I spent a few minutes this afternoon in my garden picking cherry tomatoes and green beans. I have mentioned before how satisfying this process of planting, tending, and harvesting my own food is, but this time, I want to approach it from an environmental angle, as well as from the perspective of gardening as an innate need.
Since reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I have run across two other articles about growing one’s own food in two magazines: Wired and O. Wired’s September 2008 article, written by Clive Thompson, is titled “Grow Your Own” and is about urban farming and microgardening. It seriously makes me want to buy chickens. Thompson argues that this movement is not just for health-conscious foodies and hipsters, but for those that would like to tackle our world’s food resource problems. Thompson states, “a massive increase in edible gardening could help solve them….the next president should throw down the gauntlet and demand Americans sow victory gardens once again.”
I would have no problem with that. I remember my own curiosity as I watched old cartoons that featured these patches of patriotism–these front yards filled with carrots and beans, a backdrop for the roundup of old tires and aluminum cans. I yearned for my own square of earth to tend, and now I have one. However, I doubt that mine is as prolific as the ones grown during the WWII era, which produced “roughly 40 percent of the fresh veggies consumed in the US in 1942 and 1943,” states Thompson. I sense that quite a bit of canning and preservation must have been happening, as well.
Thompson argues for urban gardening for the following reasons:
1) We are facing “a wave of obesity,” states Thompson. Growing fresh veggies might encourage families to eat the recommended 5-9 servings per day, although I think the preparation of these veggies as well as several other factors are going to make more of a difference.
2) The globalization and industrialization of our food poses health risks. If we grew our own food, would we have e. coli in our spinach and jalapenos? Globalization also means that our food is coming from further away, emitting tons of CO2 in its wake. Thompson states, “when you shop for dinner ingredients in and around your home, the carbon footprint nearly disappears.” He advocates for a 100-yard diet rather than a 100-mile diet (which, I argue, is far better than the 1,800 mile average that any given food product travels to most consumers). He states that growing our own food would establish our food independence, although I am not sure how much we truly rely on other countries for our food NEEDS versus our culinary wants.
3) Planting crops in rooftops will cool cities cheaply (and, I say, provide fewer impervious surfaces in our cities).
I will gloss over Thompson’s weak connection to gardening technology–a requirement for his ability to publish this very non-wired topic in Wired magazine–and skip to my favorite part. Thompson states, “Growing our own food again would reconnect us to this country’s languishing frontier spirit.” But is it the frontier spirit to which we need reconnecting? I argue that it is a connection to something more primal (and for that matter, less Eurocentric)–the Neolithic need for self-reliance, as discussed in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
I cannot tell you the number of times I have felt the urge to build, create, knit, grow, sew, and preserve–skills that, unless stranded, are not necessary to my existence. Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, puts it this way:
“Isn’t it curious how in so many of our pasttimes and hobbies we play at supplying one or another of our fundamental creaturely needs–for food, shelter, even clothing? So some people knit, others build things or chop wood, and a great many of us “work” at feeding ourselves, by gardening or hunting, fishing or foraging…..something in us apparently seeks confirmation that we still have the skills needed to provide for ourselves. You know, just in case…..It may be little more than a conceit at this point, but we like to think of ourselves as self-reliant, even if only for a few hours on the weekend, even when growing the stuff yourself winds up costing twice as much as wit would to buy it at the store.” Well, we won’t even go into the cost of my knitting hobby or how little I have used my sewing machine in the last 8 years, but I agree with Pollan. Americans love to be self-reliant, but I think it’s more of a human need than an American need.
Perhaps I can relate to Pollan because I come from Arkansas, dubbed the Natural State, a land of green rolling hills where, in the southeast and southwest of the state, I have grandparents that tend successful gardens. Do folks from Los Angeles and New York feel the same tug to plant seeds indoors that I do when March rolls around? Would they get the same satisfaction from nurturing their need for self-reliance in the same way that I do when it comes time to can tomatoes or bake homemade cobbler from freshly picked blackberries? I don’t know, but from reading Thompson’s article, perhaps it would be better for planet Earth if everyone gave it a try.
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