Citiwire.net

For Release March 29, 2009
Citiwire.net

Things are cooking on the Washington food front.

First, Tom Vilsack, our new Secretary of Agriculture from the big farm food factory of Iowa, had pavement torn up outside departmental offices to create a “people’s garden.” His announced goal: community gardens to promote “green” concepts at all USDA facilities worldwide.

Next, Michelle Obama, accompanied by a band of local fifth-graders and White House staff, broke ground on the White House lawn for an 1,100-square foot kitchen garden. It’s to grow no less than 55 varieties of vegetables, fruits and herbs–lettuces to berries, cilantro and hot peppers. The plot, in clear view to passerbys, is being fertilized with White House compost and Chesapeake Bay crab meal. Mrs. Obama promises her entire family, the president included, will help out pulling weeds–and of course enjoying the fresh goods from their efforts.

There’s strong precedent: the fabulously successful nationwide Victory Garden campaign Eleanor Roosevelt kicked off from the White House in 1943. By the end of World War II, some 20 million American home gardeners were supplying 40 percent of the nation’s fresh produce.

The new administration’s move on fresh food is no accident. Demand for local produce is on the rise nationwide. And the reasons are so many you can name your own–complaints about taste and nutrition in mass-prepared foods, obesity becoming a national epidemic (especially alarming among youth), climate change suggesting less long-distance food supplies, worry about loss of open farm fields around our cities, and revolt against federal subsidies to multi-millionaire commercial farmers.

We may even be witnessing a reversal of a near-century of disappearing small farms. Vilsack recently released a new census of agriculture indicating more than 100,000 new small farmers. Some of the growth may be due to new (and often quite profitable) organic farms.

Up to now, the federal government has given little more than weak lip service to small-scale local farming. Last year it appropriated just $15 million to support organic and other local foods–compared to a massive $7.5 billion for subsidies focused on big-time commodity crops. Local food evangelist Michael Pollan notes federal law has even prohibited farm operations receiving commodity subsidies from growing “specialty crops” of fruits and vegetables.

And there’s another problem: While small farms may be on the rise, they lack sufficient infrastructure, on a regional level, to get to scale and be truly sustainable. While American food systems (and government support) got hijacked by the major commodity producers and processors, virtually nothing was done to promote the storage and packing, distribution and marketing necessary to connect the farms of metro regions with potential customers.

The recent proliferation of farmers’ markets shows strong local interest in locally produced food, and they play a valuable role. But we’ve had to wait years for actions like the $250 million that the Agriculture Department plans to spend on local and regional food systems with funds from the recently-passed economic stimulus bill. Let’s hope it’s just the start.

The benefits of a regional food system are clear. With a system of warehouses and commercial distribution, for example, local farmers are better able to meet the growing institutional demand from hospital, military bases, prisons and schools. A 2006 study by the Michigan Food Policy Council showed that the state’s net farm income could be boosted by $184 million, or 16 percent, by a strong support system. In turn, it was claimed, the new income put back into the economy could generate up to nearly 2000 new jobs.

Some schools in Michigan and Wisconsin are even using their economic stimulus funds for converting their kitchens to accommodate locally grown goods–replacing yesterday’s proliferation of deep fat fryers (that cook artery-clogging food) with walk-in coolers, mechanical slicers, produce washing sinks and salad bar equipment.

The decentralization of our food production will also provide a buffer to any shocks to the system such as e.coli scares and energy price spikes. It adds to our biodiversity with plant varieties attracting a wider array of insects, birds and other wildlife. It provides valuable open green space and offers more manageable way to curb environmental harms from greenhouse gas emissions to water run-off, pesticide use to animal wastes.

On top of all that, it’s en enabler of, a metaphor for community–the “we” President Obama speaks of so often. It’s something we all can do. Growing food (whether on small farms or garden plots) engages the body and the mind. It generates a sense of well-being, satisfaction, even pride. It produces food that is nutritious and tasty. And it saves on the grocery bill–a potential boon in hard times. Digging in the dirt is a great and basic way to dispel built-up anger and frustration. Gardens may be for food–but they feed the mind and the spirit too.

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Farley M. Peters is a principal of the Citistates Group and a co-author of Century of the City: No Time To Lose, the book which grew out of the Rockefeller Foundation’s “Global Urban Summit” in Italy in 2007. Her e-mail is fpeters@citistates.com.

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