Will President Obama start a farm on the White House lawn? Local food advocates like Alice Waters and Michael Pollan think he should. When Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden at the White House during World War II, 20 million Americans followed her lead. Soon, the United States was producing 40% of the domestic food supply in these gardens.
Today, we spend $30 billion annually on lawn care. (That’s 50,000 square miles of grass.)
Right after Thanksgiving, the PBS show Bill Moyers Journal focused on the links between what we eat, how we grow that food, and the some of issues President-elect Obama placed at the center of his campaign: improving our health care system, reducing our dependence on oil, and job creation.
Check out Moyers’ interview with Michael Pollan, a feature on an urban farming organization called Growing Power, an analysis of the issues at stake in the U.S. Farm Bill, and a guide to “voting with your fork.“
–Jennifer Barger
