Eye on the Environment: Act to counter the uncertainty: Grow some food
By Lorraine Rubin
Guest writer
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Food gardening is hot right now. Fingernails haven't seen this much dirt in years.
Recent surveys by the National Gardening and Garden Writers associations report significant increases in consumer spending on vegetable gardening. In our own county, managers of community gardens report greater interest in rental of garden plots, and we have groups throwing free garden installation parties to help neighbors get started growing food.
Pick your reason: high food costs, job losses, hunger, concerns about food quality, climate change or dwindling energy supplies. It adds up to insecurity. Food insecurity.
Applications for food stamps, just one measure of this insecurity, are soaring in Ventura County and the nation, with more than 10 percent of the U.S. population now receiving them.
Growing some food, thankfully, is an action within reach for many of us that can return a sense of security.
As Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," stated in a New York Times essay last spring, "Measured against the problem we face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it's one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind."
Growing food in tough times is, of course, nothing new. During World War II, victory gardens supplied up to 40 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables Americans consumed. There are now campaigns sprouting up all over the country urging a revival of the victory garden movement.
Rose Hayden-Smith, acting director of the Ventura County Cooperative Extension office and a practicing U.S. historian, is a nationally recognized leader in this effort. Thanks to a fellowship from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Hayden-Smith has been crisscrossing the nation giving speeches, granting interviews and blogging like crazy to push the message that our country needs to invest, once again, in local gardening. Victory gardens, as she describes in one of her blogs, can do much to bring a troubled nation together.
"The victory gardens of World War I and World War II — and the garden efforts of the Great Depression — helped Americans successfully negotiate hard times. These gardens helped the family budget, improved dietary practices, reduced the food mile and saved fuel, enabled America to export more food to our allies, beautified communities, enabled every American to contribute to a national effort and helped bridge social, ethnic, class and cultural differences during a time when cooperation was widely needed," she writes. "Gardens were an expression of solidarity, of patriotism and shared sacrifice. They were found everywhere ... schools, homes and throughout public spaces in communities all over the nation. No gardening effort was too small. Every effort counted. Americans did their bit. And it mattered."
Just this month, Hayden-Smith wrote a letter to the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture suggesting a victory garden conference be convened in Washington, D.C., this spring, using as a model the National War Garden Defense Conference held there in 1941, less than two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Such a conference could outline how a national victory garden program could once again offer food security to Americans by supporting edible gardens in our schools, homes, workplaces and communities.
While we wait for government leadership, however, there is nothing stopping us from growing some food.
You couldn't ask for a better place for a food garden. The climate and soils that make Ventura County such a prolific agricultural county can make for a very productive garden. And because we are an agricultural county, we have considerable expertise here: the academic farm advisers who help citrus growers with pests or organic farmers with soil building, for example, are the same ones who instruct our county's Master Gardener volunteers, who then teach gardening in the community. Our colleges, cities and gardening clubs offer gardening classes and there are numerous community gardens that have plots available for rent.
Here are some resources that can help you get started:
- For questions about gardening, contact the Master Gardeners at 645-1455 or mgventura@ucdavis.edu. Answering your questions is their job.
- For a copy of the Ventura County Gardening Resources handout, which includes classes, clubs and community gardens, visit http://ceventura.ucdavis.edu/mg_menu or call the Ventura County Cooperative Extension at 645-1451.
- To read more about victory gardens, go to http://groups.ucanr.org/victorygrower.
- To watch the Grow Food Party install a garden in Ojai, go to http://www.ojaitv.com/2009/01/grow-food-garden-party.
— Lorraine Rubin is a master composter and volunteer with the Ventura County Farm Advisor's Office. Representatives of government or nonprofit agencies who want to submit articles on environmental topics for this column should contact David Goldstein at 658-4312 or david.goldstein@ventura.org.
© 2009 Ventura County Star
By Lorraine Rubin
Guest writer
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Food gardening is hot right now. Fingernails haven't seen this much dirt in years.
Recent surveys by the National Gardening and Garden Writers associations report significant increases in consumer spending on vegetable gardening. In our own county, managers of community gardens report greater interest in rental of garden plots, and we have groups throwing free garden installation parties to help neighbors get started growing food.
Pick your reason: high food costs, job losses, hunger, concerns about food quality, climate change or dwindling energy supplies. It adds up to insecurity. Food insecurity.
Applications for food stamps, just one measure of this insecurity, are soaring in Ventura County and the nation, with more than 10 percent of the U.S. population now receiving them.
Growing some food, thankfully, is an action within reach for many of us that can return a sense of security.
As Michael Pollan, author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma," stated in a New York Times essay last spring, "Measured against the problem we face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it's one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind."
Growing food in tough times is, of course, nothing new. During World War II, victory gardens supplied up to 40 percent of the fresh fruits and vegetables Americans consumed. There are now campaigns sprouting up all over the country urging a revival of the victory garden movement.
Rose Hayden-Smith, acting director of the Ventura County Cooperative Extension office and a practicing U.S. historian, is a nationally recognized leader in this effort. Thanks to a fellowship from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Hayden-Smith has been crisscrossing the nation giving speeches, granting interviews and blogging like crazy to push the message that our country needs to invest, once again, in local gardening. Victory gardens, as she describes in one of her blogs, can do much to bring a troubled nation together.
"The victory gardens of World War I and World War II — and the garden efforts of the Great Depression — helped Americans successfully negotiate hard times. These gardens helped the family budget, improved dietary practices, reduced the food mile and saved fuel, enabled America to export more food to our allies, beautified communities, enabled every American to contribute to a national effort and helped bridge social, ethnic, class and cultural differences during a time when cooperation was widely needed," she writes. "Gardens were an expression of solidarity, of patriotism and shared sacrifice. They were found everywhere ... schools, homes and throughout public spaces in communities all over the nation. No gardening effort was too small. Every effort counted. Americans did their bit. And it mattered."
Just this month, Hayden-Smith wrote a letter to the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture suggesting a victory garden conference be convened in Washington, D.C., this spring, using as a model the National War Garden Defense Conference held there in 1941, less than two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Such a conference could outline how a national victory garden program could once again offer food security to Americans by supporting edible gardens in our schools, homes, workplaces and communities.
While we wait for government leadership, however, there is nothing stopping us from growing some food.
You couldn't ask for a better place for a food garden. The climate and soils that make Ventura County such a prolific agricultural county can make for a very productive garden. And because we are an agricultural county, we have considerable expertise here: the academic farm advisers who help citrus growers with pests or organic farmers with soil building, for example, are the same ones who instruct our county's Master Gardener volunteers, who then teach gardening in the community. Our colleges, cities and gardening clubs offer gardening classes and there are numerous community gardens that have plots available for rent.
Here are some resources that can help you get started:
- For questions about gardening, contact the Master Gardeners at 645-1455 or mgventura@ucdavis.edu. Answering your questions is their job.
- For a copy of the Ventura County Gardening Resources handout, which includes classes, clubs and community gardens, visit http://ceventura.ucdavis.edu/mg_menu or call the Ventura County Cooperative Extension at 645-1451.
- To read more about victory gardens, go to http://groups.ucanr.org/victorygrower.
- To watch the Grow Food Party install a garden in Ojai, go to http://www.ojaitv.com/2009/01/grow-food-garden-party.
— Lorraine Rubin is a master composter and volunteer with the Ventura County Farm Advisor's Office. Representatives of government or nonprofit agencies who want to submit articles on environmental topics for this column should contact David Goldstein at 658-4312 or david.goldstein@ventura.org.
© 2009 Ventura County Star
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