Interesting article on youth-led food movements

[Hamline SPROUT]

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Whose White House Organic Garden? When Youth Lead...

BY ETHAN GENAUER

100 days into the Presidency of Barack Obama, one of the new
administration's most popular decisions -- a move that only the
pesticide-peddling MidAmerica CropLife Association could oppose -- was
ripping up a section of the South Lawn of the White House to plant an
organic vegetable garden.

In the wake of Michelle Obama beginning to plant the organic veggie
garden this March, a chorus of media voices scrutinized the cultural
and agricultural significance of this symbolic new “First Garden.”
From the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today to The Nation,
much of America’s media, joined by leading proponents of sustainable
food like Alice Waters and Michael Pollan, has in recent weeks
enthusiastically echoed and acclaimed Michelle Obama’s charismatic
message to the country that growing and eating fresh, pesticide-free
food is healthy and delicious, if not patriotic.

Yet in the rush to applaud this timely, important message while
reporting on its unfolding societal impact, the mass media’s response
fell too far into hyperbole and speculation that reflexively
overplayed the particular impact of the White House organic garden.
Rather than viewing it as just one more example -- albeit an unusually
high-profile one -- of America's already fast-spreading resurgence of
local, organic and homegrown food, the media tended to aggrandize this
garden at the expense of reporting in depth on the successes and
challenges of the wider sustainable food movement.

Nearly alone among the mainstream US media, USA Today placed the White
House organic garden firmly within the context of a nationwide
"gardening renaissance." This "back-to-the-earth movement," it said,
"comes at the crossroads of several trends: tight family food budgets,
an environmental movement focused on modestly practical things one
person can do, and food safety scares on everything from meat to
nuts." Even before the White House organic garden was announced, the
National Gardening Association predicted a 19 percent rise in 2009
household gardening, and seed companies were reporting a 20 to 30
percent boom in sales.

But in general, the mass media missed the ball on reporting the White
House organic garden as part of a wide-ranging social movement with
roots in countless local communities. Consequently, through the prism
of media infatuation with the star power of Barack and Michelle
Obama’s example, what might be the most relevant, radical and
inspiring dimension of the White House organic garden -- its
engagement with youth -- has been largely cropped out of public view.

First, the Obamas were pressed by a savvy grassroots campaign, led by
a couple of twenty-something activists, that called for the renewal of
organic food production on the White House lawn for the first time
since Eleanor Roosevelt's "Victory Garden." But then, Michelle Obama
was joined by a class of fifth-graders from Bancroft Elementary School
who have helped her plant the garden. While most media have at least
recognized their presence, these children have generally been cast and
forgotten as incidental supporting actors to the First Lady rather
than seen seriously as current and future leaders who themselves can
develop to usher America to a more sustainable food system.


Foremost among the challenges facing the future of US agriculture is
the national imperative to transition away from an aging conventional
agricultural workforce that is trained almost exclusively in the
petroleum-based and chemical-intensive practices that US eaters
increasingly reject, and toward the younger and more ecologically
minded farmers who are necessary to ensure a viable future supply of
healthy food.


Fortunately, Michelle Obama herself has emphasized the role of youth
in the process of transforming America's food system. By bringing a
group of 10 and 11 year-old kids into the creation and cultivation of
the White House organic garden, Michelle demonstrated that America's
children can both understand and participate in the process of growing
fresh food, rather than just being consumers of the food that is
marketed to them. Even more important, she acknowledged that young
people can become leaders demanding good, fresh food and empowering
its wider availability throughout society.


"My hope is that children will begin to educate their families [about
healthy eating] and that will, in turn, begin to educate our
communities," she said.


The next step must be to reflect this awareness in public policy that
supports and expands the next generation of sustainable food growers
at a pace at least equal to the aging and declining numbers of
conventional farmers. Yet already, the educational impetus that
Michelle Obama called for is more than the idle hope of progressive
political idealism. Whether by design or coincidence, the White House
organic garden is feeding into and leveraging a significant existing
social trend. Across the USA, the proliferation of youth-led and -
centered gardening, farming and healthy eating initiatives is one of
the most stunning successes of local and sustainable food movements.
From school gardens andFarm-to-School programs to the first rising
shoots of a new crop ofyoung farmers,campus food activistsandurban
food visionaries, America's next generation is perhaps the clearest
evidence that the country's hunger for better food is more durable
than a fad and much deeper than the Baby Boomer embrace of healthful
living.



