Aledo man creating healthy food

Is the food we eat killing us?

Perhaps a better, and certainly more palatable, question would be is the food we eat harming us in ways in which most of us are unaware?

It's an interesting question and one that in recent decades has been explored ad nauseam due to an influx of highly-processed foods and chemically-treated produce.

For Aledo resident and hydroponic farmer Rees Atkins, there is no debate.

"A lot of the things we eat today, the lettuce, the greens and other vegetables are coated with pesticides,” Atkins said. “Grapes have almost 2 percent round up in them in some cases, and lettuce in particular is covered in things that are bad for you. We are trying to create something. First of all, lettuce that you can grow in Texas, which is not something you hear much about or was even possible until recent years without indoor growing. So we use beneficial insects to eat the bad bugs so that we're not covering the vegetables in pesticides.”

Dutch development

Co-owner of River Valley Farms, a family-built and operated facility using sustainable hydroponic agricultural methods, Atkins, 62, opened up shop about three years ago.

“The system we use was developed by the Dutch,” Atkins said. “They get about 90 percent of their produce from these kinds of systems. They also have about an 80 percent lower frequency of cancer than we do, so it's pretty obvious what the issue is."

Atkins, who grew up in Aledo and played football at Aledo High School, owns and runs the farm with his son and daughter-in-law and also works as a real estate agent with Rees Atkins Realty Group.

"That's what pays for my passion to create a better food product," Atkins said with a laugh.

Products from River Valley Farms are created using hydroponic agricultural methods, a system developed by the Dutch.

Products from River Valley Farms are created using hydroponic agricultural methods, a system developed by the Dutch.

Found in restaurants

The product certainly appears to be of high quality.

Several local restaurants, including Bonnell's, Ridglea Country Club (occasionally) and 61 Osteria buy some of their produce from River Valley Farms.

"The chefs that buy from us think the flavor of our food is better than what they might get from a bigger supplier because our product grows in the perfect PH, the perfect amount calcium, and organic nitrate from decomposing egg shells,” Atkins said. “We read about the levels of nutrients required on a regular basis so that we can create food that looks and tastes like it is supposed to."

Atkins put that theory to the test recently when he had a friend buy the same product from his farm and a grocery store.

"He purchased a cucumber from a local grocery store and took one of mine,” Atkins said. “He called me because I told him they would be different. He said he was sitting and having dinner with his family, and he cut the grocery store cucumber open and there was no aroma. They all take a bite of a pickle-sized cucumber that had very little flavor.

“They cut mine open and immediately it's aromatic, it's juicier. They take a bite and it tastes like a cucumber. It's amazing how we've slowly lost the reality of what things are supposed to taste like. So we doctor them up with all sorts of glazes and salts and things to try to get that flavor back out of them, but they actually have great flavors when they grow in the exact nutrients that they should."

Products from River Valley Farms are created using hydroponic agricultural methods, a system developed by the Dutch.

Products from River Valley Farms are created using hydroponic agricultural methods, a system developed by the Dutch.

Plenty of help

Atkins employs several full-time workers who help cultivate 14,000 heads of lettuce, a thousand pounds of cucumbers, and large quantities of tomatoes, micro-greens, and strawberries per month.

The facility offers tours, but only for groups.

“We do a number of schools,” Atkins said. “Different colleges and schools have been talking to us recently about doing classes inside our facility and working there as an internship, and just trying to develop a better growing system for today's hungry world.

Farm box

Atkins said River Valley Farms also offers a farm box available for purchase.

"Right now we just kind of got finished with the test phase and we have about 30 customers who are getting weekly greens or bi-weekly greens from us,” Atkins said.

According to Grand View Research, the U.S. accounted for approximately 10.1 percent of the global hydroponics market in 2023.

Atkins said the health benefits of hydroponic produce make it worth the extra effort involved.

"For truly just a few dollars more and a little bit of trouble, you can get a product that doesn't have pesticides on it," Atkins said. "You can't taste those pesticides, but you're eating them. They are in your body now. If they took a blood sample, they would find traces of those pesticides in you — in all of us. We're all doing it. So I think if you want to live a long life and get good nutrition it's worth trying."

River Valley Farms is located at 411 Koldin Drive in Aledo.