare them to the others because every single situation is different.
05:01And what's great is that they're learning about, indirectly, what goes on culturally, food-wise, in other countries.
05:08And so they discover, and we discover, vegetables that were cultivated decades, centuries ago because they're very local and we've forgotten about them.
05:17We discover that we have the same vegetables in different areas, but they grow at different times.
05:21It's a fantastic thing to reconnect with our food in a hands-on and fun project such as the vegetable garden.
05:28And very briefly, is this something that should be mandatory in school curriculums?
05:32Our vision is that it is just as fundamental to know where your food comes from and to even know how to produce food as it is to read, write, and count.
05:41That is our vision, and that schools tomorrow will treat the vegetable garden like a classroom that we have in all schools, and that the Ministry of Education in all countries do the same.
05:52Henri Landès, many thanks.
05:55Henri Landès, who will be joining us in the France 24 debate, we're going to be looking at our relationship to water, bottled water, after the scandal that's engulfed the French government,
06:05over its close relationship with Perrier's parent company, Nestle.
