Row 7 Seed Company

Please take some time to listen to the Eater Upsell podcast interview with chef and seed company founder Dan Barber.

Following our post regarding The Third Plate, I wanted to expand into Dan Barber’s side hustle: Row 7 Seed Company. By side hustle, I mean, his venture to disrupt the food systems in the US. The 2000’s popularized the resurgence of heirloom seeds in popular culture for flavor but the low yields have always priced it out of the mainstream food systems. Dan Barber seems to have met in the middle of monsanto-monocultures and heirloom varieties’ to create seeds that produce yields with the flavor. He’s working with land grant universities and sponsoring this research directly. The results are free from patents, address the modern contexts of growing our food and appear to bridge the gaps between the chef creations and home cooks.

How many times have you tried to recreate a dish only to realize that without the specific produce you were fighting an uphill battle. It’s something that Chef Sean Brock has also discussed in recreating lowcountry food experiences. Unless you start with Carolina Gold rice…that food memory will remain elusive. It’s interesting to watch in real time chefs nudge the agricultural systems. For real change to occur, it must be scalable and sustainable for the markets to shift. For my garden I’ve ordered the koginut squash, the badger flame beets, the honeypatch squash and teagan lettuce seeds. I’ll add those to the tomatoes and eggplants that I’ve already started. Ideally I’ll have enough of a base to create a weekly garden dish all summer. Chef Barber also includes recipes on the seed company website for each variety. I know the lettuce will yield salads throughout the season but I’m very excited to get my first squash to recreate the hasselback honeypatch recipe. For now, I’ll have to be patient as I await my seeds/possibilities.