I think he’s right.

In fact, I think one of the biggest mistakes we’ve made in agriculture is confusing what is easy to measure with what actually matters.

Yields are easy to measure.

Community isn’t. Resilience isn’t. Dignity isn’t.

Flachs argues that small farms create value that doesn’t show up on a balance sheet. They strengthen communities. They preserve knowledge. They create relationships. They keep people connected to the land and to each other.

I agree with all of that.

But the more I thought about his article, the more I realized it led me somewhere unexpected.

If yields aren’t enough, then we need better metrics.

And if we need better metrics, then we need to pay more attention to small farms.

And when we pay more attention to small farms, eventually we have to ask a much harder question:

Why do so many of them fail?

That’s where my thinking begins to diverge.

Not from Flachs, but from much of the local food movement itself.

Because I don’t think we need more farms.

I think we need better food systems.

The Farm Isn’t the Unit of Analysis

A few years ago, I thought mostly about farms.

How many farmers could we train? How many farms could we build? How much food could they produce?

Those felt like the important questions.

Then I spent enough time around farms to realize something uncomfortable.

What surprised me was that the hardest problems rarely happened inside the greenhouse or the grow room. Most of the time, we could grow the crop.

The real challenges showed up after harvest.

Finding customers. Moving product. Managing cash flow. Building reliable distribution. Navigating infrastructure that often didn’t exist.

The farms weren’t struggling because they couldn’t produce food.

They were struggling because they were being asked to solve every other problem in the food system by themselves.

That realization changed how I think about agriculture.

The bottleneck was rarely production.

The bottleneck was everything surrounding production.

That’s when I began to suspect we were measuring the wrong thing.

We spend a lot of time talking about farms.

I’m increasingly convinced we should be talking about systems.

Everyone Loves Farms. Nobody Loves Infrastructure.

Here’s a statement that will annoy a bunch of people:

Many people who claim to support local food don’t actually support food systems. They support farms.

Those are not the same thing.

Everyone loves a picture of a farmer. Nobody gets excited about cold storage.

Everyone shares photos from the farmers market. Nobody posts selfies with a distribution hub.

Everyone wants more local growers. Very few people want to talk about aggregation, logistics, compliance, transportation, or financing.

But if you remove those things, then most farms will fail.

The local food movement has spent years celebrating production while underinvesting in everything that happens after harvest.

And then we act surprised when farmers burn out.

The farm gets the spotlight.

The system gets ignored.

The Winter Tomato Was Never the Problem

For years, the winter tomato has served as the villain in our food story.

It became a symbol of everything wrong with modern agriculture: fossil fuels, long supply chains, declining flavor, and hidden costs.

But the longer I’ve spent in agriculture, the less interested I’ve become in blaming the tomato.

Because the tomato didn’t create the system, the tomato simply reveals it.

The outcomes we dislike are often the product of decisions that made perfect sense in isolation.

At some point, a series of rational decisions made shipping a mediocre tomato thousands of miles the economically logical choice. The result wasn’t a tomato problem. It was a systems problem.

That’s why I find myself applying the same lens to local food.

When a farmer grows beautiful produce but struggles to move it, store it, aggregate it, or sell it, we’re tempted to look at the farm.

But what if the problem isn’t the farm? What if it’s the system surrounding it?

No amount of criticism fixes a winter tomato, and no amount of admiration fixes a local food system that lacks the infrastructure needed to support it.

Hype Doesn’t Feed People

One reason Flachs’ article resonated with me is that it focuses on outcomes that are difficult to measure but deeply important.

Community. Stewardship. Human connection.

Unfortunately, agriculture has a habit of chasing simple stories.

I’ve watched it happen repeatedly. A new technology appears, investment follows, and before long we’re hearing that this is the innovation that will finally transform food production forever.

Then reality arrives.

The crops grew. The technology worked. The facility looked impressive. Yet somehow the business still failed.

The lesson isn’t that innovation is bad. It’s that production has never been the only challenge. Farms don’t survive because plants grow. They survive because entire systems function.

Agriculture is brutally honest that way. Eventually every business model encounters labor costs, energy bills, distribution challenges, maintenance schedules, and customer demand.

The narrative gets a vote. Reality gets the final one.

We Don’t Need More Farms

Following Flachs’ argument led me to an uncomfortable conclusion.

If yields aren’t enough, then counting farms isn’t enough either.

That’s why I’ve become increasingly skeptical of conversations that treat “more farms” as the goal.

This isn’t an argument against farmers. It’s an argument against confusing inputs with outputs.

More farms are an input.

The outcome I’m interested in is resilience.

A city with a thousand struggling farms isn’t necessarily stronger than a city with five hundred successful ones. The question isn’t how many farms exist. The question is whether the system surrounding them allows them to survive.

Sometimes that resilience comes from a farm. Sometimes it comes from a greenhouse, a cooperative, a school program, a distribution hub, or a shared piece of infrastructure.

That’s why I don’t think we need more farms as the primary objective.

I think we need more local food-producing capacity that is economically durable.

Those goals lead to very different decisions.

The Food System Is a Mirror

One idea keeps showing up in my writing because I keep seeing evidence of it everywhere:

The food system is a mirror.

It reflects what we actually value, not what we claim to value.

We didn’t accidentally end up with consolidation. We rewarded efficiency above almost everything else and got exactly what we optimized for.

The outcomes aren’t accidents. They’re reflections of the incentives we build.

That’s why I found Flachs’ argument so compelling.

He asks us to look beyond yields. I think that’s exactly right.

But once you start looking beyond yields, the questions multiply.

Eventually you start asking who owns the system. Who benefits from it. Who can participate in it. Who gets excluded from it.

Those questions are what led me to my own work.

My goal has never been food sovereignty, and it has never been maximizing production. What interests me is whether we can create stronger regional feedback loops by shifting even a small amount of food system value back into local hands.

In DFW, that number is just one percent.

Not because local is automatically better. Not because every farm deserves to survive. But because ownership, participation, and resilience matter.

The farm does matter. The system matters more.

That’s where my thinking parts ways with much of the conversation around local food.

We spend an enormous amount of time debating symbols, while the harder challenge is designing systems that consistently produce the outcomes we claim to care about.

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But if you live in Dallas–Fort Worth, you already know the uncomfortable truth:

Big agriculture numbers don’t guarantee local nourishment.

A state can rank near the top in agricultural production and still depend on food shipped in from hundreds, or thousands, of miles away to feed its largest metro.

That isn’t a failure of farmers.

It’s a failure of design.

Because we didn’t build our food system to feed regions.

We built it to move commodities.

And that’s why “Texas grows a lot of food” can be true, while “DFW can’t reliably feed itself” is also true.

The question that matters

The real question isn’t, “How much does Texas produce?”

It’s this: Can a region meaningfully feed itself within a 20–50 mile radius, consistently, affordably, and at scale?

That’s the test I care about. And it’s what I mean when I talk about Food System 2.0.

It’s not a trend. Not a farmers market vibe. Not “shop local” messaging.

It IS a local food system that can reliably produce, aggregate, and distribute food close to where people live.

Because “local” isn’t a feeling. It’s infrastructure.

Food System 2.0, the simple spec

If North Texas wants real resilience, three systems have to work together, every week, not just on weekends.

1) Production

Land access, soil restoration, and smart growing in peri-urban corridors.

Not just hobby gardens, repeatable models that can run year-round, with labor and input realities accounted for.

2) Aggregation

Cold storage, wash and pack, light processing, so small farms can act like a network.

Because ten small farms can behave like one mid-sized farm, but only if we build the connective tissue.

3) Distribution

Institutions and employers that commit to buying local production, plus reliable last-mile logistics. Places like school districts, hospitals, corporate campuses, senior centers, and City facilities.

The demand is there, but without procurement pathways and delivery consistency, local producers can’t depend on it.

When those three parts connect, local food stops being a weekend idea. It becomes a system.

Why DFW is the case study, but not the exception

DFW is my backyard. It’s where I’m building. It’s where the work is personal.

