A White House Garden, Part II: Cuba Shows US The Way?
Although it wouldn’t be an efficient way to feed the first family and guests, a White House garden would remain a potent symbolic gesture of progressive, green action. It would demonstrate the seriousness of our new president’s perspective on greenhouse gases and global warming. A modern White House garden would invoke an image of real action against global warming and could start an expansive trend of private gardens all across America, like when we followed Eleanor Roosevelt’s example during WWII (link).
As many commentators on op-ed pieces have pointed out, one should not be under the impression that small-scale gardens will be the most cost-effective way of getting produce. A private garden is no match for agribusiness economies of scale. William Alexander writes pointedly about this fact as he describes his nerve racking adventures in the world of gardening in The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden. The subtitle may discourage, but many home-gardeners find that despite the cost they relish the time in the sun, the exercise, and the eventual fruits (and vegetables) of their labor. Furthermore, a private garden helps reduce carbon emissions by using plant life to sequester carbon dioxide, reducing the need for driving to the grocery store and even the gym. On the national scene, the tarnished reputation of American politics would surely get a facelift when the White House donates excess zucchini and cucumber to local food banks. Gardens can do all that and fight against the advance of global warming. It’s a fantastic and tasty way to be a part of the solution.
Amazingly enough, America can find a model for individual agricultural action in Cuba. Much like the US depends on fossil fuels now, Cuba had depended on the Soviet Union’s oil in order to produce fertilizer and other goods that sustained its agriculture and economy. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and cheap oil imports went with it. Cuba’s economy was in turmoil and the number of calories in the average Cuban’s diet dropped by an entire third. Ingenuity and perseverance led Cubans to a more sustainable, fossil fuel independent agricultural system. Tracy, at BeyondDinner, summarizes part of the documentary entitled “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil”:
What’s inspiring about the film is that they turned the system around and are now thriving. Now, about 80% of their agriculture is organic. In Havana, where they started farming in every empty lot, they now supply 50% of their food needs from within the city. Where in the past the farmers weren’t paid well, now farming is now a sought-after, well-compensated job.
Cuba’s agricultural renaissance can be construed as direct evidence against the USDA’s old claim that private gardens would stifle agribusiness. Just after the end of WWII, the USDA began discouraging victory gardens for that very reason. The USDA believed that big agribusinesses should be helped to thrive, that people should buy from the big agribusinesses, despite the fact that victory gardens had been growing 40% of the nation’s produce during the war. According to that reasoning, business is only good business if it is giant and nearly monopolistic. That is pure folly. Clearly, even individuals working on very small scales can produce large-scale change.
Although Cuba’s transformation is doubtlessly an imperfect comparison for what would happen in the US, it remains that the creation of many smaller, organic farms did not kill the country’s agricultural production. Cuba pulled itself together during its energy crisis and farmed every open lot available. Rather than hinder agribusiness, it encouraged more competition amongst food growers, resulting in higher wages for farmers and more food for the country. Those small plots of farm promoted a dynamic system of well-paid farmers growing local and organic produce right where it was most needed, in Havana. Imagine that, Cuba showing the US how to create competition and increase (agri)business growth.
We are not experiencing a total energy crisis at the moment, so it must be with foresight and prescience that we plan for a future in which a fossil-fuel based economy is really, truly, and absolutely no longer feasible. We should really be implementing these solutions already. However, since the icecaps have only just begun to melt and polar bears have only just become endangered, we are staying in denial a little longer.
Truthfully, we need another Johnny Appleseed and another Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House to catalyze our nation into real movement. By growing gardens, the seeds of change would be literally in our hands.
February 3, 2009
Tags: Barack Obama, energy, farmers, global warming, green, greenhouse gases Posted in: Politics
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[...] reinstated the White House garden – the first since seen since Elanor Roosevelt was there during WWII- as a way of showing the nation how easy it was to have healthy and fresh foods in hand. She [...]
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