Gardening for Food Security
On Sunday evening I was standing in the produce section of the supermarket staring at a bunch of organic Swiss chard. It cost $3.49 for six leaves. Really? You could plant a ten foot row of Swiss chard for less than that, I thought. So, I pushed my shopping cart over to the conventional side of the produce section. Regular Swiss chard also cost $3.49.
Normally buying a bunch of chard does not nudge my weekly grocery budget over the limit, but this isn’t a normal week. I am participating in the Hunger Action Challenge and spending nearly four dollars on six leaves of chard seemed extravagant when I only had 63.00 to spend for five days worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for Jon and I.
Food that we already have in our home is off limits for the challenge. This means we can’t touch the homegrown tomatoes and peppers in our freezer, the greens, herbs, and carrots in the garden, eggs from our chickens, and the homemade jam and chili sauce in the cupboard.
As people come together to think about hunger this week, we need to include access to garden space in the conversation. Vegetable gardening is so often seen as merely a hobby, but it is so much more than that. Vegetable gardening is a life skill—one that can provide an affordable source of ripe, fresh, seasonal, organic food for families of any income level.
History shows that gardening can be an important and feasible part of a secure, healthy, and sustainable food supply. During WWII the United States government recognized that homegrown food was an important way to ensure an adequate food supply, so they encouraged the planting of victory gardens at the local, state, and federal level.
In 1943 an estimated 20 million victory gardens were planted, producing 8 million tons of food, and an estimated 40% of all the fresh vegetables in the United States. The reason regular citizens were able to make such a dramatic contribution to the food supply was because the government recognized that urban agriculture was an essential component of the food system. And, more importantly, the government then created policies that provided extensive gardening education, that encouraged people to turn underutilized yards into food production gardens, and turned public lands into gardens for people who could not grow their own food at home.
The victory garden movement demonstrated that investing in gardening education and access can and should play a significant and profound role in improving food security.
Of course, gardens will not solve the hunger problem alone. We need to ensure that there are grocery stores in every neighborhood and that bus routes connect people to those stores. We need to bring farmer’s markets into underserved communities. We need to teach people how to cook in school. But we also need to ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to learn how to grow their own food and a space to do it.
This is awesome – and so true. I have always thought of home-gardened veggies and fruit as a more natural and healthy option to store-bought, but I hadn’t thought about the economic factors – especially to those who, given the space, may be able to feed their children fresh saldads instead of McDonalds, and at less financial cost.
January 26th, 2010 at 12:10 pmThanks for the insight…
Willie, I enjoy listening to you on the radio. You have an important message to share. The $63 in food stamps is a good metric, but another number in the same context is the $60 billion of the USDA budget that all those foodstamps comprise. It’s also interesting to note that back in the time of Victory gardens( into the 50′s, some 50-60 years ago) , food in our household budgets represented about 17%. Today, food only uses up about 9% of that budget, but for every dollar saved on food , we’re now spending two dollars on health care. d
January 26th, 2010 at 12:26 pmAmen…so well said.
January 26th, 2010 at 1:26 pm.-= Christine´s last blog ..Conversation Hearts =-.
Willi, I commend you for taking on this challenge, it will be difficult indeed! I’m very interested to see how things go for you this week. I couldn’t agree more with you about ensuring garden space for food security. I just spent $147 on garden seeds for 2010, and I should mention that i splurged; I could have cut it way down by not buying multiple varieties of many veggies, and by combining my purchase with others to buy in bulk and split the shipping cost (I ordered from 2 seed companies so that added even more to my shipping). Last year I spent about the same and we were able to rely on our veggie garden for the majority of fruit and veggies from April – October. What a HUGE difference that would make for people with a $63 weekly budget. They could also use any extra $$ in the growing season to stock up on bulk goods to help them through winter, not to mention preserving some of the summer bounty. What a concept! Good luck to you this week, looking foward to hearing more about your experience this week!