But this gap isn’t unique to us.

A lot of major ag states are optimized for commodity scale, not regional feeding. Which means many metros are quietly living on fragile supply chains while celebrating statewide totals.

So the job isn’t cheerleading.

The job is closing the distance between production and people, with systems that can be copied, funded, staffed, and maintained.

That’s what Food System 2.0 is, a practical upgrade.

A shift from “we grow food somewhere” to “we can feed people here.”

The ask, and a real starting point

If Food System 2.0 is going to be more than a concept, it needs a first home base.

Right now, my dream unlock is a partner who wants to help build a small food hub pilot in the southeast corner of Fort Worth or the southwest corner of Arlington. Somewhere practical. A former restaurant space, a commissary, an underused warehouse corner. The key requirements are simple: walk-in cooler & freezer capacity, and a physical presence of one day per week.

With that, we can start the work that turns “local” into real infrastructure, aggregation, cold storage, and a reliable path into institutions and neighborhoods.

No big promises. No hype. Just a simple pilot to prove the model can work, and then we iterate.

If you have access to a space like this, or you know someone who does, message me and put “Food Hub” in the subject line.

A question for you

If we tried to make DFW meaningfully more self-reliant in the next 3–5 years, what do you think is the biggest bottleneck right now?

Land access, labor, procurement, or infrastructure, meaning cold chain, aggregation, distribution?

Reply below with your pick, and one sentence why. I’m collecting patterns as we build.

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Note: This post was sparked by a thread about Texas agriculture that I saw recently on LinkedIn. Read it HERE.

It’s a tent.

And every time we confuse a tent for infrastructure, Admiral Ackbar is somewhere in the galaxy doing what he does best: warning us we’re walking into a trap.

I don’t mean that as a dunk on markets. I love farmers’ markets. They’re one of the last places where people remember food is grown by humans, in weather, under pressure, with real consequences. Markets build connection. Markets build culture.

But markets don’t move food.

Markets build culture. Systems move food.

A food system is what happens on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It’s what happens when the tents are gone, when the heat is up, when the fridge is low, when the school cafeteria still needs lunch, and when a household trying to eat well doesn’t have a “Saturday morning window” to make it happen.

I’m writing this because I keep hearing the same plan: ‘just expand the farmer’s markets.’ And I keep seeing the same outcome: burnout, volatility, and local food that never becomes normal.

Here’s the trap: everyone says they want more local farms… and then we build an economy where the only reliable channel we offer is weekends. We ask small farms to shoulder the entire supply chain, harvest, wash, pack, keep it cold, move it, market it, sell it, and then we call it “entrepreneurship” when they somehow survive.

That’s not a market.

That’s survival mode.

Local doesn’t fail on Saturday. Local fails on Tuesday.

Tuesday is when the walk-in cooler starts making that sound you never want to hear. Tuesday is when the delivery is due, and the route doesn’t exist unless the farmer becomes the delivery company. Tuesday is when compliance, wash/pack realities, temperature control, and delivery windows show up and remind you that “local” isn’t a belief. It’s logistics.

And logistics aren’t forgiving. If you lose temperature control, you can lose the product and your margin for the week.

This is the distinction I keep returning to in my Roadmap work, because it explains why local food often stays stuck as a lifestyle instead of becoming a baseline.

Connection is not capacity.

Farmers’ markets build connection. But capacity is actually shared cold storage. Capacity is wash/pack. Capacity is aggregation. Capacity is predictable distribution. Capacity is institutional purchasing that creates steady weekday demand, not a hopeful Saturday. Capacity is a system that lets a farmer farm instead of forcing them to become a tiny, exhausted version of Sysco.

And under all of it is the economic reality we avoid: local is forced to compete against a system that looks cheaper because it offloads costs. Industrial food doesn’t win because it’s magically more efficient. It wins because it can push the bill onto land, labor, public health, and the future, and still hand you a low number at checkout.

So when people ask why local costs more, the honest answer is simple: local is trying to pay the full cost in real time. The dominant system is not.

If you want local food to be normal (not a weekend hobby), you can’t stop at the market. Markets are a great front porch. But they can’t be the foundation.

Food System 2.0 is the foundation. And the foundation is boring on purpose: shared infrastructure, shared logistics, and buyers who show up on weekdays.

Here’s the test I’m using for every “support local” idea I hear:

What happens on Tuesday?

If the answer is “we’ll figure it out,” it’s not a system yet. It’s a sentiment.

Ackbar wasn’t warning us about farmers’ markets. He was warning us about confusing connection with capacity.

So let me ask you: if you could fund one boring-but-essential piece of local food infrastructure in your city, think cold storage, wash/pack, aggregation, delivery routes, institutional purchasing? What would you pick?

Doors to follow (if you want the deeper Roadmap):

1. Everyone wants more local farms… (markets aren’t a strategy)

2. No Cooler, No Car, No Chance (infrastructure bottleneck)

3. Engage the Community (how local becomes a movement)

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Scale has a shadow: what can’t conform gets replaced. That’s why colonialism didn’t stop with a land grab. It rewrote the grocery list.

Sweet potatoes? Too sacred. Millet? Too culturally rooted. Sorghum? Too resistant to empire-building. So the system pushed them out.

Communities were told their ancestral crops were ‘primitive.’ Foodways were erased. Not by accident, but by design. Simply to make room for crops that move money faster than they move nutrients.

This is still happening today. You can see it in seed funding, in research priorities, in food deserts, and in extension programs. We don’t just grow calories. We grow values.

So here’s what I’m doing about it.

I’m in Everman, Texas, a suburb southeast of Fort Worth, deep in a food desert. I’m working with my local high school to reclaim a small part of the food system. Starting in 2026, we’ll grow a variety of crops at the school. We’ll begin with hydroponics and indoor container gardening to help students understand where food comes from.

My goal is bigger. I want to reclaim part of the school grounds to grow sweet potatoes and other high-yield, culturally resonant crops. Simple food. Real food. Grown with the community, for the community, and then given away freely.

I’m not claiming to reinvent the food system, but I am redesigning a small part of it to prove what’s possible. I’m building a feedback loop: starting with crops that thrive in small spaces, with indoor systems, and with local labor. We’ll measure what works. We’ll adapt. This is about more than growing food. It’s about building ability by doing something reliable, repairable, and repeatable. A small, replicable system that can become a blueprint for local sovereignty.

I’m not interested in aid. I’m interested in agency.

I want kids to see farming as something sacred again. I want aunties and grandmas to taste something they haven’t had in a long while. And I want other communities to ask: If Everman can begin to grow sovereignty, with limited land, limited budget, and unlimited heart, what might be possible where you live?

Of course, there are obstacles. Time. Funding. Buy-in.

Buy-in means students want to grow, staff protect the time, and the community trusts the follow-through. It’s not easy to convince a school to turn part of its grounds into a working farm. It’s not easy to get students excited about soil when they’ve never tasted a tomato off the vine. And it’s not easy to convince a community to trust that this time, the food is for them. But we’re going to do it anyway.

This isn’t about going back. It isn’t about laying blame. It’s about going deeper. Because food has never been just about hunger. It’s about memory, power, and who gets to matter. It’s about what gets planted, and how that always tells the truth.

What crop would you bring back if you had one plot of land and a willing community? I’m all ears. Drop it in the comments.

For me? I see fruit trees in the school courtyard. I see kids harvesting lettuce from indoor hydroponics. I see a one-acre regenerative garden feeding hundreds. And I see aunties and elders walking home with bags of food, paid for not in dollars, but in dignity.

Writing without a payway is important to me, but writing does take time. If this post was valuable to you in any way, I would be honored if you’d consider buying me a coffee to support what I am doing. It would make my day!

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When we talk about hunger, we ask what food costs, as if the dollar amount on the receipt tells the full story. As if price alone is a complete accounting of land, labor, water, time, risk, and human dignity. As if food is simply a product that arrives in a package, and not a link in a chain of relationships that begins long before the checkout line and continues long after the meal.

