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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Digging their way out of recession
  • Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:01:53 -0700


Victory gardens
Digging their way out of recession
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1318
5476
Feb 26th 2009 | LITTLE ROCK
>From The Economist print edition
Allotments by any other name

IN 1943 Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged a return to the “victory gardens”
that had become popular during the first world war, when the country faced
food shortages. Mrs Roosevelt planted a garden at the White House; some 20m
Americans followed her lead, and by the end of the war grew 40% of the
nation’s vegetables.

Now a grassroots movement wants Barack Obama to plant another White House
victory garden. The new secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, announced
recently that his department would create “The People’s Garden” out
of a paved area outside their building. And he won’t stop there. Mr
Vilsack wants there to be a community garden at each of the department’s
offices around the world.

Margaret Lloyd, a researcher on victory gardens at the University of
California at Davis, finds many reasons for this new national trend. The
recession is one; but people are also worried about food safety, want to
eat more healthily, and are bothered about climate change. This may be a
way to make a difference.

If Washington needs further inspiration it might examine the movement in
Bill Clinton’s former stamping-ground. Although Arkansas is an
agricultural state, urban gardening has not always been popular. But now
victory gardens are springing up in backyards, school grounds and even on
front lawns in posh neighbourhoods. Many gardeners are focusing on
“heirloom” plants—rare varieties from earlier times that do not
appeal to agribusiness.

Classes are being offered on canning vegetables and raising chickens. The
Station, a new grocery store about to open in Little Rock, will sell
primarily local foods. Heifer International, a non-profit group that hopes
to fight world hunger and poverty through self-reliance and sustainability,
will host a conference in the city later this year to encourage the use of
local produce in school cafeterias.

The two-acre Dunbar Community Garden in Little Rock has served as a model
for several years. More than 600 students a month have learned about
gardening there. The students can take these lessons home and recreate them
in their own back yards. The garden, attached to an elementary and middle
school, allows inner-city students to taste fresh-grown fruit and
vegetables, sometimes for the first time in their lives. Produce grown in
the summer months is sold to local restaurants.

Perhaps the most positive aspect of the garden movement comes from ventures
like the Backyard Garden Project, which helps inner-city families start
gardens for self-sufficiency. Ms Lloyd says that the most important
promoter of projects like those in Little Rock should be Mr Obama. “It
would be great to have a farmer-in-chief,” says Ms Lloyd. “It would set
in motion something we as Americans can do in these tough times.”






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