The FoodU Program at Auburn University

Desmond Layne, Head and Professor, Auburn University - Department of Horticulture Author

01/05/2025 Added

1 Plays

Description

FoodU provides Auburn students with transformational food system learning experiences as they grow hyperlocal fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers to support consumption and utilization in Campus Dining, the Culinary Sciences program and in two on-campus restaurants. Produce is grown outdoors in raised beds, in greenhouses, vertical farms and on a rooftop. Program highlights, best practices and challenges will be discussed.

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[00:00:00.120]The following presentation is part of the Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Series at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
[00:00:07.740]Good morning and welcome to our Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Series.
[00:00:13.080]It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Desmond Layne.
[00:00:16.900]Dr. Lane is Professor and Head of the Department of Horticulture at Auburn University since 2018.
[00:00:23.480]He has more than 30 years of experience in horticulture-applied research, industry extension,
[00:00:29.280]outreach, undergraduate teaching, and both academic program administration and assessment.
[00:00:34.580]He is a pomologist, a fruit scientist with expertise in peach, apple, cherry, strawberry,
[00:00:40.900]and the Native American pawpaw.
[00:00:42.940]He has received numerous national professional awards and been a leader in two national scientific societies.
[00:00:49.060]He is a Fellow of the American Society for Horticultural Science, ASA,
[00:00:53.060]ASHS, and the Food Systems Leadership Institute.
[00:00:56.880]Throughout his career, he has been interviewed by the New York Times, NPR's All Things Considered twice,
[00:01:03.780]CBS Early Show, and ABC's World News Tonight.
[00:01:07.840]He has been an invited speaker, consultant, and trainer in countries including the Republic of Georgia,
[00:01:13.140]Canada, China, Italy, Australia, the Czech Republic, and Brazil.
[00:01:17.780]He is originally from a small rural agricultural community,
[00:01:22.220]especially fruit industry.
[00:01:22.980]He holds a bachelor's of science from Ontario Agricultural College,
[00:01:30.360]master's of science and Ph.D. in horticulture from Michigan State University.
[00:01:34.360]Dr. Lang.
[00:01:35.400]Thank you.
[00:01:36.320]Well, thank you everybody for coming out.
[00:01:42.900]I'm grateful for the invitation, Martha.
[00:01:44.580]Thank you.
[00:01:45.260]Christian, thank you for your hospitality.
[00:01:47.660]It's a short stay.
[00:01:50.360]It came in last night, and I'm heading back.
[00:01:52.800]We're at about 3 o'clock, so I'm grateful to be invited to share about what's going
[00:01:57.340]on at Auburn.
[00:01:58.080]And the things that I'm going to talk about today, I never really dreamed that we would
[00:02:05.200]necessarily be doing a lot of these things.
[00:02:07.200]So these are things that have evolved over time.
[00:02:09.740]They're pretty exciting.
[00:02:11.220]And so hopefully by the end, you'll be encouraged just to see some examples of how students
[00:02:17.640]are having what we call transformational experiences.
[00:02:20.280]So I'm going to give a little background on the department.
[00:02:22.780]To get started, so you'll get to know what Auburn Horticulture is about.
[00:02:26.460]And then I'll sort of move into the Food U part after that.
[00:02:29.160]So for those of you who haven't been to Alabama, we're about 1,000 miles from here, southeast.
[00:02:35.360]And if you look at the map on the right where the AU is, that's where the Auburn University
[00:02:40.520]campus is.
[00:02:41.340]We're just southwest of Atlanta, about an hour and a half drive.
[00:02:46.380]So you literally get on the interstate and you go straight pretty much to Auburn.
[00:02:50.920]So it's very convenient for flying.
[00:02:53.080]And obviously, I'm not from Alabama, so I'm from Canada.
[00:02:57.260]But I've adjusted very well to Alabama, and I'm very happy to be working there.
[00:03:02.620]Maybe you've heard of some of these people.
[00:03:05.300]Charles Barkley, Tim Cook, Bo Jackson.
[00:03:08.460]You probably haven't heard of Jimmy Rain.
[00:03:10.300]Lionel Ritchie, Tommy Tuberville.
[00:03:13.900]They're all some of our famous people.
[00:03:15.440]And later in the presentation, I'm going to show you a picture of a rooftop garden at
[00:03:20.420]our Culinary Sciences Center.
[00:03:22.740]All of these people have been there.
[00:03:23.920]So it's a very special place.
[00:03:26.620]So our university was established in 1856.
[00:03:30.480]In 1886, there was a joint Department of Biology and Horticulture.
[00:03:35.160]And then Horticulture became its own department in 1903, so 121 years ago.
[00:03:41.560]We have 70 people in our department, so we are not a combined department like y'all are
[00:03:46.540]here.
[00:03:46.800]And we have seven countries represented in our faculty, five postdocs, five
[00:03:52.720]postdocs now, we've got 14 support staff, 34 graduate students from nine countries,
[00:03:58.560]and we just started offering an online master's option for working professionals that is a
[00:04:04.940]non-thesis master's.
[00:04:06.040]And one of the things that I was charged with coming on board was that we really needed
[00:04:12.420]to increase our competitive grantsmanship and our peer-reviewed scholarship, and over
[00:04:17.100]the last six years that's been on a steady increase, and last year was a record for the
[00:04:22.700]faculty, especially the people that we've hired in the last few years.
[00:04:25.920]We've hired some positions that were not traditional for our department.
[00:04:32.360]So we have a fresh produce food safety specialist who has statewide responsibilities for food
[00:04:38.720]safety.
[00:04:39.120]We hired a small food breeder, which is a brand new position.
[00:04:42.940]We have somebody that's joint with Biosystems Engineering that's doing what we call smart
[00:04:47.580]systems for horticultural crops.
[00:04:50.620]We have three endowed.
[00:04:52.680]We've had several folks that have won national awards even recently, and some nice awards
[00:04:58.820]for regional with Southern Region ASHS, some state awards, and a bunch of student awards.
[00:05:05.240]So we have some really talented faculty, and I'm sure you all do here as well, but this
[00:05:10.460]is my chance to brag about my people, and I'm very proud of them, and it's a delight
[00:05:15.240]to lead them.
[00:05:15.820]We have 162 students in our program in the horticulture side.
[00:05:21.960]That's 92.
[00:05:22.660]And we have a horticulture major with four different sub-disciplines, as you can see
[00:05:27.620]on the slide.
[00:05:28.140]And then we also have an agricultural sciences degree, which is a separate degree.
[00:05:32.740]It has horticulture courses, but it also has courses in fisheries and poultry science and
[00:05:38.080]other things that our hort students wouldn't normally take.
[00:05:40.980]In the last couple of years, we created a minor, and we have 35 students in the minor.
[00:05:47.140]And as a new administrator coming in from out of state, and Mark
[00:05:52.640]well, she was here, but when you become an administrator, there are things that are
[00:05:56.680]historic about a department that maybe you don't necessarily fully understand why things
[00:06:00.700]are a certain way. And we did not have a minor.
[00:06:03.780]And when I came on board, I'm like, why don't we have a minor? Well, there
[00:06:08.680]was a tradition that if somebody was going to leave Auburn University with horticulture,
[00:06:12.820]it had to be with a bachelor's degree in horticulture. It couldn't be less.
[00:06:16.260]A minor would be considered a diluted horticulture degree
[00:06:20.740]from the faculty that were there.
[00:06:22.620]I decided to put that on the back burner because our senior faculty were very much opposed to offering a minor.
[00:06:28.780]When they retired, I brought it back to the faculty.
[00:06:31.080]We had unanimous support of offering a minor.
[00:06:33.560]Now we've got 35 students in the minor.
[00:06:36.860]Sometimes you just have to be patient and wait until you have a change in the guard, so to speak.
[00:06:42.360]It's been very good for us.
[00:06:44.040]It's improved enrollment in some of our courses and I think broadened the base of people that know about horticulture.
[00:06:49.620]We have three clubs.
[00:06:52.600]Students are actively involved in competitions.
[00:06:54.360]We have a study abroad in England and we also have an endowment funded study tour.
[00:07:02.780]So the students apply.
[00:07:05.380]If they get a scholarship to go on this study tour, all they have to pay is $500 and then they can go for two weeks on one of these organized tours in different parts of the world.
[00:07:16.280]And this year we're going to Ireland.
[00:07:18.640]Last year they went to Brazil and it's a very nice program.
[00:07:22.580]A philanthropic gift was given many years ago to make it possible.
[00:07:27.060]And it's really a very enriching experience for our students.
[00:07:30.940]So our department homepage, if you're interested to learn more, we have some nice videos there and information about our department.
[00:07:37.740]In terms of the emphasis areas, in terms of our research, our extension outreach, we have fruits, vegetables, and nut crops.
[00:07:46.380]And we have breeding, cultural and pest management, pre- and post-harvest physiology.
[00:07:52.560]Controlled environment, food safety, smart engineering I spoke about.
[00:07:56.300]And we have faculty that are both working in conventional and in organic systems.