Let’s be blunt about this: cost and worth are not the same thing.

The supermarket price tells you what you paid today. It doesn’t tell you what the land paid to keep producing. It doesn’t tell you what the farmer absorbed to make the math work. It doesn’t tell you what communities lose when the work of feeding themselves becomes invisible.

That’s the part we rarely name out loud: cheap food is never cheap. It is simple, the cost is paid somewhere else: by soil, by people, or by our future.

We’ve trained ourselves to speak one language: price. And when price becomes the only language we recognize, the system it builds behaves exactly like you’d expect. It extracts. It simplifies. It compresses the complexity of life into a unit cost and then congratulates itself for efficiency.

That’s why I keep coming back to a different frame: food isn’t primarily a product.

Food is a relationship. Not as poetry, but as a design principle.

A relationship implies proximity. It implies feedback. It implies accountability. In a real relationship, you can’t endlessly externalize consequences and still call it healthy. If you can’t see the person on the other side of the transaction, if you can’t feel the downstream effects of a decision, if the costs can be shifted to someone who will never get a vote, then the system isn’t “efficient.” It’s extractive.

And nothing exposes that more clearly than the debate over healthy meals, SNAP benefits, and nutritional guidelines. (Read more: Healthy Meal Is Only $3.)

The “Healthy Meal for $3” phrase travels well because it offers a comforting moral shortcut: if a healthy meal can be done cheaply, then food insecurity must be the result of poor choices. But that’s not how real life works. That $3 meal isn’t just a recipe and a receipt. It’s a whole infrastructure of assumptions that many of the people making the claim don’t have to notice.

It assumes you have transportation that’s reliable and affordable. It assumes a grocery store within reach. It assumes time to shop, time to cook, and a schedule that allows planning, not scrambling. It assumes you have a kitchen, a fridge, basic tools, storage space, and the mental bandwidth to manage food like a project. It assumes your life has margin available for you to optimize.

Now put that “$3” claim in the hands of someone living the opposite. A night-shift worker. A parent juggling two jobs. Someone riding a bus with groceries in their lap and a clock that doesn’t stop. In that reality, “$3” isn’t guidance. It lands like a verdict.

For people living without margin, “$3” becomes less like advice and more like a moral judgment. It turns basic survival into a personal failure. It turns policy into a lecture. It makes the system’s design disappear, replacing it with a story about individual willpower.

That’s why I keep coming back to a line that should be obvious but rarely drives decision-making: affordability isn’t access.

Price is downstream of design. If you want to understand what food is worth, you don’t start with a number. You start with the conditions required for the number to be true. And once you start naming those conditions, you’re forced into the part of the conversation most people avoid, because it’s just not shareable as a slogan.

Infrastructure.

We can talk about regeneration, dignity, local resilience, and community connection all day. But you can’t eat values. You can’t scale a relationship on vibes. If we want a food culture built on connection instead of extraction, we have to build the boring, unglamorous, deeply practical systems that make connection possible in real life.

This is where the local-food story often collapses. People love the idea of local farms, until the system asks them to confront what it takes to keep a farm alive. Everyone says they want more local food, but we’ve built a world where the small local farmer is expected to carry the weight of the entire supply chain: cooling, washing, packing, storing, distribution, marketing, delivery, compliance, and paperwork. But, without the shared systems that make any of that sustainable.

That isn’t entrepreneurship. It’s abandonment dressed up as independence.

If you want a concrete example of how this plays out, it’s the question I keep asking in No Cooler, No Car, No Chance: where does the food go after it’s harvested? Not in the abstract, but on a Tuesday night, in July, in Texas heat. Where do farmers cool it, clean it, store it, aggregate it, deliver it, and move it reliably without burning out or hemorrhaging money? (Read more: No Cooler, No Car, No Chance.)

And then there’s the part most people never see: cold chain requirements, wash-pack realities, temperature controls, delivery windows, the logistics of making food safe and consistent at scale. This is the unsexy backbone of “local”, and it’s exactly what our system rarely funds.

Most people don’t realize how often the answer is: they can’t. Not because they’re lazy. Not because they lack hustle. But because we romanticize “local” while starving the shared infrastructure that makes local viable.

If we believe food is a relationship, then we need to build the infrastructure of a relationship. Systems that create feedback loops between land, farmer, community, and eater. Systems that reward stewardship and continuity, not just volume and speed.

And yes, that’s where “movement” stops being a word and becomes a practice. Right now, “Buy Local” is not a movement. It’s a transaction preference.

A movement is what happens when people organize around a shared story and then build the structures that make that story real. Local doesn’t scale only by acreage. Local scales by belonging. It scales when the people around a farm stop acting like customers and start acting like participants. When they become consistent supporters, advocates, and builders of the conditions that make farms possible. (If you want the movement lens, that’s what I laid out here in Engage the Community.)

If you’ve ever felt the gap between the world you want and the system you’re stuck inside, you’re not alone, and you’re not “too idealistic.” You’re just noticing the design.

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Farmers are tired of being romanticized. Consumers are tired of being blamed. Both groups are exhausted by narratives that sound clean in public and collapse in real life.

The current system, designed around price alone, will squeeze labor until it breaks, simplify ecology until it degrades, centralize supply until disruption turns into crisis, and then act surprised when farmers burn out and communities lose resilience. That’s not a moral failure. That’s a design outcome.

And I’m not writing this to win the $3 argument. I’m writing it because we need to build Food System 2.0, a new version of the system that is designed around value.

When a system is designed around value, it does something different. It brings consequences back into view. It redistributes support and builds local capacity. It keeps more of the value where it was created and among the people doing the work. It doesn’t pretend $3 is an answer. It asks what would need to be built so that eating well is possible without extracting from land, labor, or time.

That’s the invitation here: stop outsourcing the relationship.

You don’t need to become a food policy expert to participate. You don’t need to win every debate. You do need to stop acting as if feeding ourselves is a personal virtue project and start treating it like a shared civic responsibility.

If the frame of Healthy Meal Is Only $3 made you angry or frustrated, good. Anger is often the first sign that someone has noticed a gap between the story we tell and the world we live in. But don’t let it end as outrage. Let it become design.

Because price is a receipt. Food is a relationship. And relationships don’t survive extraction.

We need to build the field. We can’t just argue about the scoreboard.

Writing without a payway is important to me, but writing does take time. If this post was valuable to you in any way, I would be honored if you’d consider buying me a coffee to support what I am doing. It would make my day!

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Her evidence? A simulation.

Her suggestion? It’s easy.

“A piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing.” That’s how she described a healthy meal. Not a budget idea on the back of a napkin. This was the official government recommendation.

As you have probably seen, the internet didn’t agree. Everywhere I looked, the image of a single broccoli floret had become instant satire. But what triggered the backlash wasn’t just the flawed nutritional arithmetic. It was the implication that if people are struggling to eat well, then maybe they’re just not trying hard enough.

I think that framing is very dangerous. When leaders flatten food into a simple dollar valuation, they then turn survival into a personal choice instead of a structural challenge. It makes it sound like the people I’ve worked with just don’t care enough to eat right. That’s what really angers me, how easy it has become to blame the people closest to the problem while standing ten miles away.

Ultimately, the proposed solution to food insecurity sounded like something that came out of a tech-bro coding bootcamp: “we ran 1,000 simulations,” and it told me exactly who wasn’t in the room.

Now, to be clear, this essay isn’t about one quote. It’s about three assumptions that have quietly shaped our national food narrative and kept us locked in a system that continues to fail the very people it claims to serve.

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Affordability is not the same as access.

Yeah, you can build a $3 meal.

If you have a car. A grocery store near you. Bulk buying options. A functioning kitchen. Time to cook. Time to plan. Enough emotional bandwidth to juggle price, protein, and portions across a week.

But here’s the blunt, unvarnished truth: a single mother in a food desert doesn’t just need $3 for the food to make the meal. She needs an hour she doesn’t have, grocery options she can reach, and a set of appliances that actually work.

