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.
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
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.
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.
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.
