As one of the teachers involved with Michelle Obama and the White House vegetable garden, I’ve been impressed with the sudden surge of public interest in the simple act of children planting seeds. At Bancroft Elementary School, where I work first and foremost as an art teacher, we know only too well the benefits children get from growing their own food.

But I don’t think the public has any inkling how hard it is for teachers to maintain school gardens like the one we have at Bancroft. Despite all the hoopla over school gardening, the truth is teachers engage in these activities at risk of their jobs. You see, gardening is not part of the mandated school curriculum. We are supposed to be teaching reading and math. As much as we believe school gardens offer a multitude of teaching opportunities, schools do very little to support us. Principals and teachers have been bluntly told that they will lose their jobs if math and reading scores don’t improve. We desperately need help. We need someone to take charge of our school gardens.

The kids you see in all the photos working with the First Lady in the White House garden, or making breakfast on the Today Show with the Obamas’ chef, Sam Kass, are fifth graders from my school. One of the reasons I chose to work at Bancroft two years ago was its garden. I had just moved back to the Washington area from South Carolina where I grew things pretty much all year round in my own yard. With visions of sunflowers and big tomato plants dancing in my head, I signed up for a community garden plot in D.C. But the waiting list was long. The idea of living without a patch of dirt to play in was hard to swallow.

Then I arrived at Bancroft. The assistant principal toured me around the school. As we walked through the playground, she casually remarked, “Oh, and that’s the garden.”  We passed four herb boxes and nine raised beds overflowing with giant sunflowers, with tomato plants heavy with fruit, with squash spilling out over the sides. There was even corn! Truthfully, up until that point I had no idea schools had gardens. Planter boxes with a few basil plants, maybe, but nothing like this.

As I soon discovered, these remarkable gardens were entirely the result of volunteer efforts. Ten years earlier, neighborhood resident Iris Rothman and her partner-in-crime, Nancy Huvendick, along with fifth grade teacher Toni Conklin, had begun acting on a shared vision of the school as a gardener’s Eden. Iris and Toni fought tooth and nail—cut through government red tape, jumped through every bureaucratic hoop–to make way for outside agencies such as the U.S. Botanical Garden to come in and construct the bones of our garden. Casey Trees, a non-profit groups, planted some 40 trees on school grounds. Last year, Iris had the brilliant idea to start a community garden on school property. We now have at least 30 people on the waiting list for plots.

All of this was accomplished by concerned neighbors and teachers during their free hours. I don’t think the school system ever spent a dime.

I met Iris when she approached me about collaborating on some art projects in the garden. Up to that point, I had assumed the garden was part of the daily school curriculum. It soon became clear that the work Iris was doing with the kids happened after school or in the summer. Iris worked hard to create opportunities for learning in the garden. But she did not have support from the school administration. They saw gardening as an extra-curricular activity. Disrupting the daily schedule was not an option.

The garden at Bancroft Elementary evolved on its own over the years. It was never officially introduced to the school’s staff. No system was ever put in place to utilize it within the curriculum. When I arrived, I brought something new: A passion for gardens and a creative mind. Not only was my schedule more flexible than other teachers’, I did not have test scores to worry about. I was able to weave the garden into my own arts curriculum. And since I teach every student in the school, I was able to expose all of them to the joys of horticulture.

Then came the day when some of my students helped Michelle Obama and Sam Kass break ground for the new kitchen garden at the White House. I returned to Bancroft and told the administration we needed to get our own school garden ready because the First Lady planned to visit. They laughed and told me that while she may have said that, what she actually did was something else. I called Iris.

As in the past, there was no plan for spring planting at Bancroft. No money had been set aside for seeds. No teachers had garden projects in mind. I approached some local businesses and asked for donations of plants. Whole Foods gave us enough cabbage, broccoli and lettuce seedlings to fill five beds. But how would I get students to plant our garden beds during the school day? Each day Iris and I took art classes to the garden to plant seedlings. We weeded and mulched. By the time Michelle Obama strolled through our garden with a beaming Toni Conklin on her arm, things looked pretty lush.

After that I began taking my art classes frequently to work in the garden– planting, harvesting, drawing. The White House dropped off tomato plants and we had fifth-graders show 3-year-olds how to plant them. We don’t have a kitchen at school so anytime we wanted to use the produce from the garden in a cooking lesson we had to convert the art room into a kitchen. When the lettuce was ready to eat we got an after-school group to harvest, wash and prepare it for salads. We set out salad toppings–dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, croutons–so kids could create three-dimensional, edible art projects. We picked herbs from the garden to make vinaigrette from scratch. The students were shocked to learn that salad dressing could be “made,” it did not have to be bought at a store.