[00:08:00.500]And then on the ornamental side, we're also working in physiology, cultural management, pest and weed management, smart engineering again.
[00:08:07.860]We have a public horticulture master's degree program, landscape environmental stewardship.
[00:08:13.420]And one of our faculty is actually getting into the area of autonomous equipment for landscape management and also battery-powered equipment.
[00:08:22.540]And he's doing research comparing those with a colleague in engineering.
[00:08:31.280]Our students are having great opportunities to get internships with companies, with extension.
[00:08:38.220]We have a very nice alumni mentoring program.
[00:08:41.780]This is at the college level.
[00:08:43.760]And so alumni volunteer.
[00:08:45.540]They participate for a year.
[00:08:47.240]They work with a particular student one-on-one.
[00:08:49.900]And it's really a very successful program.
[00:08:52.520]We have over 90 mentors and student pairs.
[00:08:56.020]And it really helps the students to get connected with somebody
[00:08:59.820]who's not necessarily a faculty member but maybe an alum,
[00:09:02.360]well, is an alum, and can open up doors for them.
[00:09:05.480]Our department offers about $100,000 a year in scholarships.
[00:09:10.060]And our students are getting jobs, pretty decent jobs,
[00:09:15.060]with a $50,000 to $60,000 start with a bachelor's.
[00:09:18.800]So we have more demand for students,
[00:09:22.500]to graduate than we have students to graduate.
[00:09:25.220]That's probably similar here.
[00:09:27.540]So I'm going to spend a lot of the balance
[00:09:30.980]of the talk talking about Food U.
[00:09:32.620]And really, this is, hopefully you'll see by the end,
[00:09:37.100]it's an inspiring and successful multidisciplinary,
[00:09:41.260]what we call a grassroots collaboration
[00:09:43.660]that links our historic land grant mission
[00:09:46.220]to the campus food system.
[00:09:47.540]And it is a successful story, because the people
[00:09:52.480]that are involved, we share a common mission and a vision
[00:09:57.200]and passion, and we are actually friends, and that's vital.
[00:10:00.820]We have no silos.
[00:10:03.660]We work across different parts of the university.
[00:10:06.120]We communicate regularly.
[00:10:07.920]We celebrate together, and everybody benefits.
[00:10:10.980]It doesn't mean to say it's 100% perfect
[00:10:13.700]and that we have all the collaboration exactly the way we
[00:10:16.600]would like it, but it's working very well.
[00:10:19.460]So we have three primary goals.
[00:10:22.460]One is to create these experiences that
[00:10:24.300]will connect a student in such a way that they're like, wow,
[00:10:30.500]this is what I want to do.
[00:10:33.440]Perhaps all of you, there was a point in your career
[00:10:35.600]where you're like, this is what I want to do.
[00:10:38.640]And the haze of all these courses,
[00:10:40.720]and you're trying to figure out what really interests you,
[00:10:43.400]until you get your hands on something
[00:10:45.600]and solve problems in a real world setting,
[00:10:48.120]it may be difficult to make that decision.
[00:10:50.920]We also are a source of hyper-low
[00:10:52.440]local food for campus users.
[00:10:54.880]So we grow the food.
[00:10:56.140]It goes to the campus.
[00:10:57.320]It's consumed on campus by people.
[00:11:01.220]And we grow everything from fruits to vegetables
[00:11:03.420]to herbs, microgreens, edible flowers, and hops.
[00:11:08.000]And we are also trying to foster the development of more
[00:11:10.820]controlled environment agriculture
[00:11:12.260]in the state of Alabama.
[00:11:13.600]And that's an intentional thing that I'll
[00:11:15.260]talk about more as we get deeper into the presentation.
[00:11:20.540]And part of the reason that it's successful
[00:11:22.420]is we are intentional to align with those things that
[00:11:26.660]have been historically really important at the university.
[00:11:29.340]Of course, we have a land grant mission.
[00:11:31.680]There's something called the Auburn Creed.
[00:11:33.560]I'll talk about that in a moment.
[00:11:35.600]And we have a new university tenure strategic plan
[00:11:38.140]that was just launched this fall.
[00:11:40.160]And it's interesting that the first thing
[00:11:41.940]of the strategic plan is what we're
[00:11:44.340]doing in our program already.
[00:11:47.220]So we're very much aligned with those things.
[00:11:49.900]And when you're trying to negotiate with higher level
[00:11:52.400]administration for resources to do things beyond what you
[00:11:55.480]currently have, if you align with all the things
[00:11:58.160]that they care about, the probability
[00:12:00.280]is higher that you're going to get some way of assistance.
[00:12:04.460]So our university mission, we're dedicated
[00:12:07.820]to the citizens of Alabama, of course, and ultimately
[00:12:12.400]to provide forward thinking education, life
[00:12:14.800]enhancing research, scholarship, and selfless service.
[00:12:19.980]And we have something that was created
[00:12:22.380]or written by a gentleman named George Petrie called
[00:12:25.560]the Auburn Creed.
[00:12:27.660]He was a historian, a college professor.
[00:12:30.320]He was the coach of Auburn's first football team.
[00:12:33.140]He wrote this document, and the university
[00:12:35.160]adopted this document.
[00:12:36.720]And if you're an Auburn student, you learn it.
[00:12:39.840]And it's a creed, and it's I believe in,
[00:12:43.020]like you might have in a Catholic church
[00:12:46.020]or a Protestant church or something like that.
[00:12:48.860]But some of these statements that are in there are really
[00:12:52.360]important for young people.
[00:12:54.240]Work, learning how to work hard.
[00:12:57.460]Students need to learn that.
[00:12:59.300]Their whole life will be dependent on their ability
[00:13:01.300]to work.
[00:13:02.380]I believe in education, which gives me the knowledge
[00:13:04.600]to work wisely, and it trains my mind and my hands
[00:13:07.620]to work skillfully.
[00:13:09.160]I believe in a sound mind, sound body, and a spirit that
[00:13:11.760]is not afraid.
[00:13:13.540]These are really great statements.
[00:13:15.860]And our students learn them as part
[00:13:17.500]of their undergraduate experience.
[00:13:19.220]And these are things that we embody in what we're
[00:13:21.260]doing in the Food U program.
[00:13:22.340]And then this is our new strategic plan.
[00:13:26.520]As I said, goal number one, exceptional student experience.
[00:13:29.300]We really are trying to create that environment
[00:13:32.140]for our students where it goes beyond what
[00:13:36.000]they get in the classroom or the laboratory, where
[00:13:39.580]it touches their heart.
[00:13:40.580]Where it's like something like, wow, this is so great.
[00:13:42.800]I'm so excited.
[00:13:43.640]I want to do this.
[00:13:45.580]And then distinctively Auburn at the bottom here,
[00:13:47.500]that's another one that aligns very closely
[00:13:49.240]with what we're doing.
[00:13:50.280]But it also addresses these other goals as well.
[00:13:52.320]In the Princeton review, the 2025 rankings,
[00:13:57.780]they acknowledge that Auburn students were the happiest
[00:14:00.300]in the United States.
[00:14:01.200]It's like, I don't know how they do these rankings
[00:14:04.460]and who they survey, but it's an official ranking.
[00:14:08.000]And I would say that the students that are participating
[00:14:11.100]with us in our program are -- they are very happy.
[00:14:14.120]They're quite joyful, actually.
[00:14:16.760]So I want to give you a little history of FUJU
[00:14:19.520]because it started before I came to Auburn.
[00:14:21.520]So I came in 2008.
[00:14:22.300]This already had a start.
[00:14:24.400]It wasn't called FUJU back then.
[00:14:26.620]But on the top left there, we've got Glenn Lothridge
[00:14:29.900]and Daniel Wells.
[00:14:30.960]They're two of our key pioneers in FUJU.
[00:14:34.900]And in 2015 -- so Glenn is the director
[00:14:38.240]of Auburn's campus dining and concessions.
[00:14:41.140]He's in charge of all of campus dining for the whole university.
[00:14:44.920]And Dr. Wells is a horticulturist.
[00:14:46.720]He mostly works in controlled environment ag.
[00:14:49.100]And they met, became friends, and Glenn said, "Look,
[00:14:52.280]I want to get at least 20% of what we bring into campus
[00:14:56.280]dining from local sources, and I want you to grow for me.
[00:15:00.560]Can you?"
[00:15:02.280]That's how it all got started.
[00:15:04.520]And so they formed a partnership.
[00:15:08.200]There was a grant that was funded in 2016.
[00:15:11.400]In 2017, they were able to expand some greenhouses
[00:15:14.360]at a facility where they were doing aquaponics research.
[00:15:18.400]I came on board in 2018.
[00:15:20.860]In 2019, I started
[00:15:22.260]the Food Systems Leadership Institute,
[00:15:24.020]and part of this was my project for my leadership program.
[00:15:28.040]In '21, the Board of Trustees funded us
[00:15:31.520]to create this transformation garden property
[00:15:34.540]that I'm going to talk about.
[00:15:36.560]Then we got a $10 million appropriation
[00:15:40.820]from the federal government to continue this kind of work.
