St. Louis-Based Association Has An Issue with the Obama’s Garden
Besides having a new dog, Bo, the first family has a garden at the White House. Specifically, an organic garden:
The back-to-the-earth movement has gotten the ultimate PR push. First lady Michelle Obama has planted the world’s most famous new garden on the White House grounds. Michelle Obama’s White House garden symbolizes much more than dreams of a few plump tomatoes or juicy snap peas. (source: USA Today)
Seeing our First Lady plant the first White House garden in 60 years warms my heart. I grew up with a garden and my grandparents on both sides of my family had large gardens. Who doesn’t like a garden?
Just a few days after Michelle Obama invited local fifth graders to help plant the White House Kitchen Garden, the MACA, a group which represents and is comprised of former executives from Dow AgroSciences, Monsanto and DuPont Crop Protection, sent the White House a letter expressing their disappointment that she had not “recognize[d] the role conventional agriculture plays in the US.â€Â (source: Sustainablog)
Here is part of the letter:
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.
Bonnie McCarvel, Executive Director
Janet Braun, Program Coordinator
Mid America CropLife Association
11327 Gravois Rd., #201
St. Louis, MO Â 63126
True, we’d starve if we all had to grow our own food today. But growing a family garden to supplement what you buy in the store is a good thing. The decision of Michelle Obama to have an organic garden is practical.
The first family must pay for ingredients in their non-official meals. Just like you and me, the more they can grow at home, the more money they can save.
There is something too about watchng herbs & veggies grow in the garden and later see them on your dinner plate. That is an increasingly important mesage for youth to grasp. They need to understand that we can grow at least part of our food. And we can do so organically.
But the chemical lobby doesn’t like the idea of our first family growing some organic food. It sends the wrong message apparently. I think it sends the right message.
“This is a big day. We’ve been talking it since the day we moved in,” said the First Lady as she and two dozen local students broke ground on the White House Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn of the White House. Those students will be involved in the garden as it develops and grows, producing delicious, healthy vegetables to be cooked in the White House Kitchen and given to Miriam’s Kitchen, which serves the homeless in Washington, DC. (Source: The White House Blog)
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Eveyone’s entitled to their opinions, especially when they’re repectfully expressed. I doubt that this letter will have any impact at all. Most likely it’s just some highly-paid lobbyists justifying their existence to their corporate masters!
In today’s WSJ is an article on the many benefits of the backyard vegetable garden. ScottsMiracle-Gro calculates that the average family with a vegetable garden spends just $70 a year on it and grows an estimated $600 worth of vegetables. Green beans will generate $75 worth of crops for each $1 you spend on seeds. My family favors chiles like jalapeno peppers, herbs, mint, tomatoes etc. as we love pico de gallo, different salsas and gazpacho. Growing green can save much green and good crops lead to healthy-smarter children when they’re involved and better food. But those squirrels love juicy tomatoes too.
Wow, I’m saddened that group(s) even felt the need to write this letter. I’m speechless…
I have coffee with that gal every wednesday. Seriously, she’s a friend of mine. We’re going to talk. :^)
Like Dave, I think it’s weird the group even felt the need to write the letter. Really. Obviously it would be insane to think we could all grow all our own produce in our backyards. But what we can grow is often so much better than what’s in the stores. it’s like the folks who freak out that someone would hang laundry in their backyard and scorn them for trying to save the earth in such a futile tiny attempt–No, I hang it because it saves me a little money. I garden for similar reasons–good tomatoes, heirloom chiles, fresh greens in November that didn’t come on a truck, and so forth.
The letter does seem a bit odd, but I agree, we certainly do appreciate the strawberries from California and Chile and wherever, long before we can get them from Eckerts.
So Mrs. Obama could earn how much money in the time it takes to tend all those plants? As a lawyer, she could have earned the early crop in about 3 hours. I doubt the amount of effort she will expend will be only 3 hours.
I have nothing against her doing this and setting the example. I think the example is not that you should have your own victory garden, but if you follow your passion you achieve anything. Fruits of your labor sort of thing.
Seriously, division of labor is a good thing.
But even tho we can get strawberries year round they aren’t as good as the local grown ones because they get picked so green in order to survive all the truck rides. Those berries might look big and red, but when you bite into them they’re like a piece of wood! I rather just wait till the locals are in season and then freeze some of those for winter.
I’ve been enjoying non-wooden strawberries for several months now.
I hate to say anything negative about local businesses, but Monsanto is truly an evil corporation. No one — and I mean NO ONE — should be able to patent life, in any shape or form! Monsanto basically OWNS the U.S. food supply, because they have patented many species of corn and soybeans — our primary food crops. Monsanto’s pesticides and herbicides eradicate everything in their path, only sparing their patented species. Also, the seeds from Monsanto’s patented plants are genetically modified to be infertile, which means farmers are locked into a cycle of dependence — repeatedly buying expensive seeds and chemicals from the company. Furthermore, no one knows what the long-term health effects are from exposure to these chemicals. Monsanto is opposed to Michelle Obama’s organic garden because it only requires sunlight and water, not their patented plants or poisons.
Well at least they picked an “in” name, the “Croplife” Association. The whole corporate, large is better world is not working. It is that simple.
Much of the corporate world borders on evil, preferring money and greed over human and spiritual values.
By the way Mr. Pointer, the real problem is that lawyers are paid more than farmers and gardeners, not that Michelle Obama is working on a garden.
In fact Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would claim bragging rights whomever had the first peas in early spring.
They got their hands dirty. Lawyers, whose passion is money, will pass laws to insure their success.
Agreed. A scared lobbyist drafted this because the industry looked at their bottom line and got scared. “Recession” gardens are going to impact the bottom line. They should have left it alone, it makes them look ridiculous. Kind of like AB’s response to Emerson, wrapping themselves in their employees like they really care about anything but profit.
Domino’s seemed to handle a crisis much better than Monsanto accepts a great story.
Why would Monsanto view an organic garden as a threat to their livelihood? My goodness.
It reminds me of when Anheuser Busch saw micro-brews as a threat. Then eventually they realized companies such as Schlafly were actually good for the beer industry and helped promote them. Yes this comment is based on pre-Inbev behavior.
But considering the lack of healthy eating in this country and the fact that most people can’t grow all the vegetables that need to survive in their yard – how a corporation can see this as a threat is amazing and short sited. I am off to buy some garden plants this weekend.