Posted on 12/11/2008 12:51:17 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The Bush administration’s prescription for economic health has been to encourage consumers to shop our way to prosperity. But as we’ve been learning the hard way, doing so with borrowed money isn’t sustainable.
The current recession is already being compared to the Great Depression. And while the effort to win World War II is often credited with helping to end that funk, the two wars we’re currently fighting have only helped sink the economy even more. While we probably don’t need another world war, some lessons learned during the last one may still be relevant.
The nation awaits President-elect Obama’s green version of FDR’s New Deal – which was another catalyst for ending the Great Depression. Obama’s new New Deal holds promise, but I hope that he also considers dusting off another program from that era: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Gardens.
The Victory Gardens program supplied Americans with the encouragement, tools, instruction and sometimes even the land necessary to create personal vegetable gardens. Twenty million such gardens were planted during World War II, and they produced 40 percent of America’s vegetables.
“I was 9 or 10 years old,” my dad recalls. “I bought seeds, followed the instructions on the seed packet, and grew corn in the backyard. It didn’t do very well.”
Still, he says, “it was the patriotic thing to do. Food was being rationed. Whatever civilians could grow themselves meant there would be more for the armed services.”
While the Victory Gardens program has been given partial credit for the successful outcome of World War II, what could have been an ongoing and productive legacy of the war effort was derailed by the weapons industry, which suddenly found itself in need of a purpose.
Ammonium nitrate is the main ingredient in both bombs and chemical fertilizer, and after World War II the government encouraged the conversion of the munitions industry into fertilizer production (while also encouraging a shift in the focus of nerve-gas research toward pesticides).
The U.S. government also began subsidizing commodity crops, paying farmers for all the corn, soybeans, wheat and rice they could produce, while a succession of agriculture secretaries encouraged farmers to “get big or get out.” The practice of dumping weapons-grade ammonium and toxic pesticides on gargantuan farm fields – also known as “the Green Revolution” – created literal mountains of the cheapest food in history.
But, as Michael Pollan points out in his recent memo to the next “Farmer in Chief” in the New York Times Magazine, “The era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close.”
Rising oil prices are a big reason for this, but expensive food is hardly the only downside to petroleum-intensive farming. “The way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do,” writes Pollan. He also points out that before last spring’s spike in food prices, Americans had been paying less and less for food since 1960 (from 18 percent to 10 percent of household income) while paying more for healthcare (from 5 percent to 16 percent of household income).
As four of the top 10 killers in America today – heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer – are chronic diseases linked to diet, the correlation between money spent on food and medical care doesn’t look like a coincidence. Not only is cheap food health and bad for the environment, but cheap food isn’t even cheap anymore.
If Victory Gardens helped win World War II and end the Great Depression, maybe this time around we could just skip the world war, and improve our health, heal the economy and put the brakes on global warming all at the same time with small gardens. There’s much to be gained by trying – and nothing to lose.
Several organizations are already advocating a return to Eleanor Roosevelt’s program. These include Revive the Victory Garden (www.revivevictorygarden.org), and Victory Gardens 2008+, a San Francisco group that supports the conversion of back yards, front yards, window boxes, rooftops and unused land into organic food – production areas.
Victory Gardens 2008+ defines “victory” as growing food at home to increase local food security and reduce the distance food is transported. The group’s crown jewel is a 10,000-square-foot public garden planted in front of San Francisco City Hall last summer, as a joint project with Slow Food Nation. The produce went to local food banks, and the garden, in its high-profile location, became a showpiece for the importance of local food.
Perhaps the next step, as Pollan suggests in his memo, and with all due respect to lawn-lovers, could be converting a portion of the White House lawn into a vegetable garden. A campaign called “Eat the View” (www.eattheview.org) is already petitioning the president-elect to do just that. A White House “First Garden” in the same soil where Eleanor Roosevelt planted her Victory Garden would send a strong message to the nation and the world.
Thanks for the ping, LOL, now we will have victory gardens.
Wish I could remember the post that I posted on our thread, it was a movement to plow the lawns of the White House and turn them into vegetable gardens.........LOL, good idea today.