[00:15:43.640]Our campus partner bought a couple of
[00:15:45.640]vertical farms for us that I'll show you.
[00:15:48.500]Then we started a partnership with
[00:15:50.640]the College of Human Sciences and this
[00:15:52.240]rooftop garden that I'll show you in a little bit.
[00:15:55.420]Then we completed an infrastructure project
[00:15:58.380]for the building of the garden.
[00:16:00.660]Hopefully in December, but maybe in January,
[00:16:03.720]we're going to expand our vertical farm footprint.
[00:16:07.160]We created a station where we grow microgreens.
[00:16:10.560]In the early or sometime in 2025,
[00:16:14.120]we're going to build a children's garden at our property.
[00:16:17.140]These are some of the key benchmark things that
[00:16:20.140]happened over time in this whole
[00:16:22.220]program.
[00:16:30.680]So I don't expect you to read all this,
[00:16:32.920]but all these grants wouldn't have
[00:16:35.220]happened if we didn't have this Food U partnership
[00:16:37.300]amongst these different people.
[00:16:39.520]And 23 million in grants and contracts
[00:16:42.040]have come in because of the partnerships that we have,
[00:16:45.060]which is pretty exciting.
[00:16:47.980]So just to give you an idea of who these partners are,
[00:16:50.340]so we have, obviously, Glenn Lothridge
[00:16:52.200]is the gentleman who was on that previous slide.
[00:16:54.900]He's in charge of all campus dining.
[00:16:59.440]We have what we call commercial partners.
[00:17:02.820]So where we have our Auburn University Hotel,
[00:17:05.080]where we have our Culinary Sciences Center,
[00:17:08.100]those buildings have commercial spaces that are managed
[00:17:10.500]by a commercial company.
[00:17:12.480]And the gentleman who's in charge of that company
[00:17:15.280]is a very close partner for us because he pays for stuff.
[00:17:18.560]And I'll explain that a little bit further.
[00:17:20.400]We work closely with the College of Human
[00:17:22.180]Sciences, the Horst Schulze School of Hospitality
[00:17:25.400]Management.
[00:17:25.900]They're the academic side of the Culinary Sciences program.
[00:17:29.200]And then on the horticulture side there,
[00:17:30.860]I've got several people.
[00:17:32.620]The three or four up at the top right,
[00:17:35.360]they are faculty and staff.
[00:17:37.680]And then all those in blue are current students.
[00:17:41.080]And we cycle students through there on an annual basis.
[00:17:44.920]And those are some of our rock stars right now.
[00:17:49.240]Dr. Camila Rodriguez, she's our fresh produce food safety
[00:17:52.160]specialist.
[00:17:55.060]And she works with these different student teams
[00:17:57.280]and with the faculty that supervise them
[00:17:58.980]to make sure that all the different systems where
[00:18:01.560]we are growing food meets good agricultural practices
[00:18:05.540]and would be acceptable to go into the campus food
[00:18:07.660]system or the restaurant.
[00:18:11.020]This is Dr. Daniel Wells, one of our students, Avery.
[00:18:13.940]This is on the rooftop garden.
[00:18:15.880]And this was on Auburn's home page follow up a year ago.
[00:18:22.140]Glenn-- Glenn is an amazing guy.
[00:18:24.200]He's become a very dear friend of mine.
[00:18:26.280]He is a visionary.
[00:18:28.580]He just installed a robot in one of the cafeterias
[00:18:32.620]to make french fries.
[00:18:34.400]And it's working.
[00:18:36.580]He's just next level thinking as far as campus dining.
[00:18:39.900]But he wrote the Aramark contract.
[00:18:42.240]And the contract stipulates that 20%
[00:18:44.660]of the food that comes into the campus system has to be local.
[00:18:48.820]And then they have to buy 100% of what we grow.
[00:18:52.120]Because of that's what's-- he wrote that into the language.
[00:18:54.780]So that's the kind of vision that he has.
[00:18:59.540]Other campuses I know are not doing it.
[00:19:01.400]And part of the reason is because they
[00:19:02.540]don't have a connection with their campus dining
[00:19:04.540]or with Aramark.
[00:19:06.520]So this is Hans.
[00:19:07.300]He's the CEO of the hospitality company.
[00:19:11.780]And he covers the costs of all of our student wages,
[00:19:15.040]all of our plant material, any equipment we need to buy,
[00:19:18.940]any supplies.
[00:19:20.560]And I submit an invoice to him.
[00:19:22.100]Every month of five as much as $8,000 to $10,000.
[00:19:26.480]And he's very, very happy to write the check
[00:19:29.640]because of all the benefit that comes to their business
[00:19:32.060]because of what we're doing.
[00:19:35.080]Here's some of our students.
[00:19:36.240]This is fall a year ago up on the rooftop.
[00:19:38.640]You can see we got corn, and we've
[00:19:40.120]got zucchini, and all kinds of stuff.
[00:19:41.840]I'll show you some more pictures of that in a minute.
[00:19:44.260]That's the iconic Sanford Hall behind us.
[00:19:47.220]That's across the street.
[00:19:48.900]That's the signature administrative building.
[00:19:52.080]And so, who grows the plants?
[00:19:55.320]Well, our students and our faculty and staff all grow, and the student workers are all
[00:20:01.340]paid.
[00:20:02.340]So, they all have part-time paid positions, representing 14 different majors across the
[00:20:08.040]campus.
[00:20:09.040]So, they are not just horticulture.
[00:20:10.320]They're not just College of Ag.
[00:20:12.500]And we're growing food in seven different places.
[00:20:15.360]So, we have aquaponics greenhouses.
[00:20:18.240]I'll show you these in a minute.
[00:20:19.880]We have another place called the Patterson Greenhouse Complex.
[00:20:22.060]Which would be like what you guys have here for your students.
[00:20:25.920]We have vertical farms that are at our transformation garden property.
[00:20:29.360]We have raised bed gardens that are outside.
[00:20:32.060]We have a microgreen station that we just built, and our students built, and it's in
[00:20:35.480]our 1961 building.
[00:20:40.060]And then we have the rooftop garden, and we also have one of our research centers, which
[00:20:43.580]is down in Mobile where we're growing the hops.
[00:20:47.880]So if you're at our main campus down there in the big circle, you go north just a few
[00:20:52.040]miles, we have a fisheries center.
[00:20:54.620]It's dedicated for fisheries research.
[00:20:57.380]And where that yellow arrow is there is where we have a couple of greenhouses.
[00:21:01.400]This picture is actually a little bit old, so there's more greenhouses there in real
[00:21:05.760]life than there are in that picture.
[00:21:08.340]And I tried to get this picture updated this week from our campus photography people, but
[00:21:13.160]they didn't have an updated picture, so I was like, "We need another one."
[00:21:17.660]But we're raising tilapia because it's a good fish to grow in Alabama.
[00:21:22.020]Warm water, fresh water fish, and it's not the greatest eating fish or the highest value
[00:21:26.840]fish.
[00:21:27.840]We hope to go to a brackish water species in the future, like barramundi, but that involves
[00:21:32.960]research because if you're using effluent from a brackish water species and you're trying
[00:21:37.720]to grow plants, that can be a bit of a challenge because of the salt.
[00:21:42.340]So we have a student working on that in a research project.
[00:21:45.960]These are some of our rudimentary greenhouses that we have at that facility, but we can
[00:21:50.420]grow great crops of tomatoes and cucumbers.
[00:21:52.000]We have cucumbers and peppers in there.
[00:21:54.280]And we use the fish effluent, which includes the waste from their body that's a fertilizer
[00:21:58.060]nutrient for our tomatoes.
[00:22:00.240]And they do very well in there.
[00:22:02.620]This is some of our students at harvest time.
[00:22:06.140]And then we do the deep water culture for romaine lettuce.
[00:22:11.520]In this system, we're not using the aquaponics water.
[00:22:13.760]We're just using water with fertilizer.
[00:22:17.820]But we work with our chefs.
[00:22:20.280]We take them to show them where we are.
[00:22:21.980]We're growing things so they see what we're growing,
[00:22:24.600]how we're growing.
[00:22:25.680]And then they've got all these questions.
[00:22:27.440]You can imagine.
[00:22:28.820]Can you grow this?
[00:22:30.420]Can I have this next week?
[00:22:33.480]So we go back and forth.
[00:22:35.240]And we understand more about hospitality
[00:22:38.000]now than we ever did.
[00:22:39.200]They understand more about horticulture
[00:22:40.820]now than they ever did.
[00:22:42.140]And we've actually become friends.
[00:22:43.860]And it's fun.
[00:22:45.060]And we deliver stuff to them.
[00:22:46.360]And they're like, oh, this is the best.
[00:22:47.980]We can't get that stuff.
[00:22:49.400]It's like we take it to them.
[00:22:51.140]It's the same day.
[00:22:51.960]It's harvested.
[00:22:52.920]It's like a treasure for them.
[00:22:56.140]We're also growing strawberries.
[00:22:57.380]And this is another greenhouse.
[00:23:00.100]This is our building, 1961.
