You're Never Going To Believe This: Gardens

The Washington Post published an article in the August 3 edition about the rise in the number of vegetable gardens nationwide. Honestly, there's nothing really new here, and I think I've seen the same article, at some point in the past several months, on the Web sites of every major news publication in the U.S. The angle has usually been the same: Rising fuel and food costs are leading to more locally-grown and home-grown tomatoes. I'm not necessarily complaining—Lord knows, it's heartening to see stories about community food efforts pop up on the Times-Picayune and Journal-Constitution. But at this point, as a pure news item, it seems like a fall-back and another space filler.

You know as someone who advocates a sacramental vision, like that of Gerard Manley Hopkins, I'm just nutty about the dreadful modern worship of numbers. However, I did find one passage in the article, and its horrible statistics, particularly interesting:

In New York City, more than 3 million residents, 38 percent of the population, had difficulty affording food last year, according to a recent report by the Food Bank for New York City -- up 13 percentage points from 2003. Food costs rose 15 percent during that period. The number of people using soup kitchens and food pantries hit 1.3 million last year, up 24 percent from 2004. LINK

Did I read that right? People are starving. Hopefully, there's something here that envisages organic, locally-grown food as a public right, and not simply a boutique, status-sensitive icon, like an iPhone. You could even ditch the organic part and just increase the number of urban gardens. Beyond the philosophical and theological arguments about the experience of being close to food, there's simply no drawback in a ubiquity of food. Inundate the world with vegetables from California, Florida, Chile, and around the block. I find no sin in a rotted cucumber if everyone's belly is full.

It's such a fine line, haranguing against the wrong kind of food while people go hungry. Social justice and the long-term health of inner-city residents consuming food products high in artificial hormones, antibiotics, trans fats, etc. has to be secondary to immediate needs. Yet there's no revolution without shocking the system.

Which leads me to another article. Los Angeles is trying to zone out fast-food restaurants in the same way as liquor stores in order to protect the health of its citizens. William Saletan of Slate gives his opinion here.