New York Renovator

The Victory Garden

Posted on 05. Jun, 2008 by Mrs. Mecomber in Gardening

One of my favorite Upstate blogs, Northview Diary, has a wonderful post with a treasure-trove of links about home-style agriculture in the United States. One link led to an article about the World War II Victory Gardens. I’d never heard of such a thing! Does anyone remember these?

As part of the war effort, the government rationed foods like sugar, butter, milk, cheese, eggs, coffee, meat and canned goods. Labor and transportation shortages made it hard to harvest and move fruits and vegetables to market. So, the government turned to its citizens and encouraged them to plant “Victory Gardens.” They wanted individuals to provide their own fruits and vegetables.

Nearly 20 million Americans answered the call. They planted gardens in backyards, empty lots and even city rooftops. Neighbors pooled their resources, planted different kinds of foods and formed cooperatives, all in the name of patriotism.

I think this is a great idea! I mean– the concept of everyone having their own gardens, even city-dwellers. There really is no reason NOT to grow your own food, because there are abundant resources available today, from potting soil to all kinds of seeds to available water to fertilizer.

I was saddened to read the end of the article, though:

When World War II ended, so did the government promotion of victory gardens. Many people did not plant a garden in the spring of 1946, but agriculture had not yet geared up to full production for grocery stores, so the country experienced some food shortages.

I’ve been singing the same again and again: we need to change our lifestyles in order to keep up with the radically-altering changes in the world. Fuel costs are not going to go down. Energy rates are going to go up, too, and conservation will be forced upon those who haven’t adopted it as a lifestyle. It’s hypocritical to be “green” for a day and shut off our computers and lights for 24 hours, then drive the SUVs to the malls and schools. By the way, did you know that schools keep their lights and furnaces running 24 hours a day for most of the year, even when no one is there?

I don’t want to be a “fair weather” patriot and change my lifestyle temporarily until it is no longer convenient. Look at the lifestyles of the WWII generation and their children– as soon as the war was over, they threw away their lifestyle of thrift and became the modern generation of uber-consumerists. Look where it has gotten us- foreign oil dependency (with foreign tensions), excessive waste, profligate debt (just look at all the balance transfer credit card offers we get now– banks and governments are spoon-feeding us into dependency on them. They call it “capitalism” but it’s not– it’s “consumerism,” something akin to fascism. I think it’s time that we throw away our consumerist/materialist mentality as quickly as the Victory Gardeners threw away their gardens after the war. Before it’s too late!

Tags: consumerism, Victory Garden