Urban Ecoist

The other day I wrote about the kitchen garden that First Lady Michelle Obama is putting in on the White House grounds, the first garden since the World War II victory garden tended by Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Obama decided to garden after being gently encouraged by a group called Kitchen Gardeners International, and just when you’d think that the First Lady is going to get some respect for doing something like planting some lettuce and peas for White House dinners, another group has taken offense.

The Catch-22 Garden

Seems the organic garden of Mrs. Obama is ruffling some feathers among those that farm the “conventional” way. Ok, is it odd that the way of farming that has been around for thousands of years and lead to the dawn of civilization is not called “conventional”? No, conventional farming is the newfangled less-than-a-century-in-use chemical farming that everyone thought was the answer to all of our species troubles.

Anyway, the Mid America CropLife Association has sent Mrs. Obama a letter asking her to rethink her plans to go organic in her kitchen garden. The main gist of the argument is that chemical “conventional” agricultural practices are good enough for everyone else, so the Obamas don’t need to go starting something.

Here’s a brilliant passage from the letter, which I got from La Vida Locavore.

Starting in the early 1900’s, technology advances have allowed farmers to continually produce more food on less land while using less human labor. Over time, Americans were able to leave the time-consuming demands of farming to pursue new interests and develop new abilities. Today, an average farmer produces enough food to feed 144 Americans who are living longer lives than many of their ancestors. Technology in agriculture has allowed for the development of much of what we know and use in our lives today. If Americans were still required to farm to support their family’s basic food and fiber needs, would the U.S. have been leaders in the advancement of science, communication, education, medicine, transportation and the arts?

We live in a very different world than that of our grandparents. Americans are juggling jobs with the needs of children and aging parents. The time needed to tend a garden is not there for the majority of our citizens, certainly not a garden of sufficient productivity to supply much of a family’s year-round food needs.

Much of the food considered not wholesome or tasty is the result of how it is stored or prepared rather than how it is grown. Fresh foods grown conventionally are wholesome and flavorful yet more economical. Local and conventional farming is not mutually exclusive. However, a Midwest mother whose child loves strawberries, a good source of Vitamin C, appreciates the ability to offer California strawberries in March a few months before the official Mid-west season.

So, chemicals pesticides and fertilizers are responsible for mankind’s advances in other “fields”…ok, sure, I’ll buy that a constant food supply does allow for surpluses, which would in turn lead to wealth that would be able to fund research and the arts. But a lot of studies are showing that there is very little real advantage to conventional farming methods, and that often the health of the soil is degraded over many seasons as the farmers are throwing chemical nutrients into the soil hoping that the plants will absorb them before they leach through the soils into the groundwater supply. If the nutrients are not staying the soil, then the soil turns to dust.

And I love the part at the end about a Midwestern mother be able to give her strawberry-loving child berries in March rather than waiting for the June strawberry season. Come on, that is a poor argument, especially as we start looking at the total carbon footprint of the agricultural industry and see that transporting produce in off-seasons can really add up in terms of carbon emissions. Not only that, but that California strawberry was picked while it was underripe, and underdeveloped nutritionally-speaking, so that it would be perfectly ripe by the time it made its cross-country trip to that Illinois grocery store.

That Midwestern mother would be better off teaching her kid about seasonality and how local produce is more often than not the produce at the peak of its nutritional load. Better yet, she could plant a strawberry patch with her child and then freeze extra berries for March, or make the berries into jam to have all year like my mom did.

Michelle Obama, organic gardening, White House, kitchen garden, agriculture, crops, farming, conventional farming, chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, seasonality, local foods, Kitchen Gardeners International, carbon emissions