Bring Back the Victory Garden

History tells us that in times of crisis, Americans have sought solace in gardening. Crises seem to inspire us to return to our agrarian roots and embrace traditional values of self-reliance, community and service.

I don’t know about you, but this feels like a crisis to me.

In the midst of an economic meltdown of historic proportions, we're learning the limits of a fundamentalist approach to capitalism. Our government has been preaching free markets, deregulation and privatization of services, with active intrusion into other countries/cultures to proselytize a global free-market economy. Unfortunately, this approach has sparked our currrent crisis, by promoting higher profits and an ever-higher standard of living over more important values of commmunity and sustainability.

Now, the government is scrambling to stem the tide, asking for carte-blanche authority to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at the proverbial barn door, with no guarantee that it will stick. That’s hundreds of billions of dollars that won’t be going to fund education, infrastructure or R&D. It’s more money out of our pockets, at a time when gas and food prices are sky-rocketing, unemployment is rising, people’s home values have cratered and all of our savings, investments and retirements are at risk. Is it, as they say, inevitable? Will it fix the problem?

I’ve been glued to the television, with the same dumb-struck inertia that I felt after 9-11 – watching pundits debate causes, impacts and potential solutions to this crisis while harboring an icy fear for our collective future. As with 9-11 – despite the fact that my psyche contracted every time I watched images of those planes crashing into the towers and the towers coming down and now contracts with each punch and jab of the current debate -- I feel paralyzed. I don’t know what to do, and I can’t stop watching.

Enough, I say, with others out there. Enough is enough!

It’s time for us to tear ourselves away.

We may not be able to solve the entire global, economic crises -- but we can find ways to challenge the prevailing "Chicago-School of Economics" model and be productive. And we can start in our own back yards. Milton Friedman himself said, “…only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

So here’s an idea that’s been lying around for a long time: let's bring back the Victory Garden.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, citizens stepped up. In 1942, the non-profit National Victory Garden Institute was formed to promote victory gardens and provide educational and technical support, and the response was overwhelming. By 1943, American citizens had planted more than 20 million Victory Gardens, producing 8 million tons of food and over 50 percent of all the fresh vegetables consumed in the U.S.

It was not a new idea, even then. Since the late 1800s, we’ve responded to crises by establishing and nurturing backyard, community and urban gardens. These gardens have helped us survive economic depressions and recessions; they’ve sustained us through two World Wars; they've persisted despite the rise of industrialization and the shift in our population away from rural communities and into urban areas; and they’ve sustained important American ideals.

Today, gardening has the potential to address a number of the challenges we face. It provides affordable access to safe, healthy and nutritious foods; it delivers significant health and economic benefits; it promotes sustainability; it supports community development and enlightened self-government; and it delivers these benefits affordably and cost effectively.

The popularity of gardening attests to its benefits to individual gardeners, including increased physical activity and related health and mental health benefits. Gardening has been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes and other chronic ailments, cut the risk of osteoporosis in women, reduce asthma in children, improve productivity in office workers, accelerate recovery in post-operative patients, and create a mental state with brain wave patterns similar to those achieved in meditation. Recently, exposure to a common soil bacterium was found to stimulate immune systems and increased serotonin levels in the brain.

Gardens also make healthy, nutritious food affordable. A 64 square foot plot can save a family up to $600 in food purchases per year. Research tells us that when comparing the value of food produced to the material cost of production, the return on investment is approximately 20 to one.

Fresh food is healthy food. Due to the degradation of foods in storage and transport, garden fruits and vegetables can have as much as twice the vitamins available from supermarket produce at the same price. Moreover, people who participate in gardens tend to eat more fresh vegetables than those who do not. Ohri-Vachaspati (1999) reported that gardeners consumed nearly twice as many servings of fruits and vegetables as non-gardeners, and of the gardeners surveyed, more than 70 percent consumed at least five servings of fruits and vegetables every day; 74 percent preserved produce from the garden (by freezing, canning, drying, etc.) and 95 percent shared produce with others.

