Spring North Texas Farm-to-Table Symposium
February 25, 2019
The Seed Project held our first North Texas Farm-to-Table Symposium of the year in the Ballroom of the Grand Hotel in Downtown McKinney. Nearly 140 local farmers, ranchers, local food advocates, chefs, restaurateurs attended.
For the program, Seed Project Foundation founder Rick Wells (and co-owner of Harvest Seasonal Kitchen and Rick’s Chophouse on the square in Downtown McKinney) interviewed farmer Jeff Bednar about his journey to create Profound Foods. Jeff described making the leap from real estate to hydroponic farming back in 2015. His goal was to produce the highest quality lettuces, microgreens, and herbs to sell directly to chefs in the DFW restaurant community. After purchasing their property in Lucas and learning the basics of hydroponics from other local growers, Jeff jumped into becoming a farmer.
The learning curve was steep, but rewarding, and he saw the potential to greatly expand production within a couple of years. One evening a couple years ago, Jeff found himself at one of our Symposiums seated next to Nelson Carter of nearby Cartermere Farms. They got to talking and discovered they were each driving the 30 miles into Dallas two days a week, eating up valuable time they needed to be spending on the farm. They agreed to alternate turns driving, each taking the other’s deliveries so they could stay on the farm and work. This idea blossomed into creating a local farmer’s distribution hub called Profound Foods, fueled by a $500,000 grant from the USDA. Profound Foods is currently serving over sixty DFW restaurants product sourced from nearly forty local farms and ranches. An inspirational story of farmers helping farmers and growing the local food movement, to be sure!
As always, Chef Andrea and the team at Harvest put on an incredible buffet spread that ended with soft squares of beet cake some are still talking about. If you’re involved in the local food movement and would like to be invited the next North Texas Farm-to-Table Symposium, email meg@spftx.org.
