Social Entrepreneurship in Action: Restorative Farms in Dallas

Poverty, economic opportunity, hunger, education, equity, and environmental sustainability rarely get solved one at a time — in South Dallas, we found they had to be tackled together.

In 2017 I co-founded Restorative Farms as a local food intervention in one of the nation's largest and seemingly intractable food deserts. The goal was to apply systems thinking to build a scalable urban farming model, rather than a single isolated garden.

Central to our approach is a simple philosophy: inclusive economic development means leveraging the assets a community already has, not focusing on what it lacks. Along the way we had to resolve a kind of chicken-and-egg paradox — building local supply and local demand at the same time, so the whole system could become self-sustaining.

Today, Restorative Farms operates the Hatcher Station Training Farm and Community Garden, providing material assistance and hands-on agricultural expertise to strengthen neighborhood health and quality of life.