Sounds like the perfect evening. Enjoy! :)
You forgot Okra and collards. (if in the south) Both do well, Okra in hot summer, Collard greens in the cooler months.
LOL!!!
It's pretty much the only thing I've had any luck with, since we live with deer and rabbits aplenty. The losses in shrubbery alone are in the thousands. All flowers must be place on hangers and lowered to be watered, or in second-story windowboxes. They even tear up crysanthemums and marigolds, two things they're not supposed to like, right out of the ground. My hydrangea, arbor vitae and holly are eaten down to a nub. The only plants I've had any luck with are catnip, pampas grasses and boxwood, but they will eat anything if they are hungry enough. They will rip out wire fences and tear down birdfeeders and lick them.
We have wild raspberries behind our property at the edge of the woods. The briar plot is about five feet by twelve feet and yields about two cups of raspberries for the entire season -- IF I get there before the birds. Are yours domesticated cultivars that are expected to yield better?
I bought them through a gardening catalog. Some are Heritage and the few berries that they produced were decent sized.
I understand that berries need to be thinned. The dead canes are supposed to be cut out. Not a pleasant job.
I have a friend who has cultivated ones in full sun and the plants were tall (about 7 feet) and produced a pretty good crop.
I’m beginning to see why raspberries so expensive in the grocery stores.
I have to say, I am really glad that this thread came about. I had plans to tear up my yard for a garden next year.
Now I’ll stick with containers and “Pick-UR-Own” places.
Thank you. Every couple of years I've been doing that with long-handled loppers, and I throw the sticky canes out in places where I think that trespassers come through, both deer and humans.
I just think the wild berries probably aren't as large or the canes as productive. I remember in Italy having a pastry with tiny, tiny strawberries that were almost brown, and wonderfully sweet -- I think they were wild or antiques.
When I think back to my days in the city, it seems that city dwellers did better growing things in containers and empty lots than the suburbanites do, probably because of the very hot sunlight and fewer trees. I've seen city people grow large grape arbors, every kind of vegetable and lots of types of flowers. The surrounding bricks and other masonry seem to absorb water and then give off minerals and mist that are pleasing to plants.
Here in the burbs, we have many restrictions on how you can fence, where you can garden (must be in the back, not the front) and so many natural pests like deer, snakes, rabbits, voles, and massive hordes of insects, that it is difficult to garden at all unless you are in older, unrestricted parts of town with lots of sunlight.
Pick-your-owns are great for bushelsful for canning or freezing.
We are far enough out of the city that there are several owner-operated produce stores that deal with local farms and sell at 1/3 to 1/2 the price of grocery chains, and the produce is more natural -- a few irregularites, but tastier and no wax coatings or shelf-life sprays. The one I like, for instance, always has many types of local apples, costing as little as 49 to 59 cents a pound.
Even if you go to a farm stand directly, they tend to try to get grocery-store prices; whereas they discount deeply to the independent produce dealers in exchange for steady, high-volume business. It keeps the independents' prices down.
“Not only is cheap food health and bad for the environment, but cheap food isn’t even cheap anymore.”
Is it me or is this sentence illiterate.
Public school education, followed by copious drug use and liberal arts degree from a third-rate college, I’m guessing.
Is it me or is this sentence illiterate.
Yes it is illiterate, and yours requires a question mark.
I know. I saw it when it was loading. And could do nothing to stop it. But that guy has an editor....lol
I am very suspicious that a whole lot of the financial mess that our country is in has been engineered to coincide with the last election and get the Dems in the White House. Nevertheless, my husband and I grow a garden almost every year.
I just like having fresh vegetables and food to can. It’s not really any cheaper if at all, but, being self-sufficient and learning more every year is very valuable to me.
I’ve found that if you surround deer tempting plants with plants in the nightshade family (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes) that the deer will avoid them. Last year the deer ate a lot of our garden. I tried this trick and lost nothing to the deer this year.
Thank you very much for this tip. If I ever move, I will try it. As it is, I live in one of those Neighborhood Nazi Association communities that restricts vegetable growing to the back yard, leaving all the ornamentals and shrubbery on the front and sides vulnerable.
Can you ping me with your original survival thread. I can’t find it.
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