Over eight thousand US schoolsare directly connected to local farms
that provide produce used in cafeteria meals. In California alone,
school gardens are flourishing at more than three thousand public
schools. A new national student campaign, theReal Food Challenge, is
pushing for a billion-dolar expansion of sustainable food procurement
on college and university campuses and this winter organized five
regional summits bringing together student food activists. Even stodgy
oldSlow Food USA, not long ago reputed to be the bastion ofupscale
foodie elitism, is hard at work getting a makeover. Last year
theirYouth Food Movement coordinated theattendance of 600 young US
food leadersas delegates toTerra Madre in Italy,the biggest
international gathering ever of sustainable food growers and
advocates. Meanwhile, networks like Rooted In Community, Building
Local Agricultural Systems Today (BLAST), and the Growing Food and
Justice for All Initiative are building diverse youth leadership for
food justice in communities of color across the US.


But as remarkable as this all is, the picture of America's young
people fermenting for a sustainable future is even more astonishing
when the youth food movement is juxtaposed with the student climate
movement that made its awesome national debut this winter in
Washington, DC.



In late February, thespectacle of 12,000 young climate activists
convergingin DC for clean energy, green jobs and an end to the burning
of coal was a jolt to the country's Democratic leadership. Nancy
Pelosi and Harry Reid announced their agreement to the movement's top
demand -- cessation of coal use at the Capitol Power Plant that heats
Congress -- even before thousands marched through the snow-covered
streets to physically surround that icon of dirty energy. And this was
just the beginning.

"What began partly as an environmental movement, brought together to
prevent the ecological disaster of climate change," reported
Huffington Post, "has morphed into a far-reaching movement tackling
issues as far ranging as equity, justice and economic reform. This
youth movement is setting out to dissolve the inequities and
injustices of the current energy system, to empower and lift up
communities, and to build the kind of economy they ultimately want to
work and live in."


Thus the amazing truth is that America today, in the midst of the
early stages of our most traumatic financial meltdown and economic
contraction since the Great Depression, is experiencing the rapid and
simultaneous emergence, growth and maturation of two large and
independent youth movements. While the youth climate movement is
pursuing grand ambitions of revolutionizing the energy base of how our
local, regional and national economies function, the youth food
movement is focused somewhat more narrowly on the goal of reclaiming a
healthy food supply.


These movements and objectives are now, at best, only loosely
connected. Yet the two movements may come to realize that the goals
they have in common warrant the formation of strategic alliances. And
if this consciousness were to take root, the resulting mass movement
could have the potential to enlist the numbers and organizational
strength to sweep away obstacles toward the dramatic change for a
sustainable future that many youth now believe is essential.


As Mark Hertsgaard noted in The Nation's story on the White House
organic garden, "Humanity cannot hope to halt global warming unless
emissions from the food sector are cut dramatically. As currently
constituted, the global food system is a climate killer. The American
diet [of highly processed food derivatives], and the food production
and distribution system that supports it, is one of the main drivers
of global warming and a host of related hazards, from deforestation to
air, soil and water pollution."

However, by comparing today's era to the past impact of Eleanor
Roosevelt's Victory Garden which, by the end of World War II, helped
drive home gardeners to produce nearly half of the fruit and
vegetables eaten by Americans, Hertsgaard drew the wrong historical
analogy. "If Obama's organic garden proves equally inspiring, she
could spark a new green revolution--and not a moment too soon," he
concluded.


Perhaps, but there are at least three critical differences between
then and today. First, in the 1940s, industrial agribusiness was on
the upswing, supplying the USA's military troops abroad with their
rations of processed food. Today, while the sheer productivity of US
agribusiness remains the envy of the world, it has become rife with
evidence of stress, decay, waste, and unsustainable resource
consumption. Now, we need to not only further spread the resurgence of
local and organic agriculture, including home and community gardening,
but must also transform the mono-cultures of large-scale agribusiness
into diversified fields and forests that actually produce nutritious
food while protecting and restoring the environment, with a fraction
of the greenhouse gas emissions. If we don't address the urgent need
for comprehensive agricultural reform along the lines of the
recommendations proposed by the US Working Group on the Food Crisis
and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the bitter reality is
that food shortages could bring down civilization.

