Victory Garden

Victory Garden

During the World Wars, our government encouraged us to grow 'victory gardens'. These gardens produced up to 40% of all the vegetables consumed in the country. Food was a way of fighting. Once again, we are at war. We are at war with poverty, with pollution, with nutrition-generated health risks, with industrial imperialism, with corporate greed, and with big government. The time for victory gardens has returned.

According to one Iowa State University study from July of 2003 (see http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/files/food_travel072103.pdf) fresh produce may travel an average of 1500 miles before reaching our table. It goes on to say, "The typical American prepared meal contains, on average, ingredients from at least five countries outside the United States."

At a time when the issues of peak oil, global warming, and economic decline are converging, we must ask ourselves about the ethics of industrial agriculture at the cost of local sustenance. No one wants to take food out of poor people's mouths. And certainly our farmers, a vanishing breed, have already suffered enough. But aren't we hastening our agricultural demise by encouraging industrial agriculture practices among populations unable to sustain them? What happens when the fertilizers have leeched the soil of its nutrients and fertilizer-dependent farmers can no longer afford fertilizer? What happens when genetically modified varieties of foods make it impossible for poverty-stricken farmers to set aside productive seed for the next harvest from the crop that they just grew? What happens when export, upon which the farmers depended so completely for a market, becomes prohibitively expensive with the rise in oil prices? And what happens when a combination of factors, such as diminishing honeybee populations, pollution, changing weather patterns, GM sterilization, and expensive oil conspire to destroy the agricultural basis of a country? If we do nothing, I know what will happen -- famine, pestilence, and war.

It is said that the average person will feel full after eating one pound of food. If we were to use rice as our mean measure for calculating the volume of food consumed in a single meal, we would find that the average meal (in America) is equivalent to about two cups of rice. There are 65 cups of cooked rice in a cubic foot. There are 2360 cu ft in the average 40 ft. shipping container. The average long-haul truck gets six miles to the gallon of diesel at $2.05 per gallon (as of 3/09/09). Over a 1500-mile trip, $500 would be spent in fuel. Dividing the cubic feet in a container (2360) by the fuel cost ($500) we find a food-fuel cost of .21 cents per cubic foot or .006 cents per serving. Multiply food-fuel costs by 3 meals a day and you are only spending about .02 cents per day on food-fuel.

Now that doesn't sound too bad. But add to that the long-term cost of pollution, of road tax, of salaries for these hard-working truckers, of packaging, of refrigeration (when necessary), of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, of honeybee pollination, of warehousing, and of advertising, and consider that the average farmer (even with subsidies) barely makes enough money to stay out of foreclosure, and you will see that somewhere between the soil and your table, someone is making a lot of money. You can stop that bleed on your pocketbook, lower taxes, reduce pollution, and promote your local economy by buying and producing locally. And you can begin in your own backyard.

Now, I am not making myself any friends in the trucking, warehousing, advertising, or agriculture industries, but just maybe, if my advice is heeded, a few families might not have to ask for welfare from a government already on welfare from the taxpayer. Just maybe a few families will grow enough of their own food to make it through the winter. Just maybe we can stem the tide of economic bleed to the foreign countries that hold a petro-dollar or trade-deficit knife to our throats. And I would bet the average American would be willing to sacrifice a few entertainment-dollars for better health, longer life, and economic security. All of these can be found in a local garden.

The key to having more money to spend at home is spending less abroad. That shouldn't surprise anyone. But the key to spending less money abroad is spending more money at home. That will rankle a few tail feathers. Local agricultural investment, not military deployment, should be our international priority and that priority ought to be reflected in our checkbook. The country that fails to invest at home, funds terrorist and imperial aggression against itself from abroad. The best national security policy is a local garden. Does that sound absurd? Then imagine with me for a moment.

What would happen if we stopped investing in corporate industry and returned to investing in the local lives of people? What would happen if terrorists were no longer supported by the petro-dollars siphoned off American funded fuel lines? What would happen if the pollution that clogs our air and destroys our land suddenly diminished? What would happen if agriculture were no longer limited to narrow seed pools managed by a few mega-agro-empires? What would happen if our youth needed to apply themselves diligently in sweat-soaked soil-work in order to survive instead of depending on government or parental handouts? What if we had citizens whose natural nutritional practices kept them strong and healthy? What if our inability to travel kept us all one step closer to our next door neighbors? Does that sound absurd to you? Those are the benefits of victory gardens.

"Victory gardens were a wartime necessity," I can hear the critics say. Describe the horrors of war to me. Casualties? We have them. Poverty? It's staring us in the face. Alienation from a country or countries of the world? Tell me that is not our portion. Violence? We have that in spades, both the homegrown sabotage and the foreign terrorist variety. What else would you tell me about war? Of its sickness, of its hopelessness, of its despair? If we are not at war, we are certainly under siege, but not by the usual suspects. Rather, by our cravings and lack of restraint, we have laid siege to ourselves and the only way out is to work and save our way out, not to tax and spend.

I see a victory garden as a hopeful thing, as a way to restore a healthy work ethic to our youth, as a way to strengthen homes and neighborhoods, as a way to provide for the basic needs of the poor, as a way to restore dignity to those who have lost everything and have nothing to work with but their hands and nothing to work for but the food on their tables and the honor it brings. I see the victory garden as a way to promote environmental awareness and love of nature, as a way to improve health, as a way to lower taxes, and as a way to support my local community. I see a victory garden as a bloodless revolution that conquers poverty, hatred, and war. But most of all, I see a victory garden as a way to worshipfully honor God, with the best of our creativity, on the one canvas that He has given all mankind to share.

Michael Hennen

Saturday, March 14, 2009