Last Spring I signed up for a workshop at the Washington Youth Garden– part of the National Arboretum–to learn how gardens can be used as teaching tools. My classmates were teachers who already had gardens, along with many others who wanted to start gardens at their own schools. Our common bond: a shared desire to get kids busy in the soil. For the first time, I saw just how many people are working hard to create a consistent, citywide school garden program.

Then in the fall, a new D.C. Farm to School Network sponsored a “Local Flavor Week” to encourage school activities around the idea of fresh, local produce. My principal allowed me to put the rest of my schedule on hold to plan numerous events—cooking demonstrations, a trip to a farm, building cold frames. Most were linked to teaching standards. Every one of our 450 kids participated.

Many things became clear after that week. The most important and surprising was that every teacher in my school was excited about students having garden experiences like the ones I organized. Most were even willing to sacrifice precious hours to help. I also learned that there are so many dynamic people eager to work with kids on gardening, cooking and nutrition education. Finally, it became plainly evident that while it is possible to tap into this wealth of resources to build a school garden program, it is a FULL-TIME JOB.

As I said, my new principal allowed me to put everything on hold for Local Flavor Week because she believed in the importance of highlighting these experiences for the students and agreed that all 450 kids should participate. She even paid for one of the buses because the school lacked the funding. We are lucky: Our administration supports our gardening efforts. Many schools are not so fortunate. But even with this unconditional support, the garden program is still a patchwork of volunteer efforts that needs a dedicated individual to transform it into a streamlined resource that every teacher can use to engage her students.

During Local Flavor Week, I still had to teach my full load of art classes even though there were 16 trips and in-school workshops scheduled. Everywhere I went I was actually jogging, not walking. I had to be in at least three places at once on more than one occasion. I had not asked any other staff members to help me coordinate this because none of them had the time. They had their kids all day long. So I was a one-woman show. And I remember thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if every week could be like this week?” If we had a full-time garden coordinator, that is.

I had so many teachers after that week thank me and tell me that anytime I want to set up something like that again they would love to participate. I wanted to say, “If I can do it, you can do it.” But the truth is they can’t.

It’s not that classroom teachers aren’t interested. They just have too much on their plate. And without gardening experience, they just won’t use the school garden.

For all her great work and effort, Iris Rothman lacks an inside connection to the school, involvement in the schedule, familiarity with the curriculum. She has no power to create or change the curriculum, to implement standards-based activities, train teachers. She even has a hard time convincing the administration to allow her to bring in others who could do all of these things. Fitting it into the schedule would mean more work for administrators who are already overloaded.

“Healthy Schools’ legislation pending before the D.C. Council would require the city’s schools to create a garden program for the first time, to provide training, planning and technical assistance for existing gardens as well as new ones. The one thing clear to everyone involved in this legislation is that, more than anything, what school gardens need is someone to be in charge, someone to take on this job full-time.

School gardens illuminate the connections between food, nutrition and our physical and mental well-being. They can change the lives of impressionable children. A resource this valuable should not have to depend on unpaid volunteers or teachers who fear for their jobs.

Originally published on The Slow Cook

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images North America

Last month in D.C. Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, Dora Hughes, Counselor to the Secretary of Health, and Sam Kass, White House assistant chef and Food Initiative Coordinator for the First Lady each shared their goals for the next year during an event for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Food and Community Program.  Surprisingly it wasn’t their words that left me so inspired; rather it was the words of 10-year-old David Martinez-Ruiz. Kass shared with the audience a letter that the D.C. elementary school student had presented to the First Lady following his class visit to the White House Garden:

One of the things that I want to say about being at the White House was how gentle the feeling was. It felt surprisingly natural to be there. We planted on a warm day. The sun was out and there was a little breeze. The grass was beautiful and green. The people made us feel good. I liked the way the staff person who helped me was very gentle with the worms we found. I think about the garden as being gentle: gentle with nature, gentle to your body, and gentle with each other.