Second, with America's prototypical farmer now nearing the age of 60
and retirement, we cannot count on the past generation of agricultural
specialists to lead this shift. This 21st century food revolution will
instead require creative new policies and incentives to encourage a
much larger influx of younger food producers committed to
sustainability. If sufficient numbers of youth and young adults are to
become the new farmers rising to this immense challenge, it will need
to be inspired by a vision of agricultural renewal and rootedness that
is much more expansive than by the Obama's tremendously welcome -- but
nonetheless tiny -- organic garden. As Virginia Tech sustainability
coordinator Andy Sarjahani writes, "It is absolutely essential to push
boundaries in public policy right now that lure young Americans into
the unpredictable, yet fulfilling agrarian life of a small-scale
producer of food." In this respect, we could learn from the model of
Growing Power's Youth Corps in Chicago, and implement a national
program training and employing young people to be leaders for the
growth of sustainable agriculture foodsheds across America.

Third, and perhaps most important, today we have vibrant
sustainability movements that could be perfectly positioned to demand,
plan and help lead this food revolution. Yet all too often, these
movements are divided through their strategic focus on narrow issue-
based objectives rather than building collective multi-issue power for
holistic transformation. In the ecological rhythms of the natural
world, the ways that humans produce food and global warming are far
too intimately connected to be considered the domains of separate
activist movements or government policies. We have much to gain by
learning more about food-climate links and then, by targeting these
links with synergy and coherence, reflecting this knowledge in inter-
connected struggles for substantive change.

For example, do we need a fusion of food-climate policy activism to
counter the agribusiness lobby's drive to exempt agricultural
greenhouse gas emissions from proposed new climate law? Could we learn
a lesson from Japan, of all places, and push to give sustainable
agriculture a bigger role in the implementation of Green Jobs
legislation? Should we unite forces to actively pressure President
Obama to follow through on his campaign promise to end subsidies for
the largest factory farms, while demanding greater funding and
infrastructure in support of small and sustainable farmers? Should we
more adamantly question and oppose the policy of mandating biofuels
production, which we can now see is destructive in terms of both food
security and climate mitigation?



In the same vein, sustainable food activists and growers must find
more ways to step out of our comfort zone and link with other
movements and struggles that impact our work. For example, global
warming and drought are already devastating the food production of
many arable lands, from California and Texas to China and Australia --
and this trend will only worsen as temperatures continue to rise. Does
it make sense, then, for sustainable food movements to get involved
with supporting and strengthening the grassroots movements, from
indigenous Black Mesa, Arizona to the bombed-out mountains and
communities of Appalachia, to replace the destructiveness of coal with
clean and renewable forms of energy? Can we continue to look the other
way while tens of thousands of tons of coal ash, a waste product
created by burning coal, are "recycled" as a toxic amendment to the
soils of US croplands? With the US Department of Defense lodged as the
world's single largest institutional consumer of oil, should the food
and climate movements both join peace activists to mobilize against
Obama's escalation of war in Afghanistan?


The sustainability consciousness that is bubbling up from youth
already contains the seeds of such connections. When young climate
activists took the streets of Washington DC on March 1, they self-
divided into affinitygroups carrying various colored banners that
marched to and shut down the Capitol Power Plant's different
entrances. The green section of the march held a banner demanding
"Justice" that depicted a farmer tending his seedlings. "Food Not
Bombs! Plant a Garden on the White House Lawn!" the group chanted.

Yes, the symbolic victories of planting an organic garden at the White
House and shutting down coal use at the Capitol Power Plant are
phenomenal indicators of how the organized strength of youth activism
can force progressive change within the United States democratic
system. But these victories are only a small start. Now we must build
and connect our movements to win much deeper and more systemic change.
If youth continue to lead the way in this historic task, it is likely
that the larger social movements and democratic processes of which we
are part -- and the United States as a whole -- will follow.


Ethan Genauer is a young learning farmer, an experienced food justice
activist, and a freelance environmental journalist. In 2008, he helped
establish La Placita Gardens, a youth-led community farm in
Albuquerque, and traveled from Los Angeles to New Mexico with the
White House Organic Farm Project's bus tour across the United States.
This is the first article in a series exploring the youth food
movement, its hopes and struggles, and emerging links between food and
climate change activism.

[Kathryn Malody]

Check out this link about the history of Victory Gardens (http://
www.victoryseeds.com/TheVictoryGarden/page2.html).

It talks about how "... (people) conserved raw materials, they
recycled, they rallied behind the troops, they helped their
neighbors, they gave their lives, and they planted 'Gardens for
Victory'.
Victory Gardens came in every shape and size. Governments and
corporations promoted this call for self-reliance. People in all
areas, rural and urban alike, worked the soil to raise food for their
families, friends, and neighbors..."

Is anyone else struck by the parallels?
Kathryn Malody