Building a sustainable campus food system

Committed to bringing fresh, locally grown food to campus, the FoodU program at Auburn University is an interdisciplinary effort between the College of Agriculture, College of Human Sciences and Campus Dining. Horticulture students work with the most advanced growing methods and technology to produce food for high-end customers — whether it's campus eateries or the university's luxury hotel or fine-dining restaurant. Through FoodU, students begin their careers prepared to efficiently and sustainably feed the world's growing population.

Inside of vertical propagation unit on the Auburn campus

Our focus areas


A Living Laboratory

FoodU transforms Auburn's food infrastructure into a learning opportunity. Students are immersed in high-impact educational experiences, including growing food in campus facilities, exploring local sourcing in dining services, conducting food waste audits and participating in sustainability projects. These experiences prepare students to lead in agriculture, food policy, environmental science and more.

Interdisciplinary Research in Action

Faculty and students in the College of Agriculture work alongside partners in dining, hospitality and community development to solve real-world food system challenges. FoodU supports applied research on topics like supply chain transparency, food literacy, waste reduction and land use. These efforts aim to improve both campus operations and global food systems thinking.

Student Leadership and Engagement

FoodU empowers students to take active roles in shaping Auburn's food landscape. From internships and service-learning to applied research and peer outreach, students gain leadership experience while driving change in sustainability, equity and food access on campus and beyond.

Our facilities

Before the campus-grown and -raised food makes it onto dinner plates, it begins in a network of cutting-edge facilities that bring treaching, research and real-world application together. A few of these resources housed within the College of Agriculture are described below.

This 16-acre garden includes six vertical farms — shipping containers outfitted as hydroponic farms — that provide fresh produce to Campus Dining. Once complete, the Transformation Garden will also include a children's garden, a shaded classroom, a greenhouse and aquaponic project, a teaching orchard, a landscape construction work yard, agronomic field crops, a shade garden, a vegetable teaching garden, a pollinator garden, a medicinal garden, an invasive plants garden, rain garden and more.

Transformation Garden Home

A key contributor to Auburn's sustainable food system, the E.W. Shell Fisheries Center — part of the College of Agriculture's School of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences — provides fresh, locally raised fish to campus dining, as well as vegetables grown in the greenhouse as part of the Auburn Aquaponics Project. Through this partnership, students gain firsthand experience in aquaculture production while helping supply healthy, responsibly sourced protein and vegetables for university meals.

E.W. Shell Home

The Lambert-Powell Meats Lab is a state-of-the-art teaching, research and extension facility supporting a variety of activities in the Department of Animal Sciences. It is a full meat-processing facility inspected by the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries Meat Inspection Office as well as the Alabama Department of Public Health. Products produced under inspection are available to the general public in Lambert-Powell Meats Lab retail sales room.

Meats Lab Home

Atop the Tony and Libba Rane Culinary Science Center on the Auburn campus is an edible rooftop garden operated by the Department of Horticulture faculty, staff and students. The garden provides unparalleled, transformational student experiences in urban horticulture and design.
Rooftop Garden Home
Our Impact
At the heart of FoodU is a vision: to make Auburn University a national model for a smart, student-centered, agriculturally grounded campus food system. Fueled by partnerships across disciplines — including the College of Agriculture, College of Human Sciences and Campus Dining — FoodU prepares the next generation to lead food systems that are resilient, inclusive and informed by science.
Contact
Joshua Woods
Director of Communications and Marketing
(334) 740-4187