The simple fact is that affordability on paper means nothing if it can’t be practiced in real life.

Nutrition is not just about compliance.

When the government talks about food, it often sounds like the description of a spreadsheet. Calories, macros, pyramids. Meals aren’t equations. They are cultural, emotional, and social. A piece of chicken and broccoli might check a box, but it doesn’t nourish dignity.

People want to feel full, not just fed. They want food that tastes like home, not just fuel. The story of nourishment has always been bigger than nutrient density.

Simulations are not reality.

The USDA says it ran over 1,000 meal simulations. One proposed day includes canned tuna, cottage cheese, salad with oil, and roasted chicken with frozen vegetables. Technically healthy, but effectively tone-deaf.

Because no simulation can tell the story of a grandmother caring for three grandkids with no car. Or the night-shift worker who has to choose between overtime and the grocery run. Or the SNAP user riding two buses to reach a store with any fresh produce.

A simulation may calculate nutrients. But it doesn’t measure the cost of stress, fatigue, or living without a safety net.

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The bigger issue is disconnection.

The deeper issue here isn’t how cheap we can make dinner. It’s how disconnected our food policy has become from lived experience. We’re treating poverty like a puzzle to be optimized, instead of a pressure cooker that needs systemic relief.

THIS is exactly why the solution isn’t another nutrition guideline. It’s a ground-up redesign. We need a Food System 2.0, one that prioritizes local production, regional distribution, and community-based infrastructure.

This looks like small farms feeding neighbors. Local food hubs that can redistribute harvests within the same zip code. Mutual aid fridges. Co-ops. Schools that buy from farms 30 miles away, not 3,000.

Because when we localize food, we don’t just reduce emissions or improve freshness. We can return power to the people who grow, distribute, and eat it. We can make access tangible. By doing these things, we will turn meals from simulations into shared solutions.

So please, let’s retire the $3 meal myth. Let’s stop pretending that budget efficiency is the same as food equity. Would you serve that plate to your child? Then why ask a struggling family to?

Let’s build a system where affordability doesn’t mean austerity; it can mean abundance, shared.

And if you’re building this kind of food system, if you know the local co-op, the grower’s network, or the mutual aid fridge that’s rewriting what access looks like, I want to hear from you. I’m not writing this because I’ve built the answer. I’m writing it because I know the system is broken, and I know that someone, somewhere, is already doing it better. So, if you’re doing the work or supporting those who are, then share it. Let’s map the stories.

Let’s build the network of people who have stopped waiting for permission to feed their communities differently.

Writing without a payway is important to me, but writing does take time. If this post was valuable to you in any way, I would be honored if you’d consider buying me a coffee to support what I am doing. It would make my day!

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They store well.
They scale.
They fit into monoculture machinery and global trade.
And the result is that they push aside everything that doesn’t.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

Colonialism didn’t stop with a land grab. Ultimately, it rewrote the grocery list.

Sweet potatoes? Too sacred.
Millet? Too culturally rooted.
Sorghum? Too resistant to empire building.

Entire communities were told their ancestral crops were “primitive.”
Whole foodways were erased simply to make room for profit margins.

This is still happening today, and you can see it in seed funding, research priorities, food deserts, and extension programs.

We don’t just grow calories.
We grow values.

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So here’s what I’m doing about it:

I am in Everman, Texas, a suburb southeast of Fort Worth, deep in a food desert. I am working with my local high school to reclaim a small part of the food system.

Starting in 2026, we’ll be growing a variety of crops at the school. Beginning with hydroponics and indoor container gardening, I plan to teach my students where food comes from.

But the goal? Reclaim some of the grounds outside the school to grow sweet potatoes and other high-yield, culturally resonant crops.

Simple food.
Real food.
Grown with the community, for the community, and then given away freely.

I’m not trying to reinvent the food system. I’m intentionally designing a feedback loop.
Starting with crops that thrive in small spaces, indoor systems, with local labor. We’ll measure what works. Then adapt.
This is about more than growing food. It’s about building ability by doing something reliable, repairable, and repeatable.

This isn’t aid.
It’s agency.

This is a blueprint.
A proof of concept for what happens when we center dignity instead of volume.

I want kids to see farming as something sacred again.
I want aunties and grandmas to taste something they haven’t had in a long while.
And I want other communities to ask:

If Everman can begin to grow sovereignty, with limited land, limited budget, and unlimited heart, what might be possible where you live?

Of course, there are obstacles.
Time. Funding. Buy-in.

It’s not easy to convince a school to turn part of its grounds into a working farm.
It’s not easy to get students excited about soil when they’ve never tasted a tomato off the vine.
And it’s not easy to convince a community to trust that this time, the food is for them.

But we’re doing it anyway.

This isn’t about going back. This isn’t about laying blame.
It’s about going deeper.

Because food is never just about hunger.
It’s about memory, power, and who gets to matter.

It’s about what gets planted will always tell the truth.

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What crop would you bring back if you had land and a willing community?
I’m all ears. Drop it in the comments.

As for me?
I see fruit trees across the schoolyard.
I see kids harvesting lettuce from indoor hydroponics.
I see a one-acre regenerative garden feeding hundreds.
And I see aunties and elders walking home with bags of food. Paid for not in dollars, but in dignity.

Writing without a payway is important to me, but writing does take time. If this post was valuable to you in any way, I would be honored if you’d consider buying me a coffee to support what I am doing. It would make my day!

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#FoodJustice #SeedSovereignty #SweetPotatoes #DecolonizeAg #LocalFoodSystems #TexasFarming #FoodDeserts #GrowSomethingReal

But pointing fingers at fruit isn’t enough.

Because the problem isn’t really the tomatoes.

The problem is the system that makes bad decisions look logical.

We have been told that local food is idealistic, boutique, and expensive. Meanwhile, industrial ag continues to burn energy, extract value, and dump externalities - all out of sight, and out of mind.

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And we pay for it. Not just in emissions.

But in fragile supply chains, and nutrient-poor food. In disappearing farmland and in underemployed labor. In cities like Dallas, where food deserts lie amid a series of empty lots and decaying buildings.

The hard truth? If we keep moralizing instead of designing, we’ll waste another decade.

Here’s what I believe: A truly sustainable food system must be designed, not romanticized.

That means:

1. Proximity with productivity: Grow foods closer to eaters and use intelligent systems for efficiency.

2. Circular economics: Treat water, labor, and energy as assets to be optimized. These are not costs to be externalized.

3. Local infrastructure: Invest in aggregation, storage, and distribution so “local” isn’t just a farmers’ market on Saturdays.

In the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, we need to build models that make local food economically viable, nutritionally dense, and operationally replicable. This isn’t a garden project. It’s a systems intervention.

Our food system doesn’t need any more rebranding. It needs rewiring.

We don’t need another tomato think piece.

We do need:

Leaders willing to fund infrastructure, not only awareness

Consumers who vote with their forks and their feet

Policy that will back regional resilience over global fragility

So next time you see a tomato in winter, don’t just look at it. Ask what kind of system made it seem like the only option.

We’re not just growing food in Dallas.

We’re growing logic, dignity, and resilience.

If you’re building infrastructure for local food, especially if you are in Dallas...

We need to talk.

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Not the kind you earn once with a good product. The kind you earn repeatedly with follow-through, consistency, and shared risk. The kind that allows a Chef to text you in a panic on a Saturday and trust that you’ll show up an hour later with the mushrooms they need for tonight’s special.

That actually happened to me.

We were just starting to build our mushroom farm’s restaurant accounts. One chef had taken a chance on us with a new dish, and it was apparently too popular. They nearly sold out on a Friday night. By Saturday afternoon, I had a message from him asking if there was any way we could deliver more that day. We didn’t usually do weekend deliveries, but I said yes. I went to the farm, harvested fresh, loaded up the car, made the drive, and handed him a fresh order an hour later. That favor turned into trust. That trust turned into a steady account, and that introduced us to others.

People talk about scaling farms. But they rarely talk about what it takes to scale trust.

