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.
All you need is a plan on what you want to grow. Then get a few pounds of ammonium nitrate and potassium nitrate. Thoroughly mix them in the soil. Add water and wait for a few days before planting. The acids in the soil will be neutralized. Then stick your seeds in. I had tomatoes that were 7 inches in diameter. That’s a meal with hot sauce and pepper. And only one or two won’t do. They taste great. They are the only fruits that go well with hot sauce, pepper or salt.
Easier in the long run for sure.
As for cost, I’ve rooted my runners and sold them at garage sales. :)
It reminds me of the March 93 storm that hit the whole east coast.
Forecasts are not for that kind of storm development but it sure is impressive in size.
My raspberries have been some trouble but look like they’re finally established. I think they’re not quite getting the amount of sun they need but that can’t really be helped.
I bought some blueberry bushes that are supposed to be smaller in size, 2-4 feet in diameter. They are coming along now as well.
I got currants this year that just took off. We’ll see what happens with them.
I’d like to have fruit trees but don’t have the room and
we live in apple country so we can make one trip to go picking and have enough apples for a long time and for sauce for the year.
I realize that the crops are not likely to be great for a while , if ever BUT.... if it ever gets to the point where there’s a food shortage or one simply can’t get out because of gas shortages or whatever, at least we’ll have something.
Good for you!!!!! Remind me about your rooted runners in the later part of the winter!!!!
I estimated that all I needed was to sell 5 jars of strawberry jam and I covered the cost of the 30 quarts of berries I picked.
June bearing berries are the best. You get your crop all at once and can do something with it.
A few everbearing berries are nice to have because then you can have a somewhat steady supply for snacking or fruit salad for most of the rest of the summer. Not a lot, though.
I actually planted some among my flower garden. They really are nice looking bushy little plants that fill in kind of as ground cover.
Yikes I remember those storms of 93.
We currently have fog that is getting thicker by the minute. I’m actually dreading the phone ringing which means they will either be dismissing school early, or delaying dismissal. Roads around here are treacherous in the fog, especially when it is raining, as it is now.
We’ve got fog but the precipitation is just south of us right now.
I expect we’ll be getting out fair share soon enough. They’re forecasting up to 7 inches of snow with the possibility of sleet mixed in.
Snow’s not a big deal around here :( but the ice I can live without.
How about dwarf fruit trees. I’ve got one, called a fruit cocktail and if I ever get up enough money I would like to put in a bunch more trees.
I might try strawberries again, one never knows :)
I know snow is no big deal for you, but I totally agree with you about the ice. UGH.
No mountains here, in fact the joke is that if one jumps they are the highest point in the county.
We get fog very often because of all the surrounding water. I’m smack dab in the middle between the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay — 10 miles east to one and 10 miles west to the other.
Oh well, worrying about the weather and what I’m going to plant in the spring is not getting me downstairs to the kitchen — besides, hubby is up here fiddling with the Christmas decorations and just being a nuisance, I like my alone time.
I wonder how long it is going to take him to wander downstairs and then start getting underfoot? Oh well, I’ll just come back here to the puter when he does that - like I always do :)
Later gators!
People might have to go this route to survive the Obama years.
Maybe those women are going to decide to put some clothes on?
Then the Mayors of Monterey, Salinas, Pacific Grove and the county supervisors must stop using the taxpayer to fund ‘smart growth’ human storage container housing and creating off limits ‘open space’ so their political contributors don’t have to look at their neighbors, and let people build single family homes with gardens.
They need to get spines and oppose the virulent ‘greenies’, and let the people build the planned water storage systems so the county isn’t on water rationing ( I mean reservoirs, not desalination boondoggle plants).
Then maybe people can grow gardens there.
LOL! See you soon!
The key to a good soil is compost. I started my compost pile weeks ago. I just pile up grass clippings and the fall leaves and turn it every so often. The winter cold will slow down the decomposition but it will continue even in the cold. Come spring it will revive. The bigger the pile the better!
I’d like to see a timeline since 1960 plotting these same spikes in the prices of food and health care versus the progression of government “involvement” (farm bills, medicare and all). I’ll bet they correlate about 1:1.
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