[00:23:01.900]Yours is 1970-something, I heard.
[00:23:04.080]Is that right?
[00:23:05.140]Yeah, so we're older.
[00:23:07.280]We are excited that we have a new building under construction.
[00:23:11.780]And the students built this.
[00:23:13.160]They're doing microgreens in here right now.
[00:23:15.060]They built this in August.
[00:23:16.680]And we're delivering microgreens to our different restaurants
[00:23:19.580]on campus, and they are no longer
[00:23:21.940]buying their microgreens from Cisco.
[00:23:23.560]And the student there, the gentleman with the beard,
[00:23:29.260]long hair, Owen Yoder, he helped build it.
[00:23:33.580]And if you go to our gourmet restaurant on campus right now
[00:23:35.920]and you see microgreens on there,
[00:23:37.300]our students produce those.
[00:23:38.920]So that's pretty exciting.
[00:23:42.100]So this is just a map of our campus.
[00:23:43.900]And I just want to sort of show you proximity
[00:23:46.000]from where our current building is down to the site where we're
[00:23:50.280]building out our transformation garden
[00:23:51.920]it's about a 10 minute walk.
[00:23:54.940]You have to go through the arboretum to get there.
[00:23:58.840]And this central piece, so right here,
[00:24:01.940]this is our transformation garden property.
[00:24:05.020]And it links to other green spaces that are on the campus.
[00:24:08.260]And this whole area, the board of trustees
[00:24:10.080]is designated as a green corridor.
[00:24:13.480]And so you can basically walk through all
[00:24:15.280]those different spaces and be exposed to either native plants
[00:24:19.080]or cultivated plants and various gardens
[00:24:21.900]that are on the campus.
[00:24:24.400]And so the photograph on the left
[00:24:26.820]is the site plan for the transformation garden.
[00:24:31.020]It is a project that is ongoing that we're fundraising for.
[00:24:34.320]It's not completely built out yet.
[00:24:37.020]But the picture on the right is actually
[00:24:39.780]a drone shot of the property about a year ago.
[00:24:42.680]And where those two yellow arrows are,
[00:24:44.300]those are where we're growing food right now
[00:24:46.340]for the campus partnership.
[00:24:49.160]This is the area on the bottom left
[00:24:50.620]here where we have the raised beds.
[00:24:51.880]And we do multiple crops there throughout the year.
[00:24:54.320]Our students do all the growing.
[00:24:59.180]And this is what it looked like about a year ago.
[00:25:02.760]There's, I think, 40 different beds there.
[00:25:05.960]And we grow flowers, because we do cut flowers for the hotel.
[00:25:10.480]All different kinds of fruits and vegetables.
[00:25:14.240]And on the same property, so up on the northern part there,
[00:25:18.620]we have two of these vertical farms
[00:25:20.380]that were purchased by our campus
[00:25:21.860]dining partner.
[00:25:23.960]And part of the reason we bought these
[00:25:25.680]was that it was going to cost us too much and take too long
[00:25:28.780]to build a greenhouse there.
[00:25:31.040]And he really wanted something quickly that he
[00:25:33.000]could get into the salad bar.
[00:25:34.240]And so we did our investigations.
[00:25:36.380]These are freight farms.
[00:25:38.820]And we've been using them for over three years now.
[00:25:43.660]And this is on the inside.
[00:25:44.820]This is when the lights are on.
[00:25:46.480]They've got these vertical walls where you grow your leafy
[00:25:49.300]greens or other crops.
[00:25:51.840]Here's one of our students out there.
[00:25:53.640]And for the most part, they do great.
[00:25:55.560]It's completely environmentally controlled,
[00:25:57.940]everything from temperature to humidity to CO2 to lights
[00:26:01.620]to fertilization.
[00:26:04.280]We can also grow beautiful flowers in there.
[00:26:06.540]And these are used for various purposes
[00:26:09.360]with the culinary team.
[00:26:10.440]Sometimes things happen.
[00:26:14.600]And I say this with different audiences,
[00:26:16.940]but it's like this opportunity just sort of dropped out
[00:26:19.280]of the sky.
[00:26:20.800]I got a call.
[00:26:21.820]My dean, the dean of the College of Human Sciences,
[00:26:25.300]Hans, the gentleman who manages the commercial property,
[00:26:28.780]they wanted me to come over.
[00:26:31.100]I knew this building was being built on campus.
[00:26:34.260]You couldn't miss it.
[00:26:35.780]But I didn't know that it was designed
[00:26:38.440]to have a garden on the rooftop.
[00:26:40.520]And the College of Human Sciences
[00:26:43.280]really didn't have a plan.
[00:26:44.500]And they wanted to bring in horticulture
[00:26:46.940]and see if somehow maybe we might be willing
[00:26:48.660]to work with them.
[00:26:49.600]And it was a construction site.
[00:26:51.800]It was a construction site when I first saw it.
[00:26:52.880]And we went up there with our hard hats
[00:26:55.960]and our vests and walked around.
[00:26:57.180]And that's the view from the rooftop.
[00:26:59.860]So you can see the Sanford Hall there.
[00:27:02.320]And that's with a beautiful sunset.
[00:27:03.820]And I'm like, this is amazing.
[00:27:07.780]We will figure it out.
[00:27:10.200]Yes, we are in.
[00:27:11.220]So 4,400 square feet of a blank canvas
[00:27:17.420]to basically give to a horticulturist team
[00:27:20.000]to figure out how to make
[00:27:21.780]that amazing.
[00:27:22.400]And it was kind of a daunting task at first
[00:27:25.300]because none of us had really had much experience
[00:27:27.180]working on a rooftop.
[00:27:28.000]And although it was designed
[00:27:30.900]to support plant growth up there
[00:27:33.500]and these different areas,
[00:27:35.320]you know, it's three feet deep
[00:27:37.420]of rooftop substrate
[00:27:38.800]with drainage built in.
[00:27:40.540]There was really no irrigation installed.
[00:27:43.940]We had to figure out all of that.
[00:27:45.280]We had to decide, you know,
[00:27:46.640]what we were going to grow.
[00:27:48.120]We came up with some plans.
[00:27:51.760]We talked about how we would lay it out.
[00:27:53.080]And it's not like that right now.
[00:27:55.060]Each year it kind of evolves
[00:27:56.240]and we change it by season.
[00:27:58.160]But we had to figure it out
[00:28:00.400]and come back with a proposal.
[00:28:01.520]And this is what it looked like
[00:28:04.420]about a year ago
[00:28:05.200]when we were shooting a video.
[00:28:07.020]And it's an amazing space.
[00:28:09.360]And this is a teaching hotel
[00:28:11.920]culinary sciences building.
[00:28:13.460]So it has classrooms.
[00:28:14.360]It has commercial type kitchens.
[00:28:16.980]It has a boutique hotel.
[00:28:19.540]It has a gourmet restaurant.
[00:28:21.740]There's a coffee roastery.
[00:28:23.920]There's an attached brewery.
[00:28:25.860]It's an unbelievable place.
[00:28:27.900]And to be able to be in charge
[00:28:32.720]of sort of the signature space
[00:28:34.660]in that building
[00:28:35.440]that is utilized by the restaurant,
[00:28:38.000]by the culinary program,
[00:28:39.520]it's a real honor.
[00:28:41.160]And it's been a great challenge for us
[00:28:43.640]and very fun.
[00:28:44.380]These are our students up on the rooftop.
[00:28:47.660]You know, the first year we were there,
[00:28:49.280]we got there in May.
[00:28:51.720]The grand opening was in August.
[00:28:53.460]And if you all have been to Alabama
[00:28:55.740]in the summertime, it's really hot.
[00:28:57.180]Crazy hot.
[00:28:58.640]And that substrate was very porous.
[00:29:01.040]It was intentionally that way.
[00:29:02.480]And so water would just go off.
[00:29:03.700]And so you're trying to fertilize in water
[00:29:06.080]and keep the plants from wilting and dying.
[00:29:07.640]And we've got it under control now,
[00:29:10.380]but that first summer was really rough
[00:29:12.360]for us and for the plants.
[00:29:13.780]And the students go up there every day
[00:29:16.960]and they work.
[00:29:17.480]They work.
[00:29:21.700]And they love it.
[00:29:22.400]So our Food U customers,
[00:29:24.980]the Central Campus Dining Facility
[00:29:27.700]called the EDGE Culinary Sciences Classes
[00:29:30.780]in the Horace Filtsy School of Hospitality Management,
[00:29:33.820]the Culinary Residence,
[00:29:35.740]which is this fine dining restaurant
[00:29:37.640]on the first floor
[00:29:38.760]where they bring in a chef in residence every year,
[00:29:41.680]a different chef, a professional chef,
[00:29:43.440]a commercial chef,
[00:29:44.600]and the students get trained there.
[00:29:46.400]So our produce comes from the rooftop
[00:29:48.580]literally right down into that restaurant.
[00:29:51.680]And there are other restaurants
[00:29:52.680]that are associated with the hotel.
