Vanity Gardens vs. Victory Gardens

Talk about missing the point. And a waste of resources to boot.

As a result of interest in local food and rising grocery bills, backyard gardens have been enjoying a renaissance across the U.S., but what might be called the remote-control backyard garden — no planting, no weeding, no dirt under the fingernails — is a twist. "They want to have a garden, they don't want to garden," said the cookbook author Deborah Madison, who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Her neighbor Chase Ault, a business consultant, recently had a vegetable garden nstalled with a customized set of plants and a regular service agreement. "I am orking 24-7 these days, but I wanted to have something growing in front of me," Ault said.

For God sakes. If you want to garden, do it yourself. If you "don't have the time" - well, number one, that's part of the problem. We've become so pre-occupied with the artificial lives imposed upon us by corporate workaholism and mindless entertainment that we're compelled to outsource our sustenance. But beyond that, this money would be better spent supporting local CSAs, which can serve a community, rather than just serving your own needs.

These aren't "victory gardens"; they're vanity gardens. It's gardening as style, not substance.

Why Aren't There More Conservatives in The Local Food Movement?

I just asked why conservative politicians don't climb aboard such obviously pro-family and pro-community initiatives as the 4-day work-week, telecommuting, and living closer to where you work. Rod Dreher (The Crunchy Conservative) and local food celeb Michael Pollan wonder the same thing:

POLLAN: There is this Joel Salatin, evangelical Christian, libertarian right-wing, but there are not a whole lot of them. Frankly, it baffles me that this growing food movement doesn’t have more support on the Right. It’s very consistent with libertarianism, and it is very consistent with family values. Nevertheless, it is often portrayed in the media as a white-wine-sipping, arugula-chopping, liberal politic.

Pollan notes that he gets the elitism charge from both the left and the right: the right reacts reflexively to critiques of the standard American diet, whereas the left says he wants to price the poor out of eating. Pollan objects:

...the fact is, eating healthy, carefully grown food in this country does cost more. But I think the focus has to be less on that than why the other food is so cheap. The reason is that it’s unfairly subsidized—from direct government subsidies in the form of crop subsidies to the kind of support of agribusiness that I was describing earlier to the fact that the companies growing this food are not required to pay the cost of the environmental damage they do. Did you know that if you’ve got a feedlot and you’re polluting local streams, the government will pay you to clean up your mess? That seems deeply unfair to someone trying to do it right.

It doesn't help that high-profile authors like David Korten wrap such basic human issues in leftist lingo that conservatives could never accept. These issues are too central to our physical and psychological well-being to remain the dominion of one-half of our political spectrum.

Growing your own food - a.k.a. farming - was once held in high esteem. The farmer took his rightful place alongside motherhood and apple pie. How far we have fallen, that calls for a renewed respect for farming are met with accusations of elitism.

Rochester Farmer's Market: Now Accepting Food Stamps

This is a wonderful development in my hometown. The Rochester (NY) Public Market now accepts food stamps via a machine that converts the paper vouchers into $1 wooden Market tokens. Now Rochester families living on assistance can get fresh, local produce, instead of spending it on packaged crud at a box chain.

Say Goodbye to Bananas Now, Not Later

Bananas are a problematic fruit for we here in the States. Plenty of blood was spilled in the 20th century to ensure that we'd have a fresh, unending supply of this tropical fruit. Leaders suck as Guatemala's Jacobo Arbenz have been deposed in its name. Whole rain forests have been cleared to plant more of the crop. Decades ago, the ravages of nature intertwined with the "ingenuity" of man to ensure that, today, our taste buds know only one strain of banana - the Cavendish.

Through all of this, the banana has survived as an American staple. But for how much longer? It was a viral infection that wiped out the Gros Michael variety of bananas, and steered us toward Cavendishes; and now, a new strain of Panama disease may take down the Cavendish as well.

The banana may be our ultimate un-sustainable food. Companies ship thousands of pounds of this fruit to our markets, across thousands of miles, in refrigerated storage. The maintenance of huge banana monocultures makes crops highly susceptible to disease, which require tons of chemical pesticides to keep at bay. It's a waste of resources our planet can ill afford.

In his talk on The End of Food, Paul Roberts thundered that Americans must acclimate to the idea that out-of-season fruits and vegetables are harmful luxuries. Judging by the piles of bananas sitting in the produce sections of our markets, it's obvious most Americans aren't getting that message. Most of us continue to ignore the real costs of our actions - the environmental waste, the topped governments, the striking workers shot dead in far-off countries - until the cost of the item spirals out of control. Even with prices going up, bananas are still relatively cheap (a fact that delights executives at Chiquita).

Ditch the banana. Give that money to local farmers instead.