How Houston Chefs Collaborate With Refugee Farmers to Produce Some of the City’s Best Dishes | Eater Houston

"Fifteen miles southwest of Presidio I find a small field on the corner of a busy intersection on Fondren Road where beds of lettuce, carrots and Brussels sprouts sit under power lines while banana leaves and sugar cane mark the site. Farmer Constant Ngouala prepares weekly harvests there from dawn into the night, pulling bundles of green and purple baby bok choy that he sells to local chefs; chef sales now account for nearly a quarter of his income. Plant It Forward — one of the first farms within Houston city limits and the city’s only refugee-run farm — helped Ngouala, a Congolese refugee who joined the inaugural class, build connections with chefs like Justin Yu, Chris Shepherd and Adam Dorris, and even led to a meal for Anthony Bourdain when he visited Houston in 2016. After Hurricane Harvey setbacks and years with the program, Ngouala became a master farmer, purchased an acre of his own last year, and plans to move off the Plant It Forward site in the coming years to make room for new farmers." - Cat Modlin-Jackson