This is why I believe the farms that thrive long-term aren’t always the ones with the best margins or most pristine produce. They’re the ones who can deliver consistently. Who communicate clearly. Those who build systems that say: you can count on us.

At a certain point, the food is table stakes. What matters is how you show up.

And here’s where it gets interesting: trust is scalable. But only if we design for it.

When I say design, I’m not talking about logos or websites. I’m talking about feedback loops. Communication templates. Agreements. Clear ordering systems. Honest pricing.

Too often, local food depends on hustle. On charm. On last-minute texts and back-of-truck transactions. That might work for a season. It might even work for a few years. But it doesn't build a system that can last.

Real trust lives in the boring stuff: follow-up emails, updated availability lists, and reliable drop windows. It’s the chef who knows you’ll text if there’s a delay. The school buyer who knows you’ll give them a straight answer about volume. The father who knows their CSA box will show up on time.

This is also where we start to connect back to the "Infrastructure" pillar in the local food roadmap. Because trust and infrastructure are deeply linked. It’s hard to deliver reliably if you don’t have cold storage. Or if your van is held together with duct tape. Or if your ordering process changes every week.

Scaling trust means investing in infrastructure—not just physical, but relational. Digital systems that let customers order easily. Templates that standardize communication. Delivery routes that aren’t reliant on heroics.

Farmers need support to do this. It shouldn’t be a solo act. But it also shouldn’t be postponed until everything is perfect. Every time you show up reliably, you’re building something.

And the payoff? That’s when trust starts working for you.

Chefs refer you. Buyers advocate for you. Customers promote you. Not because you asked, but because you proved yourself trustworthy again and again.

And just like that, your small farm stops feeling small.

So if you’re a farmer wondering how to grow without burning out, start here:

• Where in your business could you make trust easier to earn?

• What system could you improve this week to reduce friction or build consistency?

• Who already trusts you—and how can you make their experience even smoother?

We don’t have to scale like Big Ag. But we can scale our connection. And when we do that with intention, we create something worth keeping.

Let’s make local food dependable. Let’s make it durable. Let’s build it on trust—and let that trust grow.

But some of the most values-driven farms I’ve known sold their greens to chefs on Tuesday, packed CSA boxes on Wednesday, and delivered clamshells of lettuce to the neighborhood grocery store by Friday. Their work wasn’t defined by where it showed up. It was defined by the relationships they built at every step.

Still, the narrative sticks: farmers market good, supermarket bad. It’s clean. Familiar. It gives us a story with clear heroes. But the truth is, it’s not that simple.

When I ran my aquaponic lettuce farm, we sold to a small local grocery store. We didn’t move massive volume, but it was consistent. Something we could count on each week. We included a poster with our product that showed photos of the farm, shared our story, and invited customers to visit. It sat next to our greens and became a kind of farmstand inside the store. People told us they felt more connected to the food just by seeing it. That sign mattered.

Later, with our mushroom farm, we sold to restaurants, grocery stores, and farmers markets. We made a point to tell our market customers, “If you ever run out during the week, grab more at the store.” That wasn’t a fallback. It was a bridge. And it built trust. People felt like we were part of their world. Not just a stall they stumbled across.

This kind of flexibility matters. Many small farms rely on mixed sales channels not just for profit, but for survival. A market may be rained out. A restaurant may change chefs. A school lunch program might need consistent deliveries at odd hours. Without the option to sell through multiple outlets, a single disruption can derail a week—or a season. And when a farm folds, it’s not just a loss of food. It’s a loss of local jobs, soil knowledge, and community relationships.

We also lose something larger when we narrow the definition of local food. These partnerships don’t just support farms. They shape what kids eat at lunch, what seniors find at the food bank, and what working families can pick up with their groceries. When we expand our definition of local, we expand who gets access.

That’s why this idea of a false choice bothers me. Because when we treat local food as something that only counts when it’s sold hand to hand, we erase all the ways it’s working behind the scenes. We ignore school food service directors reworking their procurement plans just to buy from a farm 12 miles away. We overlook small grocers who clear space in their cooler for a farmer’s clamshells because it’s the right thing to do. We miss stories like mine. And probably yours too.

We also ignore the potential of the system itself to change. I’ve seen a grocery buyer go out of his way to source seasonally. I’ve seen an institutional chef ask for a farm tour. And I’ve seen small farms take what they learned at the market and use it to build signage and sampling stations inside the retail aisle. These are not competing approaches. They’re reinforcing ones. And when we treat them that way, everyone wins.

The truth is, I’m not anti-grocery. I’m pro-connection. And wherever that connection can be built, it counts.

If we want a food system that actually feeds people well, we have to stop asking where food was sold and start asking who it served. And how.

Local isn’t a place. It’s a principle. And it lives wherever people make the effort to bring real food a little closer.

Where have you seen local food show up in unexpected places?
What relationships make something feel local to you?

1. Land Access

2. Farmer Training

3. Financial Support

4. Infrastructure Needs

5. Finding New Markets

6. Policy and Advocacy

If local farms want to scale, they can’t just grow food—they need to grow a movement.

This is the seventh and final essay in the Roadmap to Scale Small Farms series. We’ve talked land, labor, capital, infrastructure, markets, and policy. But none of it sticks without one last ingredient:

Community.

Not in a soft, vague way. In a strategic, system-building way.

If local food is going to compete with Big Ag, it needs fans, not just customers. It needs Tribes in the Seth Godin sense: people who don’t just buy your product—they spread your story.

The Stakes: Why Community Isn’t Optional

Local farms face hard limits. They can’t ship across the country. They don’t have marketing budgets. Their advantage is relationships.

If the community doesn’t know the farm exists—or worse, doesn’t care—the farm fails.

But when the community shows up? When people bring their friends to the farmstand, share your lettuce box on Instagram, or ask their favorite restaurant why it isn’t sourcing from you?

That’s scale. Not of acreage, but of identity.

In a world of anonymous shopping, choosing local becomes a declaration of values.
It's not just what you buy. It's what that choice says about who you are.

How to Grow Engagement That Lasts

There’s no single recipe. But there is a playbook. Here are three principles that work:

1. Invite, Then Involve

People are curious. They want to know how food is grown.

So invite them in. Offer free workshops. Run open farm days. Tell your story in person. And then: give them a next step.

Try a free sample. Take home a recipe. Come back with a photo of your meal and get 10% off next week.

You could even offer a sticker to any kid who tries a vegetable—and a t-shirt if they post about it.

The hypothetical reward? A loyal advocate who brings others along.

2. Build Participation into the Product

Programs like "volunteer harvest shares" are simple but powerful. People work a few hours on the farm, and in return take home a share of the harvest.

It’s more than barter. It’s ownership. They’ll tell their friends, bring their kids, and post it online.

Engagement creates connection. And connection builds trust.

3. Design for Shared Culture

Think beyond one farm. Build shared experiences:

• A Local Food Bingo Card where customers visit different farms to win rewards.

• A "Local Food Challenge" month is promoted by the city or school district.

• Recognition for restaurants that source 10%, 15%, 25%, or more of ingredients from local farms.

These aren’t gimmicks. They’re systems of shared meaning.

Final Thought: Fans, Not Followers

You don’t need a bigger megaphone. You need better roots.

The goal isn’t to just increase foot traffic. It’s to increase loyalty, pride, and participation.

Because the more someone sees your farm as their story? The more they protect, promote, and grow it.

What have you seen work? What tools have helped you convert a shopper into an advocate?

Let’s build a playbook together. Because no farmer scales alone.

1. Land Access

2. Farmer Training

3. Financial Support

4. Infrastructure Needs

5. Finding New Markets

While the first five essays in this series focused on how to make farming more viable—from land access to markets—this one takes a necessary detour. Because even the best farm plan will buckle if policy and advocacy don’t support it.

Especially at the local level.

We don’t need more press releases about food deserts. We need city policies that reduce friction, fund first steps, and make small-scale agriculture not just legal, but welcome.