There was not a dry eye in the house after Kass finished reading that letter. David’s sentiments regarding the White House garden were shared by many of his Bancroft Elementary School classmates. Kass says it is experiences with kids like David that continue to spur the First Lady to champion new and creative ways to help children regain a healthy connection to food and physical activity. By doing so, Mrs. Obama hopes she can help her husband’s administration lead the way in the fight to end the childhood obesity epidemic in America.

The obesity rate in the U.S. has doubled since 1980. According to Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelious, “over two thirds of American adults — and almost one out of every five American children — are obese or overweight.” Shockingly the CDC found that the number of adolescents who are overweight has actually tripled in the last 30 years. Being overweight increases a child’s risk of developing a laundry list of preventable diseases including: heart disease, asthma, and type 2 diabetes. In fact, one in three kids born in 2000 are at risk of developing diabetes in their lifetime — for children of color that rate is even greater.

So what’s going on? Why are our children so heavy? Ostensibly, the answer seems to be simple — kids are consuming too many calories and not moving enough. However, obesity experts Drs. David Kessler and Kelly Brownell argue that the root cause is much more complicated. Both point to underlying forces that have powerful influence over what our kids are eating and craving — namely the abundance of easily accessible and inexpensive processed foods.

Dr. Kessler, a pediatrician, former FDA Commissioner and author of, “The End of Overeating,” claims that the way food companies process, package and market foods plays a key role in the obesity epidemic. Many of these processed foods contain significantly higher levels of fat, sugar and salt, and when consumed it is believed that they trigger primal cravings to eat more. Dr. Kessler calls it, “conditioned hypereating.” He says that research has found in both animals and humans that, “eating foods high in sugar, fat and salt makes us eat more foods high in sugar, fat and salt.”

Processed foods have become ubiquitous in the American diet and make their way into almost every meal. Dr. Brownell director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, argues that these “nutrient-poor, calorie-dense foods cost less and are more accessible than more healthful choices.” Nothing exemplifies this more than the number of low-cost high-volume fast-food restaurants located on the Main Streets of every town in America. Dr. Brownell also warns that marketing practices targeted at kids and adults alike encourage overconsumption of calories.  There are plenty of other theories as to why processed foods lead to overeating. For instance, some claim synthetically produced sugars like high fructose corn syrup fail to trigger satiation hormones that tell your brain to stop eating.

Mrs. Obama admits that she didn’t pay too much attention to how food can affect her health until she became a mother. While speaking to David’s class during a White House Garden harvest party she shared what she learned about the benefits of eating healthier foods:

… with the help of our kids’ doctor, I became much more aware of the need for my kids to eat healthy…  I’ve learned that if it’s fresh and grown locally, it’s probably going to taste better…  And that’s how I’ve been able to get my children to try different things, and in particular fruits and vegetables.  By making this small change in our family’s diet and adding more fresh produce for my family, Barack, the girls, me, we all started to notice over a very short period of time that we felt much better and we had more energy.

Now with the help of several Administration agencies, including the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Education and Health, the First Lady is leading an initiative to tackle America’s childhood obesity epidemic by making sure kids are eating healthier and moving more. Dr. Hughes, who is a physician board-certified in internal medicine and earned a Master of Public Health degree at Harvard, said she believes the collaborative efforts to fight childhood obesity will be a hallmark of the Obama Administration.

Ironically, as the waistlines of America’s children continue to expand, statistics show that food-insecure households have reached record numbers. The latest 2008 U.S. food insecurity survey found that 49 million people had difficulty meeting basic food needs. President Obama, who has pledged to end child hunger by 2015, said he was particularly troubled to learn, “that there were more than 500,000 families in which a child experienced hunger multiple times over the course of the year.” Kass claims that too often health and nutrition issues are considered to be unrelated to hunger issues. He argues that, “if we assure that all children have equal access to healthy and affordable foods, we will make great strides in tackling both issues.”

Since government numbers indicate that 60 percent of the nation’s public school students receive the majority of their nutrients at school, a keystone to Mrs. Obama’s healthy kids initiative is efforts to encourage improvements to the National School Lunch Program. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says that providing school children with fruits, vegetables and more nutritious food is a priority for the USDA. There are a few encouraging examples of school districts across the country that are making remarkable strides in school lunch reform without significant government assistance. From Baltimore, Maryland to Berkley, California school districts have adopted progressive programs to teach kids where their food comes from and to encourage them to eat healthy foods. Most recently Washington, D.C. Council members introduced a bill that would require public schools to establish a farm-to-school program and to “create a monetary incentive to serve foods that are locally-grown, locally-processed, and minimally-processed from growers engaged in sustainable practices.”