January 26th, 2010 at 2:33 pmChard and Kale prices never cease to amaze me whether at the farmer’s market or at the grocery store. These plants are soooo generous. And, it seems they store and travel fairly well. So what gives folks? Why the high prices? Is it to balance out lowering prices on more difficult crops?
Keep up the good work on the challenge Willi — good thing those eggs and carrots will keep beyond this week!
January 26th, 2010 at 3:09 pm.-= gardenmentor´s last blog ..Free Ticket to the 2010 Northwest Flower and Garden Show =-.
S–Gardens can absolutely save money, and like anything you can garden on a budget. Buying seeds instead of seedlings is a good way to start!
Del–Interesting stats. I had no idea that we spend less money on food now then ever before. And of course, most food has an artificially low price (especially processed foods) do to all the ag subsidies.
Justine–The challenge has definitely been a challenge, and more eye opening than I thought it would be!
Gardenmentor–I’m always surprised at the cost of them,too. I usually have so much that I rarely have to buy it, but a lot of my greens bit the dust during that cold weather because lazy me didn’t cover them up!
January 27th, 2010 at 9:08 amYet another inspiration. I was going to ease off of such a large garden this year. I used two plots at my sister’s house in addition to my own yard last year and did more work than I could handle alone. I will just invite someone else to help and share in the bounty!
Farm City by Novella Carpenter is another good way to get your inpirational juices flowing.
3.49 for chard? Dh will be amazed. We always grow it ourselves.
January 27th, 2010 at 9:12 am[...] Diggin Food: Willi had a great post about the value of gardening and it’s role in helping relieve hunger. She was also on KUOW Radio talking about Hunger Action Week and gardening. You can listen to the broadcast here (she starts around the 15 minute mark). [...]
January 27th, 2010 at 2:31 pmWhy not use what you grow and take it off the budget?
January 28th, 2010 at 3:02 pmHi Willi! It’s Nurit (remember me?). I’m taking the challenge again as well. I love your approach and discussed it a bit in my post today. I’ll add a link to this post ot it.
.-= Nurit – 1 family. friendly. food.´s last blog ..Hunger challenge 2010 – Hungry, not only for food =-.
Ann–I’m so glad this inspired you to keep your garden and share the bounty. Good for you!!!
Nurit–Hello! I’ve been following you in the challenge too
Thanks so much for mentioning me in your post!
January 28th, 2010 at 4:40 pm.-= Willi´s last blog ..An Edible Front Yard =-.
Hi Willi
Regarding your last paragraph:
Of course, gardens will not solve the hunger problem alone. We need to ensure that there are grocery stores in every neighborhood and that bus routes connect people to those stores. We need to bring farmer’s markets into underserved communities. We need to teach people how to cook in school. But we also need to ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to learn how to grow their own food and a space to do it.
We must also teach people to eat. The school lunches that are served are terrible, mushy stuff. I can’t believe we feed them on just pennies, when we should be investing in good choices, and better health.
I teach my kindergartener how to choose good food, and we send him to school with home-made. He gets to choose a “school-meal” once a month, from the calendar they send home, so he doesn’t consider it ‘forbidden food’. If we could raise a whole generation of good eaters, then we’ll raise a generation of people who demand healthful, fresh food from local sources.
January 28th, 2010 at 9:18 pmWilli, thank you so much for this post. On one hand it’s so obvious but most of us need to be reminded that the REAL reason for growing our own food is EATING our own food. Food prices makes me blanch. Good for you and Jon for showing us a very real problem right in front of our noses.
January 30th, 2010 at 12:24 pm.-= Lorene´s last blog ..Meet me at the Soiree… =-.
http://roostershamblin.wordpress.com/ would you please spend a few minutes and check out my blog. I am a farmer who has been raising over fifty breeds of chickens for forty years.
January 30th, 2010 at 3:31 pmGrace–I completely agree and well said. I think investing in educating kids of good food choices is so important!
Lorene–Thanks so much! It really was an eye opening experience.
February 1st, 2010 at 8:34 am