Here are three levers local leaders can pull today to support the growth of small urban farms:

1. Incentivize Local Food Like It Matters

Big Ag has lobbyists. Local farms have booth fees.

At our mushroom farm, we paid over $300 per week just in booth costs to sell at 12 farmers markets across five municipalities.

Imagine if a city offered even a partial rebate of market fees for farms selling in their zip code. Or a $500 permit credit for local food producers.

These aren’t massive subsidies. But for small farms, they’re meaningful. Especially for new growers making early location decisions.

Want to ensure the food goes to the right places? Tie incentives to impact: extra benefits for farms that sell in low-access areas or donate unsold harvests to local food banks.

Not every policy needs a price tag. But the ones that do should reflect our values.

2. Zoning Shouldn't Be a Death Sentence

In most cities, growing food commercially on residential or industrial land is either banned, unclear, or buried in red tape.

Dallas has started to change that. Its Urban Agriculture Plan is one of the few forward-looking frameworks that sets real goals for food production and removes the zoning barriers that kill most urban farms before they start.

It’s not fast. It’s not flashy. But it’s happening.

And the next step is simple: replicate it across every municipality in the DFW region.

Cities don’t need to reinvent the wheel. They need to borrow the blueprint.

3. Local Institutions Must Be Buyers, Not Bystanders

Some say there’s no market for local food. Others say there aren’t enough farmers to supply it.

Both are right. That’s why we need to build both, together.

What if school districts, hospitals, and city agencies were required to source a percentage of their food from local farms?

What if employers offered Harvest Box programs through local growers as a wellness benefit?

What if anchor institutions like universities or Fortune 500 companies pledged to move even 5% of their cafeteria spend to local producers?

The result wouldn’t just be economic. It would be cultural.

Buying local food would become the norm, not the niche.

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Systems Build Momentum

We often talk about local food as a moral good.

But moral goods don’t scale without smart systems.

We need to:

• Pull on the levers that spark new farms: funding, policy, visibility.

• Push hard against the outdated codes and cultural defaults that keep them small.

Not someday. Now.

The farms are ready. The food is wanted. Let’s build the systems to match.

What policy shifts would most support farms in your community? What invisible friction could we remove?

Comment below or reach out. Let’s name the levers.

And then pull them together.

1. Land Access

2. Farmer Training

3. Financial Support

4. Infrastructure Needs

A farm can have land, funding, infrastructure, and proper training, but even with all of that, there is one final piece that determines if the system will sustain or collapse:

Revenue.

You can reduce startup costs and share equipment. But if there’s no one to buy your greens? You’re out of business.

Too many new farms stall here: strong product, no market.

Because we’ve built a culture where ‘local’ means virtue signaling, not viable distribution.

The Stakes: What Happens Without Market Access

We can train a generation of growers, fund them, equip them—but if we don’t create channels for them to sell into, the effort collapses.

Farmers burn out. Consumers return to imports. Local food loses credibility.

A viable system depends on building the final mile: reimagining where and how food is sold—and who keeps the value.

Why the Current Wholesale Model Fails

Let’s break it down.

A farmer grows lettuce. They sell to a broker for $0.50. That broker sells to a distributor for $1. The distributor sells to a grocer for $2. The consumer buys it for nearly $4.

That is a 100% price increase at every step of the chain, and the farmers only gets 12.5% of the final value.

That margin might work on thousand-acre commodity fields. But for a 3,000-square-foot urban greenhouse? It’s laughable.

Urban farms need new models. Or at least revisions to the existing ones.

When I ran a mushroom farm and aquaponics operation, we earned at least 55% of retail value when selling direct to chefs. It wasn’t flashy, but it was consistent. And we kept all of the revenue on the farm.

Farmers' Markets, on the other hand?

Farmers Markets: A Tool, Not a Strategy

I’ve had market days where we sold out in three hours.

And I’ve also held down a tent in a torrential downpour—three inches of rain in 90 minutes—customers gripping the frame beside me, bracing against the wind to keep it from taking flight.

Some days were gold. Others, gutting.

Farmers' markets are episodic. Unpredictable. Revenue swings just as wildly—booming one week, bottoming out the next.

You can’t build a food system on chaos.

CSA 2.0: Pay-As-You-Go Boxes

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is evolving.

Old model: Pay upfront for a full season. Good for the farm, risky for the buyer.

New model: Weekly boxes. Pay-as-you-go. Flexible, affordable, marketable.

Here’s how it compares:

Local example: Mike Bell at Dallas Half Acre. A full-time teacher, part-time farmer, growing on less than 5,000 sq ft. He sells 20–30 boxes per week at $15 each, doing this only part-time.

Market value for the boxes is closer to $25, and there are 650 homes within a three-mile radius of his farm. His max output? 80 boxes/week.

At his full production capacity, that pencils out to $100K+ potential annual revenue.

That’s not a ceiling. That type of model is just the start.

Aggregators: Digital Hubs for Local Food

Now add infrastructure.

Profound Foods built a system connecting 150+ farms to 100+ chefs and 500+ consumers in DFW. Each farm posted its inventory weekly. Orders came in. Delivery was streamlined.

It worked because it made buying local food feel effortless.

Pair that model with shared cold storage or last-mile delivery hubs (from Essay 4), and suddenly a small grower can reach hundreds of buyers with a single drop-off.

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The Modern Urban Food System

Here’s what works:

• Weekly harvest boxes

• Restaurant sales with a human story

• Aggregator tech for frictionless fulfillment

• Regional standards (e.g. "DFW Clean-Grown") to build trust

This isn’t hypothetical. It’s real, and what we lack is the system to connect it.

So let’s fix that.

Because this isn’t about nostalgia.

It’s about sovereignty.

If we want food grown by neighbors—not corporations—we need to stop pretending the current system will fix itself.

Markets don’t just exist. We build them.

Call to Action:

This week, ask one local leader, grocer, or neighbor: What would it take for you to buy from a small farm like Mike’s? Leave your response below -- I want to hear all of them.

The answers build the next layer of the system.

Writing without a payway is important to me, but writing does take time. If this post was valuable to you in any way, I would be honored if you’d consider buying me a coffee to support what I am doing. It would make my day!

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We simply don’t produce enough food locally.

There are many challenges to building a localized food economy, and future essays will explore them. But we have to start with this: if we don’t produce more local food, we’ll never build a real local food economy.

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Here in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex—the sixth largest urban area in the U.S. with nearly 8 million residents—we're not going to achieve food sovereignty. That’s not the goal. My objective is more focused, but still deeply ambitious: redirect just 1% of the DFW food system into local channels. That’s a $400 million annual impact.

But to do that, we need more production. That means we need to address one foundational issue: land access.

Redefining the Farm: Small, Smart, and Already Working

Urban land is expensive. Cities are designed to maximize the tax basis of every parcel, so agricultural use is often discouraged—intentionally or not. Traditional farms won't work within these constraints. The city simply doesn't want farms that look like farms.

But here’s the truth I know from experience: urban farming is a different breed. And it works.

I’ve owned several farms. One aquaponic operation spanned two greenhouses totaling 3,500 sqft, on a 5,000 sqft footprint. A mushroom farm I co-founded was run in a 2,000 sqft warehouse—formerly an autobody shop. I know successful market farmers working 2,500 sqft or less, and profitable microgreen growers operating under 1,000 sqft.

We don’t need massive land. We need intelligent design.

Urban farming already thrives elsewhere:

• Curtis Stone teaches farming on vacant urban lots.

• Karen Washington built a NYC network of community farms on unused plots.

• Green City Growers in Boston grows on rooftops.

• Gotham Greens launched high-tech greenhouses atop grocery stores.

The proof exists. The models are out there. We just need to build DFW’s version.

Unlocking Land: Creative Access in the Urban Jungle

So how do we begin?

Step 1: Map what’s already growing.

We need to know who is growing food in DFW today, and where. This foundational map will reveal patterns—and gaps.

Step 2: Identify underutilized land.

What should we look for?

