Farm fresh: Edible Campus program aims to innovate, educate, serve NIU students, community

DEKALB, Ill. — Cabbages are not exactly the typical big university landscaping, but at Northern Illinois University, cabbages — along with cauliflower, beets, tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables, fruits and herbs — are the first step in what could be a food revolution.

“We are taking over green spaces all over campus,” said Bryan Flower, the director of the Edible Campus project, a multifaceted program that aims to not only nourish students’ bodies with fresh, campus-grown food, but also their minds, by educating them on food production and sustainability.

The first step in the Edible Campus program was the raised beds scattered around campus. Beds of cabbage plants, tomatoes, peppers, herbs and even flowers are the “free-to-pick areas.”

“We have 100 free-to-pick areas. That’s for anybody, community members, faculty, staff, students, free to pick for anybody,” Flower said.

Flower came up with the Edible Campus program based on his extensive career as a chef in the hospitality food-service industry.

Before he entered institutional food service, Flower traveled the globe as a chef, working for Hilton International.

He started at NIU in 2014 as food systems laboratory coordinator and in 2020 was named associate director of food systems innovation.

One of the first things Flower found was that the options for NIU’s dining halls, as far as food purchases, were limited to sources not usually local.

“As a state university, we are mandated by the state as to who we can purchase our products from. Unfortunately, that doesn’t allow us much scope to purchase from our local farmers and support our local farmers,” he said.

As a chef used to choosing and preparing the finest, freshest ingredients for luxury hotels, that didn’t seem right.

“It’s important for me to know where my food comes from,” Flower said.

The solution was to find a way to produce fresh food on the NIU campus itself. In 2023, a grant from the Small Business Administration via the office of Sen. Dick Durbin provided the seed money for the first steps of the Edible Campus project.

Since then, Edible Campus has surged forward with multiple projects producing food for students and the DeKalb community.

“We started out with the first 100 free-to-pick beds. Then we built the Anderson Market Garden, which is on a tenth of an acre. That production goes into campus dining, it goes into the Huskie Pantry, our student food pantry, it goes into our meal prep program,” Flower said.

Since it started, the Anderson Market Garden has produced over 3,000 pounds of food for campus dining, the Huskie Food Pantry and the Edible Campus meal prep program, where students are taught how prepare meals, using the fresh produce from the garden.

The Edible Campus has added a hoop house and a composting site.

The program is collaborating with ComEd and the Electrical Power and Research Institute on the HydroPod, a 325-foot vertical farming system. The HydroPod is being used to produce seedlings, as well as hydroponically-grown leafy greens and herbs.

As the unit produces produce, it is also being used as part of a research project, measuring the electricity and impact of vertical farming systems.

Another donor donated $150,000 to build a 24-by 48-foot greenhouse that will also supply seedlings for the campus beds and the market garden.

Flower said the program has received support on all levels, from NIU administration to the local business community and the broader business community.

“We were very fortunate. Once we got it started, the proof of concept, once we got it up and running, people realized how important this could be for the university and we got a lot of support,” he said.

The program doesn’t just feed students’ bodies. It also feeds their knowledge and builds job skills.

The program employs student workers along with graduate assistants and volunteers. NIU students, faculty and staff, along with community members, round out the workforce who help plant, tend, care for and harvest and process the produce throughout the year.

The Edible Campus program also works with local high school agriculture education programs and FFA chapters to raise seedlings for the HydroPod and the market garden.

“It’s interesting that the students we attract, as workers and as volunteers, come from different majors and backgrounds. What they have in common is this passion in gardening and food and sustainability,” said Laura Fehling, who was hired earlier this year as the program coordinator for the Edible Campus program.

With the program up and running and successful, Flower has his eye on growth.

“We are working on a grant with our sustainability office and that grant will allow us to plant more trees on campus. We are looking to build a food forest out there. The goal is to take over as much green space as possible and grow food in it, as opposed to annual plants or landscaping,” he said.

Flower also has his eye on acreage on the university’s west campus.

“We hope that we can take over a 20-acre to 30-acre piece on our west campus and truly start to grow at scale regeneratively, including some livestock,” he said.

Flower has a larger, long-term goal in mind, one that started when he set out to get more locally grown food to NIU students and the community.

“If we could grow 150,000 to 200,000 pounds of food, that would meet what we are looking to achieve, which is that 20% to 25% of all food consumed comes from right here on campus,” he said.