[00:29:54.120]There's a campus food pantry,
[00:29:56.260]and they're also now working with the brewery
[00:29:58.860]that I mentioned.
[00:29:59.400]We are providing them with Alabama-grown hops,
[00:30:01.500]which is pretty exciting.
[00:30:03.700]This is the Central Campus Dining Facility,
[00:30:06.700]so they serve about 4,000 meals a day here.
[00:30:09.560]And as you can imagine,
[00:30:11.560]that's a lot of food.
[00:30:13.640]We don't grow nearly enough food
[00:30:15.540]to provide for the whole campus.
[00:30:16.840]We grow some, probably maybe 5%.
[00:30:20.520]Our goal is to get to, like,
[00:30:21.660]10% on certain things,
[00:30:22.880]but it'll take a while.
[00:30:24.380]But if you go to the salad bar,
[00:30:26.740]you'll see our spring mix.
[00:30:28.680]It's there every day,
[00:30:29.560]and that's coming straight out
[00:30:31.260]of those vertical farms.
[00:30:32.220]And we advertise so people know that.
[00:30:35.320]These are some of the kitchens
[00:30:37.200]that are in the Culinary Sciences Building.
[00:30:38.920]They are all state-of-the-art.
[00:30:40.320]All the equipment in those kitchens
[00:30:43.140]were donated by commercial partners.
[00:30:44.860]And this is one of our previous
[00:30:48.820]executive chef, Ford Fry,
[00:30:51.640]and they are there residentially
[00:30:53.520]for the course of a year.
[00:30:55.080]And our students getting trained there
[00:30:58.180]on all manner of things,
[00:30:59.360]and this all came from the rooftop right there.
[00:31:01.720]And if you go to the 1856 Restaurant,
[00:31:05.700]they will feature our items on the menu.
[00:31:08.300]They'll say rooftop this, rooftop that,
[00:31:10.020]rooftop the next.
[00:31:10.820]And it's a very fine dining restaurant.
[00:31:14.080]The evening is a plate menu.
[00:31:16.560]You can get wine pairing.
[00:31:17.780]It's quite elegant.
[00:31:19.400]Very, very high quality.
[00:31:22.580]It's added a,
[00:31:23.920]it's taken the culinary experience
[00:31:26.520]in the city of Auburn to another level.
[00:31:28.340]They'll even use our edible flowers on,
[00:31:32.600]this is something called tea on thatch.
[00:31:34.920]Thatch is the street.
[00:31:35.960]The guy who is the executive director
[00:31:38.740]of the restaurant,
[00:31:39.300]he's a pastry expert.
[00:31:41.100]And so he uses our edible flowers
[00:31:43.540]on some of his things
[00:31:45.380]for when they have a British style tea
[00:31:48.060]on a Sunday afternoon.
[00:31:49.100]We grow flowers
[00:31:51.600]for them.
[00:31:52.360]So whether it's on the rooftop
[00:31:53.940]or at the transformation garden,
[00:31:56.440]those are part,
[00:31:57.100]every hotel room gets fresh cut flowers
[00:32:01.000]every day.
[00:32:01.540]And our students are the ones
[00:32:03.420]that grow those flowers.
[00:32:04.240]This is the Aricha restaurant,
[00:32:07.520]which is also in the hotel.
[00:32:08.880]We provide for them.
[00:32:09.980]This was the New Year's dinner last year.
[00:32:12.400]My wife and I went for dinner
[00:32:13.620]and they were featuring our Swiss chard
[00:32:15.560]that we grew on the rooftop there
[00:32:17.760]in this dinner.
[00:32:21.580]I mentioned hops.
[00:32:22.920]These are two of my faculty
[00:32:24.320]that are doing some hops research
[00:32:25.680]down in Mobile.
[00:32:26.300]And we are now providing hops
[00:32:28.420]for the brewery
[00:32:29.640]that is part of this building.
[00:32:31.540]And they're also working
[00:32:33.400]with a craft brewery down in Mobile.
[00:32:36.380]And they've actually got their first brew,
[00:32:38.460]which is pretty fun.
[00:32:40.380]Alabama grown barley
[00:32:45.500]and Alabama grown hops.
[00:32:47.160]When we have extra,
[00:32:49.980]we provide for the campus food
[00:32:51.560]pantry.
[00:32:52.040]And then this is just to give you an idea
[00:32:55.540]of the diversity of students that are involved
[00:32:57.580]in our Food U program.
[00:32:59.760]All these different majors.
[00:33:01.100]And the students help to recruit
[00:33:03.460]the other students.
[00:33:04.920]So maybe they're in the same dorm
[00:33:07.620]or they're in the same fraternity or sorority
[00:33:09.500]or they're taking classes together or they're friends.
[00:33:11.480]And not every student works out.
[00:33:13.700]But we have
[00:33:15.420]a lot of really, really good students.
[00:33:17.560]I'd say on average they work
[00:33:19.020]five to ten hours a week.
[00:33:20.760]Some work 20.
[00:33:21.540]Some work 30 hours a week.
[00:33:22.480]And they have,
[00:33:24.260]based on their skills and their ability
[00:33:26.320]to communicate with the public
[00:33:27.500]and things like that and manage,
[00:33:28.940]we give them more and more responsibility.
[00:33:31.500]The young man that's in charge of the rooftop garden
[00:33:34.040]now, he's a biosystems engineering student who's
[00:33:36.800]only been involved working in horticulture for two years and he's amazing he's one of those that
[00:33:42.600]has found what he loves and we celebrate at the end of the semester we just get together and have
[00:33:48.760]pizza and just say how did things go this year and just sort of recap so these two slides here
[00:33:54.440]I'm going to go through these these are important because you all are academics and you all are
[00:33:58.940]trying to find ways to engage your students to the greatest extent possible and so these are
[00:34:03.980]what I consider to be the high impact experiences and these are these are real so they get to learn
[00:34:09.860]how to grow multiple crops in different systems and we intentionally cross-train them so rooftop
[00:34:18.640]raised beds vertical farm greenhouse they get to rotate amongst those they even get to learn how
[00:34:26.440]to grow things that we don't know how to grow one of our chefs said can you grow butterfly pea
[00:34:32.000]I'm like what is butterfly pea
[00:34:33.960]what would you use it for so we found our source we got the seed we figured out how
[00:34:39.780]to grow it and you harvest the flowers and you dry them and you extract them and you make a
[00:34:45.340]little cocktail that you serve as a palate cleanser between meals at a fancy restaurant
[00:34:50.840]and when you pour basil infused lemonade into it it changes color and it's a beautiful presentation
[00:34:58.320]and it's delicious and so they're harvesting 100 flowers a day off of these plants and we
[00:35:03.780]never knew that what you know so you your your experience is enriched by the culinary partners
[00:35:08.880]who may have worked in different parts of the world and different different kinds of plants
[00:35:12.840]but we have to negotiate what we're gonna grow and when and how we're gonna deliver and all
[00:35:17.460]these things and but it's you know they have to let students have to learn how to work with
[00:35:22.440]these chefs figure out what their needs are what's possible what kind of quality they expect
[00:35:28.200]if it's going to the 1856 restaurant probably a little bit you can't have any nothing wrong
[00:35:33.600]with it it's going to campus dining you know it's the standard is still really good has to be good
[00:35:39.240]eating quality and everything but it doesn't have to be that same exacting level they have to learn
[00:35:44.320]how to plan and implement crop rotations if it's in the raised beds outside that's about three crops
[00:35:50.100]a year if it's in the micro green station that's every two weeks rotate right and then learning how
[00:35:57.840]to use all different kinds of equipment and all the different operations and scouting for insects
[00:36:03.420]and all of that and then learning how to troubleshoot and solve problems I have a picture
[00:36:10.020]I'm going to show you a little bit later where there was a mistake made and sometimes those
[00:36:14.680]things happen and we learn from our mistakes hopefully they are involved in engaging with
[00:36:21.480]the media so sometimes they're interviewed they're part of a story they're part of a video and that's
[00:36:27.780]enhances their public speaking skills they have to work together in teams they're not necessarily
[00:36:33.240]in the same class they might be in different majors it may be the weather may be really bad
[00:36:37.200]outside and they've got to figure these things out and teamwork is something that is often identified
[00:36:44.700]by people in industry that our students are deficient in so this is intentionally trying
[00:36:49.500]to build that managing deadlines facing the public we do so many tours but it's a great experience
[00:36:57.300]for them and we provide good references we've got currently 18 students that are working part-time
[00:37:03.060]doing this I had a tour this week and this is one wall in one of the vertical farms and
[00:37:10.800]this one is another vault wall and another vertical farm and that one doesn't look so
[00:37:15.000]good the pump failed and if you're going in a vertical wall system like that and the lights
[00:37:22.260]come on and you don't have water it doesn't take long to what lettuce all that has to be
[00:37:27.720]thrown out now is that gonna be is our campus dining partner gonna say hey guys we're done
[00:37:32.880]I didn't get your Monday shipment of let us know you know there's an understanding there
[00:37:38.380]but it was a mechanical failure and so we bring the students in we try and diagnose it and help
[00:37:44.700]them figure out it wasn't like the student made a mistake it was a mechanical failure but these
[00:37:49.020]things do happen so what's next well we have a new building that's under construction that
[00:37:57.360]is going to be give us laboratory and classroom facilities that are substantially better than what
[00:38:02.700]we have right now I'm excited about that I took this picture last week so that's my my office is
[00:38:09.360]going to be somewhere on this floor when it's done it's closer to where we have the transformation
[00:38:16.140]garden property it's like a five-minute walk and I'm gonna spend a good chunk here talking about
[00:38:22.580]just this garden and what we're trying to do there we have some very good promotional materials we
[00:38:28.440]have a very high quality video if you go on our departmental website you'll see the video it's
[00:38:32.520]about two and a half minutes it's narrated by one of our students and we have a very aggressive