• Vacant lots

• Empty warehouses

• Rooftops on schools, offices, retail centers

• Oversized backyards

These spaces are everywhere if you train your eye. They’re underused, overlooked, and often hiding in plain sight.

Step 3: Prioritize proximity.

Rank sites by accessibility to consumers. Proximity to the end customer reduces transportation, refrigeration, and delivery costs—and increases profitability.

Step 4: Create accessible ownership models.

Urban land costs more. We need creative solutions:

• Lease-to-own models for beginning farmers

• Long-term land leases with equity options

• A nonprofit or land trust that purchases and holds land, offering favorable terms to mission-aligned growers

Step 5: Reform zoning with intention.

Urban ag faces real regulatory friction. I know this first-hand. In my first farm buildout, I was told to pour 18" concrete footings around a seasonal greenhouse. In another case, a city required a paved road over a mile long to get to a tool shed alongside a field of row crops for fire department access.

These aren’t just hassles. They’re startup killers. We need micro-farm zoning classifications that account for scale, seasonality, and sustainability—not legacy industrial standards.

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The Path Forward: From Land to Life

Addressing land access is step one. It doesn’t grow a single tomato by itself. But it’s the necessary foundation.

From here, we move to the next part of the roadmap: training and supporting a new generation of urban farmers. We need systems of mentorship, hands-on experience, and financial scaffolding that empower people to turn those empty lots into living ecosystems.

If you have thoughts, critiques, or want to help build this, join me. I don’t have all the answers—I’m asking questions and inviting collaborators.

Because this doesn’t get built by one person. It takes a network. It takes advocates, growers, designers, chefs, consumers, and neighbors.

And maybe, just maybe, it takes a few thousand square feet of forgotten space and someone willing to turn it into food.

Let’s plant some seeds.

Writing without a payway is important to me, but writing does take time. If this post was valuable to you in any way, I would be honored if you’d consider buying me a coffee to support what I am doing. It would make my day!

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I understand this is not a goal that will happen quickly or easily. But I do believe that it is possible, and I think that most people would agree that this type of outcome would only have positive effects on our community. I believe that by focusing on small-scale farms using innovative production methods, it is very possible for DFW to create a sustainable, localized food system.

This goal would need to maximize productivity using minimal land, empower new farmers and food producers, and intentionally foster growth in the resilience of the region's food economy. This would certainly require the right mix of land access, training, financial support, infrastructure, and market development, but I believe that small farms can drive this shift toward a thriving, community-focused food system.

How do we get there? Every destination begins with a plan, so the first step needs to be the design of a roadmap that will foster the growth of small farms in the DFW area of North Texas. This plan will need to foster the growth of farms that are innovative, efficient, nimble, and sustainable. These farms are the crucial ingredient that is needed to produce the quantity of local food production that is needed to meet the goal of diverting $400M annually into the local food economy. To do this we will need to have a plan that allows us to maximize productivity across a minimal land footprint, and by leveraging advanced farming techniques.

The plan that follows is a first draft of an idea. It is not meant to be a finished product. There will be multiple iterations and revisions of this concept. But remember that if the best time to plant a tree was 10yrs ago, the second-best time is today. We need more local food production. We should have started a decade ago… but we can start now.

My ask of you is to read the following and give some feedback. Give me your thoughts on this, and especially your criticisms. I do not have all the ideas, and there are many of you who have been working on this for many years. I want to tap into the knowledge and experience that you each have. Hopefully we can build something that will take on momentum and keep building.

Please join the conversation and help me plant some seeds today!

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(Proposed) Roadmap for Scaling Small Farms in DFW

1. Develop Accessible Land Solutions for Small Farms

Land acquisition is often the biggest hurdle for small-scale farming. For small farms (greenhouses or gardens on 1/4 acre or less), creative land-use solutions are essential.

Action Steps:

• Urban and Suburban Land Mapping:

  • Identify small plots of underutilized land in urban and suburban areas (e.g., vacant lots, backyards, or rooftops) that can host greenhouses or soil gardens.

  • Prioritize areas with easy access to consumers (restaurants, neighborhoods) to reduce transport costs.

• Lease-to-Own Models:

  • Create lease-to-own programs that help new farmers access small plots at affordable rates while building equity over time.

• Micro-Farm Zoning:

  • Work with city governments to create zoning classifications specifically for small farms, allowing greenhouses or soil gardens to operate in residential or commercial areas.

2. Promote Training in Innovative Farming Techniques

Small farms thrive with techniques that maximize productivity in limited space. Providing education and resources for these methods is critical.

Action Steps:

• Workshops and Courses:

  • Partner with local agricultural organizations (e.g., Texas A&M AgriLife, urban farming nonprofits) to offer hands-on workshops in:

    • Hydroponics: Soil-less farming using nutrient-rich water.

    • Aquaponics: Combining fish farming with hydroponic plant cultivation.

    • Regenerative Soil Farming: Methods like no-till farming, cover cropping, and composting working to build healthy, carbon-rich soils.

    • Vertical Farming: Growing crops in vertically stacked layers to optimize space usage in greenhouses or indoor farms.

• Small Farm Incubators:

  • Establish small farm incubators where aspiring farmers can test these methods on small plots of land or in shared greenhouses.

• Peer Mentorship:

  • Create a network of experienced small-scale farmers who can mentor new farmers in these innovative techniques.

3. Financial Support Tailored for Small Farms

Small farms have unique financial needs, such as funding for greenhouses, hydroponic systems, or soil improvements. Offering targeted financial support is key.

Action Steps:

• Microgrants and Low-Interest Loans:

  • Offer small-scale farmers grants or microloans specifically for setting up greenhouses, irrigation systems, or hydroponic/aquaponic systems.

• Shared Funding Initiatives:

  • Encourage cooperative ownership of expensive equipment (e.g., hydroponic pumps, storage facilities) to reduce costs for individual farmers.

• Subsidies for Sustainable Practices:

  • Provide subsidies for small farms that adopt environmentally friendly practices, like water-efficient hydroponics or regenerative soil methods.

4. Build Infrastructure for Small Farm Success

Small-scale farmers need access to shared infrastructure and tools to succeed.

Action Steps:

• Shared Greenhouses:

  • Establish co-op greenhouses where multiple farmers can lease space for hydroponic or aquaponic farming.

• Tool Libraries:

  • Create a “tool library” where small-scale farmers can borrow equipment like soil tillers, irrigation kits, or greenhouse supplies.

• Cold Storage and Processing Centers:

  • Develop small, decentralized cold storage and food processing centers to help farmers store and package their products efficiently.

5. Create Markets for Small Farm Products

Small farms need reliable, local markets that value their innovative and sustainable methods.

Action Steps:

• Direct-to-Consumer Sales:

  • Promote CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) models where consumers subscribe to receive weekly produce from small farms.

  • Build an online platform to connect small farmers with local buyers, such as residents, chefs, or small grocers.

• Local Restaurant Partnerships:

  • Work with local restaurants to prioritize purchasing from small farms, especially those using innovative methods like hydroponics or regenerative farming.

• Micro-Farm Certification:

  • Develop a certification program that highlights farms using sustainable, small-scale methods, such as "DFW Clean-Grown" or "DFW Regenerative Micro-Farm."

6. Policy and Advocacy for Small Farms

Building a supportive policy environment for small farms is essential for their growth.

Action Steps:

• Small Farm Incentives:

  • Advocate for local tax breaks or subsidies for small-scale farms, particularly those using sustainable practices.

• Urban Agriculture Ordinances:

  • Push for ordinances that allow small farms to operate in urban areas, including residential and industrial zones.

• Local Procurement Policies:

  • Work with public institutions (e.g., schools, hospitals) to source a portion of their food from small farms in DFW.

7. Engage the Community to Support Small Farms

Public buy-in is critical to the success of small farms. Educating and engaging the community will help generate demand.

Action Steps:

• Public Workshops:

  • Host workshops and farm tours to teach residents about hydroponics, aquaponics, and regenerative farming.