Gardens also promote improved food safety and security. Nearly every day, news headlines warn us of a new food scare: pesticides in apples; E. coli in beef patties, spinach and bagged lettuce; toxic chemicals in infant formula; the list goes on and on. People who raise their own food have more control over how it’s raised and what goes into it. Those who choose to garden organically can reap significant nutritional benefits as well. Studies have shown that organic food contains greater amounts of essential minerals such as iron, calcium, magnesium and potassium. A recently completed study by the European Union – the largest study of its kind, covering four years and costing approximately $25 million – confirmed that organic fruit and vegetables contain up to 40 percent more antioxidants, including flavenoids; organic produce has higher levels of beneficial minerals like iron and zinc; and milk from organic herds contains up to 90 percent more antioxidants.

Organic gardening also helps the environment. Based on 23 years of field studies on organic farming practices, The Rodale Institute reports that organic soils can offset CO2 emissions by capturing atmospheric CO2 and converting it into soil material. The studies document an average increase in soil carbon of about 1,000 pounds per acre-foot of soil, or about 3,500 pounds of CO2 per acre-foot per year. If we all worked together to improve the soil health of our yards and gardens, we could make a significant dent in our collective carbon footprint.

Finally, some of the most potent benefits of gardening are the hardest to quantify. Gardens provide a venue for relearning important values related to self reliance, delayed gratification, cooperation with natural processes and community stewardship. Anyone can plant a garden – whether it’s in a container garden on a fire escape outside an apartment window, a strip of land in the backyard or vacant lot in the neighborhood. We can take back power from the government, agribusiness, and Wall Street -- and begin again to care for ourselves and others.

Gardening puts us into a direct relationship with earth. It reminds us of the mysterious cycles that govern birth, growth, production, death and renewal -- and it reinforces the notion that, despite our wishes and fantasies to the contrary, we are part of -- and not above -- these mysteries. Anyone who studies photosynthesis has got to revere the elegance and complexity of the interdependence of nature's processes; it's enough to knock your socks off. Above all, gardening teaches us that we must nurture what we care for and protect what we depend on – i.e., clean air, clean water, temperate climate, healthy soil, microorganisms, insects, and the whole ecological chain.

Gardening can also put us in direct relationship with others. It’s a common activity that often serves as a catalyst for community, as gardeners in a given neighborhood connect over fences and alleyways to share questions, expertise, tools, seeds, and harvests. (Zucchini, anyone? Anyone? Please?)

Working with others to create a community garden provides the opportunity to practice communication and cooperation with a group of diverse, albeit like-minded, people. This not only strengthens community; it also can – and often does -- serve as a springboard to community development and participatory democracy, at a very local level.

It may not be a total solution, but it's a start.

As Michael Pollan says, “Measured against the Problems We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign… but it fact, it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do – to reduce our carbon footprint, sure, but more important to reduce our sense of dependence and dividedness.”

So I say, let's bring back the Victory Garden.

Let's tear ourselves away from the TV and the financial pages. Let's get out there and get our hands dirty.

It’s time to plant the seeds of change.

September Events

Now thru Nov. 24
Miller Farms Annual Fall Harvest Festival
9 a.m. - 6 p.m. daily
www.millerfarms.net
Contact: (970) 785-6133

Sept. 6-12
Harvest Week
Denver Independent Network of Restaurants-various locations
www.harvestweek.com
Contact: Wendy White, (303) 239-4119

Saturday, Sept. 13
Colorado Cattle Crawl
Contact: Kari Jensen, (303) 264-3005
Wynkoop Brewery, Denver & Ameristar Casino, Black Hawk
Tickets: $100/person or $175/couple, includes food and transportation
www.acfcoloradochefs.org

Sunday, Sept. 14
Whole Foods Market’s 2nd Annual Farmers and Food Artisan’s Road Tour
An opportunity to meet the famed food producers and learn the behind the scenes story first hand as vendors sample and sell their products. During the event, proceeds from the purchase of prepared lunches will be contributed to local non-profits.
Colorado Blvd, 870 S. Colorado Blvd., Glendale
303.691.0101

Sept. 19-21
Colorado Mountain Wine Fest
Riverbend Park, Palisade
Tickets: $40 in advance
www.coloradowinefest.com

Saturday, Sept. 20
Whole Foods Market’s 2nd Annual Farmers and Food Artisan’s Road Tour
An opportunity to meet the famed food producers and learn the behind the scenes story first hand as vendors sample and sell their products. During the event, proceeds from the purchase of prepared lunches will be contributed to local non-profits.
Belmar, 444 S. Wadsworth Blvd, Lakewood
303.935.5000

September 20-21
Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Fair
Fort Collins, CO
$5/day, Kids under 12 free
http://sustainablelivingassociation.org/thefair/

The Global Scramble to Own Food and Agricultural Assets

Greetings everyone.

