Q&A: Food U at Auburn University
March 26, 2025 Committed to bringing fresh, locally grown food to students on campus, the Food U program at Auburn University has academia and the hospitality industry working in tandem. Desmond (Des) Layne, Ph.D., head of the Department of Horticulture at Auburn, spoke with CEAg World about his involvement with the program and how it benefits the local community while preparing students to enter the workforce.
CEAg World: Can you tell our readers more about what Food U is and how it works?
Dr. Layne: Back in 2015, the director of campus dining and concessions at Auburn, Glenn Loughridge, reached out to the Department of Horticulture about sourcing locally produced fruits, vegetables, and other products for campus dining.
He met with one of my faculty members, Daniel Wells, Ph.D., and they started an aquaponics program. They were raising tilapia fish in the greenhouse and used the nutrient-rich water to feed plants growing in the greenhouse.
After that, we got funding for a greenhouse expansion. I came on board in 2018, we got a federal appropriation to do research, and it’s all grown from there. But our campus dining partner was the impetus that got things going, and he had some really innovative ideas. I’ve never seen anything like this where different departments on campus work together to create something for the student body.
Universities, like a lot of places, have different departments that do their own thing, but they don’t necessarily work together. Food U tries to break down those silos and bring all the appropriate people together.
Aquaponics facility at Auburn University. | Photo: Dr. Desmond Layne
Since you’ve been at Auburn, how have you seen Food U impact students on campus?
The first and most important impact I’ve seen is providing fresh produce to one of the largest cafeterias on campus. “The Edge” on main campus is our central dining facility, and we provide leafy greens for its salad bar on a daily basis. We grow these greens in our vertical farms, and our students are the growers.
They learn all kinds of skills because growing things in a vertical farm is a little bit different from a greenhouse, which is a little bit different from growing in raised beds outside or on the rooftop of a building. They might be growing the same species of plants in each place, but the growing conditions are totally different.
Are there other ways the program will prepare students to enter the workforce?
Because our students are working with high-end customers, whether it’s campus dining, a luxury hotel, or a high-quality restaurant, the produce and flowers have to be good quality. The students also have to work with other students who are majoring in different subjects.
Maybe it’s an engineering student working with a student from math, or a student studying English working with a student in horticulture. They each bring different skill sets to work on problem solving. That’s part of the beauty of it, because that’s what real life is like.
Think about a greenhouse, how many people work there, and how many different skill sets there are. You might have an electrician, you may have a guy that focuses on irrigation, a pest management person, and you have the horticulturist dealing with growing media, fertilization, lighting, and those kinds of things. But you need those different skills to solve problems and be successful.
Auburn University students harvesting produce on the rooftop garden. | Photo: Dr. Desmond Layne
What do you have planned for Food U moving forward?
The rooftop garden is a new element of the program that we started in August 2022. This project came about because the College of Human Sciences constructed a new building on campus. It’s both an academic and a commercial building.
There are teaching classrooms, kitchens, and all the things you need to teach students how to become chefs or other professionals in hospitality management. And then there’s a high-end restaurant called 1856, a luxury boutique hotel called the Laurel Hotel, and a brewery.
In partnership with the hotel and the restaurant, we came up with a plan on how we can grow things [on the rooftop] that would be used in restaurants and the culinary sciences program. It’s such a visible spot, too, so it’s like putting horticulture on display.
To get the full interview with Dr. Layne, watch our CEAg Talks episode.
Editor’s note: This Q&A, drawn from a longer interview, has been edited for length and clarity.