[00:38:37.240]fundraising campaign that I'm leading and it's it'll be a largest classroom on Auburn's campus
[00:38:44.340]it's 16 acres and it has been committed to by the Board of Trustees it's a it will be
[00:38:49.620]a property indefinitely and we will have fruits vegetables ornamentals we will have agronomic
[00:38:56.940]crops and all these different areas that have been designed and designated and even
[00:39:02.340]each of those we have basically a price tag for somebody to name and we will be growing
[00:39:07.920]more and more food there as we get Orchards built out as we get more vegetable areas devoted and
[00:39:13.440]it'll be a place just like you have even here in your courtyard where you can go out and just
[00:39:17.820]have a peaceful moment right that's a good thing to have for mental health we will engage with
[00:39:23.280]the community there's going to be a children's garden down at the bottom I'll tell you about
[00:39:27.000]that in a minute and it will be accessible to anyone there won't be any restrictions
[00:39:32.160]time or day or who comes in and these are students working at the out at the raised
[00:39:40.080]beds at the transformation garden this picture was taken last summer and they're out there
[00:39:45.780]almost every day some of the things that we've completed there so we have a complete site design
[00:39:51.780]we have irrigation to all the plot areas when that when the property was prepared
[00:39:58.260]when it was graded and everything all the topsoil is pretty much gone so
[00:40:01.980]so we're rotating cover crops through there to build our organic matter
[00:40:05.260]we have an old cotton rotation that's there that's a historic property all the agronomic
[00:40:11.020]plots are being used with the vertical farms the raised bed garden commercial vegetable plot all
[00:40:15.820]those are being used and then some of these other ones we are waiting based on our fundraising
[00:40:20.220]or preparation of the ground to be able to install them we had a four million dollar
[00:40:26.540]infrastructure project that basically graded the whole property brought in all the utilities
[00:40:31.800]brought in a road a pedestrian path and that was funded by the university we've raised
[00:40:38.840]about three and a half million dollars so far with a million in pledges over 200 gifts
[00:40:44.860]and of the items that can be named in the garden nine of them have been named so far
[00:40:50.440]and about two weeks ago we had the state master gardener they call it their seminar and they
[00:40:56.280]presented us with a check for $200,000 to name the pedestrian path it's going to be
[00:41:01.620]pedestrian master gardener trail and they literally raised money across the entire state
[00:41:05.980]all the different master gardener groups and one person put it all together and into one check so
[00:41:11.820]we're very grateful for them if you want to name the garden anybody here want to name the garden
[00:41:17.820]there's a price for that the road that is beside the garden which is a new road I don't know on
[00:41:24.980]this campus but do you have any roads that aren't named probably not and we have some people that
[00:41:31.440]are philanthropists that maybe have would like to have their name on a road on the campus that's an
[00:41:36.120]opportunity you see the some of the different price tags on these and like I said we've raised
[00:41:41.040]about three and a half we've got a long way to go but we're making very good progress in the future
[00:41:49.020]any projects that exceed a million dollars the Board of Trustees has to approve those there has
[00:41:53.940]to be a plan a budget everything we're working through that process right now we have a law in
[00:42:00.100]the state where it has to go out for business and we're working through that process right now we
[00:42:01.260]have a law in the state where it has to go out for business and we're working through that process right now we have a plan for the Board of Trustees for their February meeting for
[00:42:11.100]approval it will be able to go forward on that we have the money for it right
[00:42:13.820]now the teaching orchard we're preparing that site will be begin planning that
[00:42:17.940]hopefully in early in the new year and we have a state-of-the-art greenhouse
[00:42:22.680]project it is a dream project that we're trying to raise money for right now this
[00:42:29.260]is where we would have the educational pavilion
[00:42:31.080]we've got an architectural rendering of what we would like we want it to look
[00:42:36.060]kind of like a farmers market and we'll capture water off the roof and we'll
[00:42:40.260]have a display garden up front this is our dream for the state-of-the-art
[00:42:45.000]greenhouse it'll be over near where the vertical farms are and it would be a
[00:42:49.860]Dutch style greenhouse like you would see in Ontario or in the Netherlands
[00:42:53.280]and we would grow our vining crops we'd have deep water culture strawberries we
[00:42:59.440]would also have an aquaponics
[00:43:00.900]area for racing fish and this is the one at Ohio State maybe
[00:43:05.940]some of you have seen this it's beautiful we'd like to have something
[00:43:09.060]like that but not as big our budget isn't as big as theirs we have created a
[00:43:15.600]team of faculty staff and then folks from state government and our power
[00:43:20.620]utilities where we are trying to show that our Alabama is a good place to
[00:43:26.620]invest in for controlled environment AG we have a brochure that we share with
[00:43:30.720]different potential folks talking about Alabama where we have distribution
[00:43:34.920]centers that could be facilitating the movement of produce our resources our
[00:43:40.080]partners state government and how the university is involved in these various
[00:43:46.440]partners and we are eager to see the CEA industry expand in Alabama because we
[00:43:52.520]need more food security absolutely and most of the fruits and
[00:43:57.120]vegetables in Alabama are grown in particular
[00:44:00.540]so we aren't producing a lot the rest of the year we're bringing in all that food
[00:44:04.680]either from California or Mexico or Ontario wherever it is and we have a we
[00:44:10.620]have a dream and a desire that Alabama would become more self-sufficient in
[00:44:14.340]terms of their food production more secure food supply and a highly
[00:44:18.120]nutritious food supply we took these these folks from government and our
[00:44:22.740]power companies to Leamington Ontario this summer that's where I grew up and
[00:44:26.780]we visited some state-of-the-art greenhouses there that would if you have
[00:44:30.360]haven't seen something like that it's pretty mind-blowing and these are
[00:44:34.620]organic red peppers and those plants will get almost 20 feet tall by the time
[00:44:39.580]they're done and very very impressive this is our team we were up on the
[00:44:45.840]rooftop just for we had a meeting with our Provost and we went up there
[00:44:49.800]afterwards to take some pictures down at the bottom of the garden we're going to
[00:44:54.480]have an area where we have an equipment equipment building and some offices and
[00:44:57.760]a area to grow shade plants
[00:45:00.180]so that's a dream project as well look something like that will capture solar
[00:45:05.760]off the roof and the children's garden project this one is mature so that we've
[00:45:11.960]got 95% drawings right now we have a budget and it will be if the board
[00:45:18.480]approves it in February we'll probably go out for bid March we would hopefully
[00:45:23.100]have it done by December of next year and that's obviously to engage the
[00:45:27.960]community and to bring in kids
[00:45:30.000]and they learn about stuff there and then they can go through the whole
[00:45:33.180]garden and maybe they'll be future students of us maybe not but they'll be
[00:45:37.500]better better informed people and it'll be a wonderful place for people to bring
[00:45:41.580]their kids and and just get out and have fun we're very intentional about telling
[00:45:46.920]our story and I think this is important when you have a good story to tell who's
[00:45:52.660]the audience how do you want to tell the story who helps you tell the story so
[00:45:56.680]I've intentionally worked with lots of people at the University we have some very
[00:45:59.820]good YouTube videos our College of Ag communications team I know every person
[00:46:04.140]on that team by first name I work with them a lot I know the people on the
[00:46:08.060]university team I invited them all to lunch one day and talked about all the
[00:46:12.580]stuff we were doing I said how can you help us and over the next year we had
[00:46:16.200]several different things that they did to help us to tell our story we've been
[00:46:20.280]interviewed by TV magazines I never thought I'd be quoted in
[00:46:25.380]Garden and Gun magazine but I got quoted in Garden and Gun and we used
[00:46:29.640]social media a lot with our partners we do LinkedIn posts lots of tours
[00:46:34.400]word-of-mouth and this was the day that we had our NCAA public service
[00:46:41.480]announcement recording we had to get up on the rooftop at like five o'clock in
[00:46:46.520]the morning because they wanted to fly a drone over the building as the Sun was
[00:46:49.700]coming up and our students are up there on the rooftop and when the when the
[00:46:54.960]video was done we had about three seconds
[00:46:59.460]on this video but over 30 million views so you know every home football game
[00:47:05.540]would be up on the jumbotron right or if you're watching a Auburn football game
[00:47:09.420]on TV it would show up so these things don't happen by accident but I'm very
[00:47:17.160]grateful that we've had some really good support we have a bunch of industry
[00:47:21.500]partners that that have either already given money or donated product or are
[00:47:25.440]going to help us to build some of our facilities and whether they're for us
[00:47:29.280]companies or Canadian or Israeli or Dutch or Belgian these are all have
[00:47:33.060]signed on with us to help us fulfill our dream of building out that property and
[00:47:37.080]building a state-of-the-art greenhouse I'm very grateful for each of them and