• Neighborhood Farms:

  • Encourage community members to participate in or support small neighborhood farms, which can double as educational spaces.

• Local Food Challenges:

  • Launch a “DFW Local Food Challenge” to encourage consumers to source a percentage of their food from local small farms.

Timeline and Incremental Goals

To achieve the $400M target, here's a timeline focused on scaling small farms:

Year 1-2: Laying the Foundation

• Identify and secure 50 small plots of land for greenhouses or urban gardens.

• Train 100 new small-scale farmers in hydroponics, aquaponics, and regenerative practices.

• Establish 2-3 shared greenhouse hubs or incubators.

Year 3-5: Scaling Up

• Increase the number of operational small farms to 300 across DFW.

• Develop at least 5 food hubs or cold storage facilities tailored to small farms.

• Build partnerships with 50+ local restaurants and grocers to source products from small farms.

Year 6-10: Achieving the Goal

• Expand to 1,000 small farms in the region, collectively producing $400M in local food annually.

• Establish a robust ecosystem of shared infrastructure, supportive policies, and consumer demand.

• Make small farms a cornerstone of DFW's local food economy.

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Conclusion

By focusing on small-scale farms using innovative production methods, DFW can create a sustainable, localized food system. This approach maximizes productivity on minimal land, empowers new farmers, and builds resilience in the region's food economy. With the right mix of land access, training, financial support, infrastructure, and market development, small farms can drive the shift toward a thriving, community-focused food system.

Let’s grow smarter, more efficient farms—one small footprint at a time. 🌱

I have spent more than a few nights this past week awake and staring at my ceiling. Each time, my mind has been focusing on one particular question: Where is our food system headed?

Today, I want to explore some of the motivations and my thoughts that have led me to start this mission. First, some background, when I look at the food system here in Dallas-Fort Worth, I see a massive $40B industry. When I see numbers this big, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and think that small changes won't matter.

Confession time – I have been struggling with motivation for a while, because this is such a MASSIVE challenge. But this week, something happened that crystallized my focus. I realized that I don’t need to overhaul the entire system overnight. I don’t need to tear down everything and build a perfect system. Instead, I can use the levers I can reach and start to shift things that way.

My goal is now highly specific: I want to redirect 1% of spending to local producers.

When this goal is realized, that will represent $400M annually that would now support farms, food producers, and distributors right here in DFW.

Now, I admit, if you just focus on the number, "1%" - it does sound small. It would be easy to dismiss this as ultimately ineffectual. BUT the reality is that if we can accomplish this together – if we can create a ripple at that tiny level, the tangible effects that it can have on the local community are incalculable. So, this week, I am going to try really hard to focus on that tangible impact that it will have for this community.

For the past three months, my day job has been to work with local Chefs to connect them to the produce that is grown at the farm I work for. Since the beginning of this year, I have added over 25 restaurants to our client list, and about 12 of those order each week. While some only order one or two things, some of these Chefs are actively trying to source a large part of their menus from local producers. I am also actively working to connect with other local farmers to build a distribution network that can connect even more local production with the market.

I have been watching the trends locally, and what I see is exciting to me: There is a desire for local food! Chefs want it. People want it. Farmers want to grow it.

So, where I am now, is that a shift like this is not just possible, it is 100% achievable.

I personally have seen more restaurants intentionally sourcing local foods, data shows that more farmers markets are thriving, and more consumers asking where their food comes from. But, the commercial food system isn't going to change direction quickly - that's just reality.

Now the question has to become, “What are the barriers? Where are the roadblocks? Why are more businesses not doing this?”

What we need is consistent, dedicated effort to build our local food economy. This isn't just about hitting a number. Instead, it's about creating a resilient local food system that supports our community. And at $400M, we could create hundreds of sustainable jobs and businesses right here in DFW. 💪

Every week, I see more people joining this movement, from small-scale farmers to local distributors stepping up to meet the demand. Let's grow this conversation, work together, and forge a path that builds a truly local food economy.

If you are involved in local food, in any aspect, I would ask that you reach out. Leave your social media links, or send me a message. Let’s connect and see how we can work together to build this.

Join me in planting some seeds daily for the future of our Local Food System

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What is it that makes food local, and the larger question, is how much “local” is needed to make an entire food system local?

This is a question that has been in my head for the last few months. It is one of those questions that seems paradoxically simple -- i.e., food is produced and used locally. I mean, duh!?!? But, the more I've thought about it, and what it means for an urban center like DFW, the more murky my understanding has become.

In highly urban areas, like much of North Texas, the ability to grow food is minimized (with most traditional methods) and strongly discouraged (city planners always talk about “highest and best use” for property). The reality that I have come to understand is that our current food system is entirely global, and it is skewed significantly towards processed and ultra-processed foods. This reality, by its very nature, is highly extractive and often not focused on beneficial outcomes for producers, consumers, or the planet.

I will certainly admit that this is somewhat of a negative and pessimistic viewpoint to characterize the global food system as such, but I have come to believe that the argument can be made fairly easily that through the effects of globalization, extractive capitalism, and the focus on yield vs quality in our crops, our food system has lost sight of the “food” part of its definition.

Albert Einstein once famously said, "If I had one hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem." To that end, I have begun to define the problem, as I see it, resulting from a lack of a resilient local food system. Perhaps the best way to start is by looking at the challenges that are caused or perpetuated by the system we currently have today. While this is certainly not an exhaustive list, I am sure I will add to this as I continue working on this problem, below are the challenges I have identified so far. (If you have others, or agree/disagree with my thoughts, please leave a comment below – I welcome discussion on this topic.)

Challenges in the food system today as I have seen or experienced:

1. Transport Chain: If foods are grown all around the world and then transported to destination markets, then there is a huge fragility in this. We saw some of the cracks in the transport chains during COVID in 2020. There is also the equally massive, and often unseen cost to the planet of this transport footprint. The fossil fuels that allow this global transport are an absorbed cost of moving food products from New Zealand, Argentina, and Asia into the U.S. market. The emissions from this have a is a huge portion of the retail price that consumers pay for these products. (Not to mention the effect that the new tariffs from the US administration have levied on (nearly) all international products.)

2. Nutrient density. Food today is simply not the same as it was 50 years ago, much less foods from 100+ years ago. As our soils have been depleted of critical nutrients and microbial life, we have become increasingly dependent on chemical fertilizers. Then, as a result, we have engineered crops for increased yield or traits like shelf-life or bruise resistance at the cost of things like flavor, nutrition, and regional specialization. As we do this, we are actively creating ongoing problems for ourselves

3. Chemical residues: Pesticide and herbicide sprays are now the norm for commercial production in today's world. Studies have shown that over 70% of produce in the global food system has testable levels of pesticide on it, and some crops have up to 18 different identifiable chemicals on them. While these are said to be within “acceptable levels”, we do not have a long history of observing the effects of these on humans, especially at this level of exposure, and the frequency of exposure within our diets.

4. Access and availability. There is a long history associated with economic and societal issues within our food system. Systemic challenges with access to fresh food and over-access to ultra-processed foods have been studied a great deal as they relate to income inequity, racial bias, and other socio-economic issues. This is a category that is often ignored or relegated to the sub-text in any conversation about food. This needs to change immediately.

5. Barriers to entry - The combination of regulatory, financial, and industrial issues create problems for the creation of new businesses within the agricultural production-transportation complex. Current regulations and the associated barriers do all they can to create and promote economic inertia. The focus is on retaining the status quo and de-incentivizing any attempt to revise the system to make it easier for new players and new businesses to enter the system and provide an innovative solution.

While these are certainly not all the challenges facing a shift of this type in our food system, to me at least, these are the five largest and most critical to address at the onset of this redesign. I am going to continue to explore these topics, and others, as I work to help build this shift in my local community.

Leave a comment below to let me know your thoughts. Am I on the right track? Did I forget something egregious? What do YOU think is the greatest challenge or barrier to this shift? Let’s define the problem together, and plant seeds daily until we accomplish our goal of a thriving, resilient local food system.