I am posting this via a wireless Internet connection from the road as we drive across Kansas on our way home from vacation in Michigan. For the last three days, we've been driving past acres and acres of pasture, orchards and farmlands -- and it got me to wondering -- who owns our farmland? In the race to globalization, foreign investors are buying up our companies, resort properties and commodities -- are they buying our farmland, too?

We'll investigate who's buying farmland in Colorado; in the meantime, the following essay on the race to own global agricultural assets introduces the topic, and is reprinted here by permission fromTouch the Soil Magazine. For more information visit: www.touchthesoil.com.

The Global Scramble to Own Food and Agricultural Assets

By: Benjamin Gisin

Benjamin Gisin has visited hundreds of farms in his banking, farm consulting and publishing careers. He writes and lectures extensively on the global and domestic food situation, the promise of local food first and grass-roots economic issues.

Since the formation of the World Trade Organization in 1995, the U. S. Government has abandoned the maintenance of food stocks in favor of leaving things to free market forces. Yet neither the WTO or the free markets have any financial incentive or direct public mandate to maintain food stocks or food security.

While little is happening here at home relative to government or private sector intervention into food security issues, this is not the case with nations who appear to view things differently.
Actions that closed or limited food exports by the world’s largest wheat and rice exporting nations are just now being lifted. Nations, whose political stability almost collapsed from an inability to import enough food (due to availability and price), drew the attention of every other nation that depends upon food imports or whose domestic economies were invaded by high global food prices. Now, in the immediate aftermath, one of the largest food and agricultural asset scrambles in history is unfolding.

As new crops from the 2008 farming season enter the markets, alleviating some of the immediate supply and price stresses, there are concerns we are cutting it too close. The four largest global crops by tonnage are soybeans, rice, wheat and corn. The USDA projects these four crops to yield 2,129 million metric tons of food for 2008. Out of this, projected consumption is 2,116 million metric tons leaving a paltry 13 million metric-ton margin. This is only a .7 percent margin before already stressed stocks must be further drawn down to meet the global demand for food — a demand artificially trimmed by some 900 million people without financial resources to move out of starvation diets.

On the heels of this tight crop production report and the recent memory of individual nations experiencing food disruptions, there is a scramble to control or own agricultural assets and food stocks.

The nations of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are bringing money, soil scientists and equipment to farm large-scale tracts in Sudan. Arab nations, with limited arable land, must assure access to food — even if it is in Sudan where local starvation is rampant in the Darfur area.

The governments of China and India are supporting efforts for domestic companies to own land in Africa and South America to raise food earmarked for their nations.

The Chinese government has already purchased 26 million metric tons of wheat from its own farmers with the goal of acquiring a total in excess of 30 million metric tons. This is equal to the entire U.S. domestic wheat consumption for one year. The Chinese government will sell this wheat domestically at lower prices to control food inflation and protect itself from western-style commodity speculators that influence global prices.

China recently passed legislation prohibiting the further development of its core agricultural lands. Adding punitive measures to its laws, government officials are being held personally responsible for overseeing farmland protection in the various agricultural regions.

Saudi Arabia is setting up a $566 million holding company to invest in agriculture overseas to ensure food comes from these investments back to Saudi Arabia. The goal, in part, is to circumvent global free markets that sent several neighboring nations into food chaos.

South Korea is headed to Indonesia to clear land for corn production and long-term leases on other land. South Korea is trying to purchase a U.S. owned hay company with sufficient agricultural assets to raise 10 percent of South Korea’s annual hay needs.

Several undisclosed global corporations recently purchased $100 million in agricultural land assets in Australia to control access to food crops.

Marubeni Corp. a Japanese company, recently purchased eight grain-storage facilities and two warehouses for $48 million in the United States. The goal is to buy corn and soybeans directly from U.S. farmers, circumventing global food corporations.

Venezuela just passed legislation requiring the government to hold reserves of key food crops and guarantee 90 days-worth of food consumption is held domestically. Major government intervention is planned to stimulate domestic food production.

While this list of actions to control food and agricultural assets is by no means complete, it illustrates what is going on as nation after nation tries to control the agricultural assets needed for food security. ■

Shouldn't we in Colorado and the U.S. be thinking about this, too?