[00:47:41.880]the Board of Trustees you know they wanted to take their picture up on the
[00:47:45.420]rooftop that's good for us this gentleman here that's Jimmy rain that's
[00:47:52.860]the Tony and Libba rain Culinary Sciences Center that's his name for his
[00:47:56.700]mom and dad and he's an Alabama
[00:47:59.100]billionaire this is president Chris Roberts right here and our president our
[00:48:04.340]Provost they they know what we're doing they're excited about what we're doing
[00:48:07.980]they're trying to help help us expand our reach okay that's food you so I'm
[00:48:24.660]happy for any questions
[00:48:28.920]yes sir
[00:48:31.800]yeah so firstly I would like to thank you for making the journey up here to
[00:48:39.180]the cold white north and the weather's been kind of nice for recently yeah but
[00:48:44.520]my question you know seeing all the fantastic things that you're doing here
[00:48:48.120]right is understanding more about those financials and how you're cultivating
[00:48:53.220]more of those relationships with those donors and so I was wondering if you
[00:48:56.140]could speak to the methods
[00:48:58.740]that you employ for trying to court potential donors you know how exactly
[00:49:04.000]step by step you're trying to say hey here's how we're using the money here's
[00:49:07.300]what we're interested in doing and so I just like more of your thoughts yeah on
[00:49:11.060]how you approach donors and bringing in that that extra funding it's complicated
[00:49:14.720]and it's something I've learned a lot over the last several years so we have a
[00:49:21.780]college development office we have a university development office they're
[00:49:26.060]called advancement you know back in the
[00:49:28.560]day it was fundraising then it became development now it's advancement so I
[00:49:33.180]work very closely with them we develop materials we do tours we go and visit
[00:49:39.660]with individual people who are prospects the best people to give are people who
[00:49:44.700]have given already and they have record of that so they know who the givers are
[00:49:49.560]oftentimes they are alum not exclusively but if they have a
[00:49:54.720]passion for engaging students they're probably going to be interested in what
[00:49:58.380]we're doing if they have a passion for students who are in aerospace
[00:50:02.620]engineering they're probably not going to be interested in what we're doing and
[00:50:07.020]so it's very intentional sometimes it happens even accidentally I'll just give
[00:50:13.500]you one example so we had a gentleman who was a student in our program he was
[00:50:19.920]a retired colonel in the Air Force came back to school in his 60s did a
[00:50:25.440]bachelor's degree
[00:50:28.200]right before the spring semester he passed away very sadly we made
[00:50:36.120]arrangements for a posthumous degree presentation at the spring at the spring
[00:50:39.760]commencement and invited his wife to come and his family and we were there
[00:50:43.880]and I was just talking with her you know I'm sorry for the loss of your husband
[00:50:48.360]he was a great student we miss him and I had no intention of doing any pitch for
[00:50:54.660]anything there and she said you know the thing that he
[00:50:58.020]loved the most was going out and working in those raised beds
[00:51:00.560]and is there any way we could do something to support
[00:51:05.160]what you all are doing
[00:51:06.200]I'm like yeah let's talk about it not in necessarily that moment we had
[00:51:13.560]follow-up conversations and she ended up writing us a very nice
[00:51:16.960]check to support the garden because her husband
[00:51:19.380]had been blessed by having the opportunity to work out there
[00:51:22.740]you know the master gardeners I mean we they come every year they come to
[00:51:27.840]campus and they want to know what's happening
[00:51:30.220]with the transformation garden and so we talked with them about the
[00:51:34.040]various giving opportunities and they weren't
[00:51:36.560]going to be able to raise multi-million dollar gifts
[00:51:38.520]but we said you know they said we really would like to name the road
[00:51:42.860]and we had a particular price tag on it just sometimes you come up with these
[00:51:47.120]numbers just off the top of your head and so
[00:51:50.660]when we shared with them what that number was it was out of reach for them
[00:51:54.960]but they are
[00:51:57.660]very important stakeholders of ours they're all over the state
[00:52:01.400]they love what we're doing they're going to be helping to teach classes out there
[00:52:05.600]to the public and everything so we adjusted that that particular gift
[00:52:09.460]goal to something that was achievable for
[00:52:12.180]them and then they fundraised for two years
[00:52:14.060]and when they presented that check to me at that meeting that was a victory lap
[00:52:18.720]for them because they had successfully corralled
[00:52:21.960]everybody and one person coordinated it and everybody gave and they raised
[00:52:26.240]two hundred thousand dollars that's a lot of money
[00:52:27.480]for a volunteer group and so you know in terms of the naming of the children's
[00:52:33.600]garden that was Bonnie plants foundation so Bonnie plants they're all over the US
[00:52:38.340]they grow plants primarily for garden centers their base of operations is in
[00:52:42.540]Opelika which is the next town over from Auburn and we met with their executive
[00:52:46.560]leadership team and talked about the garden and they wanted to invest in a
[00:52:51.960]children's garden there and so we gave them a figure and they made a commitment
[00:52:57.300]so although they you know the big the big news is the the six-figure or
[00:53:02.540]seven-figure gift but that's a gift over seven years so they didn't give us all
[00:53:07.560]of it at once so we've got part of it now and we're you know but then they get
[00:53:12.120]their name on it and they're in every garden center in Alabama and probably
[00:53:15.900]most garden centers across the US so they're a big name and they're
[00:53:19.860]Alabama based company so yeah it's uh it depends on who who the person is I'm
[00:53:27.120]working with somebody from right now from southeastern Alabama there they are
[00:53:33.280]a billionaire who has a very strong interest in food safety and we're
[00:53:38.980]working on a plan to create a an endowment for a food safety person that
[00:53:44.180]are actually a food safety program that would be and that you know that could
[00:53:49.320]end up being somewhere between five and ten million dollars it won't all go to
[00:53:52.600]the transformation garden but it's aligned with what we're doing and it
[00:53:55.720]would help to support student experience
[00:53:56.940]experiences so that was one that I didn't aggressively pursue myself he
[00:54:01.560]came to visit the campus he the president took him on a tour we he went
[00:54:06.180]in the vertical farms and we talked about that he said wow this is really
[00:54:09.660]cool and then we he's from Canada I'm from Canada you know we we had a
[00:54:13.860]connection and we started exchanging some emails and next thing you know
[00:54:18.060]we're we haven't sealed the deal yet but you have to have a good you have to have
[00:54:23.700]something that somebody would want to invest in there
[00:54:26.760]to be value for them to make the investment the investment target needs
[00:54:31.160]to be realistic for what their capacity is and something that you can celebrate
[00:54:35.160]together and so it's it's a long process we with that that video that I are that
[00:54:43.100]when I talked about the transformation garden video so we created a video
[00:54:47.100]booklet so you receive that as a donor you open it up and you hit play and it
[00:54:52.160]plays that video in the little video booklet it's very very high quality and
[00:54:56.580]so our first attempt with that was we worked with our team from University
[00:55:03.480]advancement and we got permission to go talk to communicate with donors that are
[00:55:07.740]at the university level that's different than the donors that are college donors
[00:55:11.220]these are people that are naming engineering buildings and stuff and we
[00:55:16.080]got permission to send out to them so we sent out to a batch of them we're going
[00:55:19.240]to send to a second tier and it's just they get it they can open it they can
[00:55:22.860]watch the video and say yeah yeah I don't know
[00:55:26.400]and first round we got nothing but that video is on our website where we have a
[00:55:32.160]second tier of people we're reaching out to and it just helps to tell the story
[00:55:35.880]and it's told by students it's really really good so a very good question I'm
[00:55:41.520]sorry for the answer so long but it's you know it's a it's part of my job that
[00:55:46.320]they don't teach you in graduate school right and if you don't have good people
[00:55:50.820]skills and you can't communicate a message clearly with passion you're not
[00:55:54.780]going to make very good progress
[00:55:56.220]i i got the mic so i'll go next uh so i'm don i'm i'm in the agronomy and
[00:56:03.380]horticulture department i'm a the teaching coordinator which sounds
[00:56:07.020]official but i get to read every every teacher's annual evaluation report so you're describing
[00:56:15.680]an amazing amount of learning opportunities with your program and they're only going to
[00:56:20.120]get bigger all right so i got two parts are you are your faculty in in horticulture
[00:56:26.040]engaged in these teaching opportunities and then how do you give them credit for that when
[00:56:33.420]you're not generating academic credit hours which is the main metric yeah that's a very
[00:56:38.760]good question so um yes they're involved um so dr daniel wells who's the guy who had the
[00:56:45.740]big bushy beard that was on the rooftop with a student uh he is our food you director
[00:56:50.580]and because of the impact of this program i was able to get him a
[00:56:55.860]supplement and create a director title for him so that we could devote 10 actually 15
[00:57:02.420]of his job to service that he gets evaluated on and i'm his boss so he gets evaluated on that
[00:57:09.380]he just was uh he just became an endowed professor um this is the university values this so yes of
