Mr. Obama, please make south lawn productive

By: David Bare | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: November 22, 2008

Picture this. It's Jan. 21, and President Obama calls you, Mr. or Ms. Everyperson, into the Oval Office to ask your advice on what he should try to tackle first. The economy? Global warming? The American obesity epidemic? The energy crisis?

A growing movement, pun-intended, wants to symbolically tackle all four by planting a vegetable garden on the south lawn of the White House. It sounds a little absurd, but the idea has been batted about for quite some time, starting with Alice Waters, a California chef and local-foods advocate, back in the Clinton administration. (Waters is the owner of Chez Panisse restaurant, author of several cookbooks and president of the board of directors and founder of the Edible Schoolyard.)

Then, the founding director of Kitchen Gardeners International, Roger Doiron, started his campaign, Eat the View, on the Web site ondayone.org. "On day one" offers a public forum for ideas for the next president, on "day one." Doiron's idea is to bring a large organic Victory Garden to the White House lawn to demonstrate "how we can meet global challenges such as food security, climate change and energy independence."

Videos and a petition

It has drawn the largest public comment of any ideas submitted to ondayone.org. It spawned its own Web site, eattheview.org, which features videos, a petition and a "virtual sale of the White House lawn," in an effort to give the idea a little more weight. Not that it needs it. In the Oct. 9 issue of the New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan, a local-food advocate and bestselling author of The Omnivores Dilemma and In Defense of Food, threw his considerable authority behind the idea in an article titled "Farmer in Chief, An Open Letter to the Next President."

Pollan proposes hiring a White House farmer, one who would oversee the production of organic produce on 5 acres of the south lawn -- a garden that would promote "the image of stewardship of the land, of self-reliance and of making the most of local sunlight to feed one's family and community." Pollan further advocates that the tons of surplus vegetables that will be produced be offered to local food banks.

It may all sound a little far-fetched, but consider the implications. A NASA-financed study using satellite data collected by the Department of Defense concluded that including golf courses, lawns in the U.S. cover nearly 50,000 acres, an area roughly the size of New York State. An EPA study determined that nearly one-third of all residential water use goes toward landscaping. The EPA also states that traditional gas-powered lawn mowers are responsible for 5 percent of the nation's air pollution. Americans burn 800 million gallons of gas each year trimming their yards.

Homeowners use up to 10 times more chemical pesticides per acre on their lawns than farmers use on their crops. Six percent to 12 percent of every dollar spent on food consumed in the home comes from transportation cost.

And then there is the historical precedent. As Pollan points out in his article, Eleanor Roosevelt put in a White House garden back in 1943 and spawned the Victory Garden movement across the nation during wartime. "By the end of the war, more than 20 million home gardens were supplying 40 percent of the produce consumed in America," Pollan writes.

Add to the pollution reduction and the energy savings, the health benefit of locally grown fresh produce, which is proven to be far more nutritious than processed and shipped foods. And then there are all those less quantifiable benefits.

Picture this. We turn on the evening news and there is the president, out pulling carrots from what was the White House lawn, preparing to be host to a state dinner. Fresh peas and carrots are on the menu, and maybe new potatoes. And something more -- a generous serving of ingenuity, common sense and self-reliance. In other works, American ideals.

■ If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to gardening@wsjournal.com.