Yesterday Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilasek broke ground on a patch of pavement at the USDA headquarters in Washington D.C., declaring it henceforth "The People’s Garden.’
Vilasek also announced his goal to establish a community garden at every USDA facility in the country.
West Oakland’s upstanding food justice organization, The People’s Grocery, astutely notes that "this announcement makes no mention of the issue of food insecurity among millions of Americans or how the People’s Gardens will help address this issue." That is to say, when the USDA says ‘community gardens,’ what exactly do they mean?
The official announcement makes it sound like these are to be model gardens, akin to model homes (as an avid magazine reader and West Coast resident, I couldn’t help but think of Sunset magazine’s Idea Houses when I read the press release). In other words, the gardens will be a living illustration of various techniques of water conservation, native plantings, and other ‘green garden’ concepts. Presumably, the gardens will be open to the public.
I am currently fantasizing about community-based food justice organizations and gardening groups collaborating with each USDA site on each respective local garden. Unlikely, I know, but a gal can dream.
The People’s Garden itself will be adjacent to the site of the USDA Farmer’s Market and an already planted conventional ornamental garden.
>>Unlikely, I know, but a gal can dream.
I think it’s more than just a dream, Lori.
Despite my cynicism about Vilsack as a pro-real-food politician, I’m not cynical about programs like these. I think they’ll prove to be more than ceremonial, and, indeed, I think they’ll even have leverage because of the local/sustainable/community foods movements, and the great swaths of the business sector that are already pushing this agenda forward. Now they have something to point to in the USDA, run by a King Corn man, that say, "Hey, we value this."
It’s not an organic farming program at a major land-grant university, nor is it a sustainable foods entitlement in the Farm Bill, but it’s modeling behavior. And I’m down with that.
Now if they’d just have the People’s Gardener youtubing, showing how it’s done, I’d be very impressed.
Keep the Home Garden Growing. Roosevelt had a garden in the white house, though it probably ended up being the same plot of land that Reagan buried the air traffic controller’s union under, along with a producer based economy….but it was there before, and I welcome it back in.
Such a core fabric of fairly recent Americana, I think it’s great – even as symbolic as it may be, to encourage people to grow food…..plant something!
Talk about symbolic, what a perfect photo op to have the First Family’s dog fertilizing the people’s garden.
http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2009/02/tom-vilsack-secretary-of.html