Victory gardens are no solution for climate change

We don’t need individual fixes. We need a Green New Deal for agriculture.

By Anastasia Day
Washington Post
Anastasia Day is a Hagley scholar and doctoral candidate in history at the University of Delaware, writing about environment, capitalism and gardens in the twentieth century United States.
July 18, 2019

Excerpt:

Last week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) helped introduce a joint resolution for the United States to declare a “climate emergency,” a move to support her Green New Deal legislation. The same day, she also tweeted about the joys of growing her own food and issued a plea to bring back “victory gardens,” invoking the World War II-era effort by ordinary Americans to grow their own food.

Internet progressives lauded the tweet, which was unsurprising given that many others on the left see victory gardens as a force to advance their goals: Green America’s Climate Victory Gardens campaign instructs readers, “Planting a garden has the power to change the world.” Activists across the nation regularly invoke urban gardening as a panacea for tackling a range of issues, including the obesity crisis, food apartheid, economic inequality and climate change.

But by touting victory gardens, Ocasio-Cortez may have undermined her broader political agenda, especially the Green New Deal.

That’s because urban gardening is a bootstraps solution that puts the onus for a sustainable world order and good health on the individual. In reality, however, structural and institutional reform are necessary to achieve those goals. While gardens may bloom and fade with the seasons of public sentiment, government-supported agricultural systems will survive any changes of weather, even war. That’s the lesson of the New Deal and the World War II victory gardens remembered so fondly today.

Read the complete article here.