[00:57:16.180]course we value peer-reviewed scholarship and competitive grants and and doing a good job in
[00:57:20.520]the classroom and this doesn't exactly fit under those i mean it it does to some extent because
[00:57:25.680]he teaches a he teaches the hydroponics class there's a greenhouse class there's landscape
[00:57:30.360]classes all these different classes where they use the rooftop they use the they use those spaces
[00:57:36.020]so it may be built into the curriculum from that standpoint but because it is a priority area for
[00:57:42.440]the department and because i'm the one evaluating them it works if a new administrator came in and
[00:57:48.320]said this is a bunch of baloney then it'd be to be a problem yeah that was great
[00:57:55.500]seminar thank you i've heard part of it before as you know but it's so obviously student centered
[00:58:03.580]yes student focused you've received financial backing from a number of
[00:58:11.160]uh entities such as bonnie's plants do the students then in that go through this program
[00:58:20.340]often wind up being employed by say bonnie's
[00:58:25.320]plants or some of the other they do um we haven't kept track of everyone and where they go
[00:58:31.260]but we but bonnie aggressively recruits our students so i didn't say this in the seminar but
[00:58:37.040]we now have a so we have a a fall career fair and a spring career fair that are college career fairs
[00:58:46.480]and because there was so much demand for horticulture students in the fall now we
[00:58:50.900]have a horticulture dedicated career fair and so we have horticulture
[00:58:55.140]career fair on say wednesday and the college career fairs on thursday
[00:58:58.160]and we had like 28 companies that come just for the horticulture career fair
[00:59:01.720]and bonnie's you know we have a lot of graduates that work for their company
[00:59:06.000]they're involved in our ag mentoring program so they get to connect with our students
[00:59:10.480]they donate plant materials that we use on the rooftop in the raised beds and so they one of
[00:59:17.480]their staff helps with a couple of our classes so yeah they're they're actively involved and they
[00:59:24.960]hire some of our students for sure and those jobs are good jobs yeah that's pretty good so that's
[00:59:31.200]one that's one example just a short side question you you mentioned in the future you're going to
[00:59:37.800]have a demonstration or teaching orchard yes and vineyard uh have you have someone working
[00:59:46.700]with the uh pierce's disease resistant yes grapevines yes so uh dr alina kaneva
[00:59:54.780]she's one of my faculty members and she's testing that material in alabama and it's
[01:00:00.720]all from uc davis and it's for the most part it looks really good i thought that was the
[01:00:05.940]case yeah good for you yeah thank you
[01:00:07.840]uh i just want to say also thank you for the presentation thank you um my question is so
[01:00:18.560]you and your team have built this very successful food u program that's got a lot of good momentum
[01:00:24.600]and kind of success breeds success from what i understand started as kind of a hydroponic or
[01:00:31.740]aquaponic greenhouse that needed some grant money to go through some improvement how did you get
[01:00:38.320]that initial momentum that initial ball rolling and what were some of the challenges that you
[01:00:42.960]had to overcome early on yeah it so it started off really small uh and uh i'd say the partnership
[01:00:51.320]with dr wells and um glenn lothbridge before i came
[01:00:54.420]you know so one of the things daniel grew he grew cucumbers in the greenhouse and they
[01:00:59.580]had the fish well they could take all the fish that was no problem he was growing way
[01:01:03.920]more cucumbers than they could possibly use and glenn is like no more cucumbers right
[01:01:10.280]you know figuring out uh everything from what to grow when when to be able to deliver it
[01:01:16.540]uh training students because we have these we were growing these plants but we're also
[01:01:21.320]doing research right
[01:01:24.240]um so that that was a challenge i think some of the big the pivotal moments so we daniel
[01:01:31.640]wells and i wrote a two-page white paper on aquaponics and its benefit for alabama at
[01:01:37.740]the time when our senators were asking for input on potential things that they could
[01:01:44.000]bring through the farm bill that would help alabama so we wrote this two-page white paper
[01:01:49.840]gave it to our lobbyists who then went and talked with the staffers and the senators
[01:01:54.060]and the senators we wrote we submitted it in the fall a year later in january we got
[01:02:02.260]word that we were going to be getting this 10 million dollar appropriation 5 million
[01:02:07.000]a year or 5 million for let's see we get 2 million a year and we split with the usda
[01:02:17.660]facility that does the fish research it's that's the arrangement it's half for ars and
[01:02:22.140]half for us
[01:02:23.880]and that enabled us to expand our facilities it gave us a whole lot more money for graduate
[01:02:27.780]students and for staff and so we could really expand um the partnership with on the rooftop
[01:02:34.260]that was just an invitation and when i went up there the first time um and i came down
[01:02:40.660]and we talked about sat on the table and talked about it i'm like well we want to be in but
[01:02:44.840]we've got to have funding to make this work you know our students volunteer for some things
[01:02:49.820]but they are paying for college you know we've got a they need to be
[01:02:53.700]able to make money and so i negotiated with with hans who's the director there and i said
[01:02:59.460]you know if you'll cover all of our expenses all of our students everything um we'll do it
[01:03:04.420]and he said yes and he's been a man of his word now three years and we've never not gotten paid
[01:03:10.740]for anything we've ever submitted and uh he and his team would say this is one of the best
[01:03:15.940]partnerships they have so um the when i took when i took the transformation garden on as
[01:03:23.520]my food systems leadership institute project that was a pivotal thing it was prior to me
[01:03:29.280]coming to auburn it was a project on the shelf uh paralysis by analysis and and a commit
[01:03:36.020]death by committee and we need we needed somebody to take charge somebody to have a vision a passion
[01:03:44.360]to lead it and i and i wanted to do the food systems leadership institute because it's the
[01:03:49.740]best leadership program for anybody in our in our field
[01:03:53.340]and you have to have a project to do that program that's going to impact the university
[01:03:57.740]and i wanted this to be my project and i wanted the provost to be my mentor that was all strategic
[01:04:04.520]and the provost's wife is a master gardener
[01:04:08.100]you know all these different things right and so working with him we were able to take
[01:04:12.820]a 12 acre site and expand it to a 16 acre site we were also able to bring it before
[01:04:18.020]the board of trustees and get funding where we had originally made a pitch to raise two
[01:04:23.160]million dollars to do the infrastructure project he told me if you raise a million I'll match
[01:04:28.980]it and we can do it in the process of doing that Bonnie plants came forward and they gave
[01:04:34.020]us a million dollar pledge I went back to him and he said okay talk to my accountant
[01:04:39.480]we'll move forward meanwhile I'm working with our facilities team which does all the projects
[01:04:45.680]on campus they oversee them and the guy who's a civil engineer there who I'm good friends
[01:04:50.580]with he said Des you know
[01:04:52.980]we had a project to build this road on campus a few years ago but the provost would not
[01:04:56.900]support it because it was too expensive he said what do you think about us combining
[01:05:02.160]these projects with the road because it would be the left the western border of the property
[01:05:07.280]what if we combine that into one project one contractor makes it more cost effective and
[01:05:12.920]present it to the board and see what happens and I'm like that would be awesome let's do
[01:05:15.920]it well they decided to do it four point one million dollars and they didn't ask
[01:05:22.800]me for my million dollars from my Bonnie plants gift that's just lucky or blessing
[01:05:31.620]either way you know and so I think now that the the university administration
[01:05:38.720]really understands what we're doing last week I had a meeting with the the director
[01:05:45.480]for our university advancement for the director for university facilities I had a
[01:05:52.620]phone call yesterday from the Provost literally while I was in my hotel
[01:05:55.920]they're gonna help us with our greenhouse project and we just got word
[01:06:00.720]that the board of trustee that the green aren't excuse me the Children's Garden
[01:06:08.100]project has been approved by the president to be on the agenda of the
[01:06:11.500]Board of Trustees meeting in February we have the money we have the design and
[01:06:16.320]basically the way they do things at the university is they they get all the work
[01:06:21.280]out ahead of time
[01:06:22.440]make sure that the board is all on board before it comes before the board you
[01:06:26.160]know what I mean it's not a surprise when they see the requests they've
[01:06:29.340]already vetted it and then it's just a stamp of approval so you know having
[01:06:34.800]good relationships with people and who make decisions that are based on trust
[01:06:38.820]where we are delivering something really good that's going to benefit the
[01:06:42.400]university then they can support it and are eager to do so so I've learned a
[01:06:49.140]tremendous amount I you know if ten years ago if you were to tell me I was
[01:06:52.260]doing this I'd say maybe I don't know but it's fun it's really fun thank you
[01:07:00.900]very much just check one more time for online all right no thank you very much
[01:07:07.920]you
[01:07:09.980]You
[01:07:11.980]Thank you.

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The FoodU Program at Auburn University

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