Loyola University Chicago students provide community with campus-grown food all year round
'There's nothing that tastes better than the food that you grow yourself'
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Students at Loyola University Chicago are using sustainable practices that allow them to grow their own fresh produce right on campus - all year long.
"Today we're making a winter salad and in the salad we use lettuce that we produced ourselves, and also onions that we harvested in the fall that we had for storage," said Isabella Rodriguez.
"We also used other winter produce items like sweet potato and beets," said Gabby Fuque.
Both Rodriguez and Fuque are juniors in Loyola University's Urban Agricultural Program. They're learning how to grow plants from seed - as well as through indoor hydroponic, aquaponic and mushroom systems.
Alejandra Rodriguez is a student team leader who normally oversees the program's outdoor production. But during the winter months, the students are focused on indoor production.
"We use sustainable practices for everything. So those systems for our aquaponics, we use fish and we kind of utilize them as fertilizers," explained Rodriguez. "And for our hydroponic system we utilize shelving and we rotate water through them. So we're conserving water, we're conserving soil, we're conserving space."
Among the many advantages of these urban agricultural methods is the ability to grow food year round.
"It really gives us a continuous supply of food. And no matter if we have a big heat wave or a flood event outside, you know, a lot of the extreme weather events associated with climate change are mitigated through indoor production," said Kevin Erickson, the Sustainable Agricultural Manager at Loyola.
Everything the students grow is sold at the nearby Edgewater Farmers Market or gets donated to local food pantries.
And each week, the students break bread together while sharing production and sales updates.
"We know our community. We love our community. So we want our community to have the best produce possible and the best crops possible because we're also consuming them ourselves as students," said Alejandra.
"It's really cool to see how over time the lettuce grows and it's like a little leaf and then you get to harvest it and use it in the salad," said Isabella. "You kind of lose touch with it when you go to a grocery store and you see like the produce all laid out, pristine, like pristine produce."
And it takes lots of fuel and energy to get that produce to store shelves.
"When we sell at the farmer's market, we just walk it over a couple of blocks. It's not like it's being grown like halfway across the country and it spends days and days and days in motion until a grocery store can pop up and start selling it," said Alejandra.
"I think that just the mass production of it all is really hurting the way that we practice food and the way that we interact with food," said Fuque.
And besides being better for you and the environment - their campus grown food just tastes better.
"Well, they always say there's nothing that tastes better than the food that you grow yourself and we want to participate in not only growing it, but also sharing in the joy that comes along with eating this really fresh and wonderful food," said Ericson.
You can purchase their delicious produce at the next Edgewater Indoor Market on Saturday, March 22th at the Broadway Armory.
Loyola is hosting its annual Climate Change Conference from March 12-15. It will explore strategies for developing just solutions to the emerging water crisis
This story is part of our Climate Ready series - a collaboration between ABC News and the ABC Owned Television Stations focused on providing practical solutions to help you and your family adapt to extreme weather events and the current challenges of climate change.