Helping to improve every American’s relationship with food will not be easy. A fact that Dr. Merrigan, who is leading the, Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Initiative, understands all too well. The initiative’s goal is to build strong local and regional food systems, which includes creating opportunities for farmers to supply local schools with their harvests. Merrigan admitted that moving the initiative forward in a huge government bureaucracy “is really difficult” and confusing to navigate. She says equally difficult is determining how to establish priorities and deciding what to do first.

If Dr. Merrigan were to ask me for my advice, I would suggest a good place to start is opening a dialogue with America’s parents — the people who purchase and monitor the food kids eat every day. Each parent who walks into a supermarket has the right and should expect better access to healthy and affordable whole foods for their kids. Michael Pollan, journalist and author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and most recently “Food Rules” would argue that most of the foods we buy in the grocery store today are not food at all, but rather “edible food substances” designed by food scientists to mimic “real foods.” One of my favorite food rules that Pollan offers in his new book is, “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” As savvy American consumers, parents should be able to buy foods that they know are healthy for their children. Price conscious parents on a limited budget shouldn’t be forced to buy foods that are more likely to make their children sick simply because a healthier alternative costs more. Likewise, parents looking for convenient prepackaged or easy to prepare meals, which their kids often find more palatable, shouldn’t have to compromise their child’s health just because a healthier alternative is not available or too expensive.

Parents must also demand more of the schools that provide lunches for their children. Very few schools across the U.S. prepare their students’ meals with fresh ingredients anymore. Instead, they depend on prepackaged meals made up of those tasty but much less healthy processed foods that are chock-full of sugar, fat and salt like chicken nuggets or pizza. And now we’re learning that many of those processed foods may pose greater food safety issues. It was shameful to read in the USA Today that most fast-food chains impose more stringent food safety standards for their processed beef, “than those set by the Agricultural Marketing Service for beef supplied to the National School Lunch Program.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge of increasing demand for healthy foods is ensuring that every American child prefers to eat them and find them just as or even more satisfying than the processed foods that they eat. Sam Kass — speaking with his chef’s hat on — offers his own food rule on that topic. While creating satisfying and tasty meals is important, Kass says, “anybody who cooks for somebody else has the responsibility to safeguard the health and well-being of the people that they are feeding.” I would take it a step further and assert that any company that prepares, serves or advertises food for children is ethically bound to ensure that it is just as healthy as it is palatable. It is also incumbent upon the government to assure that food companies do the right thing for children’s health and make it easier for them to do so.

I believe that if America’s food supply shifts from one that is primarily made of processed foods engineered to encourage overeating to one composed of more balanced healthy and whole foods along with a change in the American appetite that enjoys smaller portions and finds whole foods just as satisfying and tasty, we will then begin to see an end to the childhood obesity epidemic and the chronic diseases associated with it. Dr. Kessler says, “Our greatest gift to future generations of young people would be to find a way to prevent the cue-urge-reward habit cycle from ever taking hold.”

It’s a tall order, but young people like David Martinez-Ruiz continue to give me hope. If his simple experiences with the White House Garden helped him recognize the “gentle” effects of freshly grown foods on his body and on the environment then it is possible to encourage every American child to better appreciate and demand healthy foods.

Originally published on the Livable Future blog

On Monday, Daily Show host Jon Stewart kicked off the new decade by inviting Michael Pollan on to discuss his latest book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, a slender guide to healthy eating.

As Stewart noted, you can read it in an hour; it’s a pocket-sized distillation of his last book, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, which was itself an appetizer-sized portion of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It reminds me of those Russian nesting dolls that open to reveal ever-tinier incarnations. Presumably, Penguin’s next plan is to publish the bumper sticker: “Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants.”

Pollan shares my cautious optimism that we may be on the verge of seeing real changes in our food system. Is he basing this hope on the brisk sales of his books? Maybe, but Pollan also sees promise in that much ballyhooed-and-booed piece of legislation, the health care bill.

He predicted that health insurance reform could spell the end of “the disconnect between what you pay for a cheap fast food meal and the ultimate price of eating that way”:

Pollan: I think what’s about to happen, if we get this health care bill passed, and there are some kind of minimal rules, no more pre-existing conditions, they can’t throw you off the plan, they have to take you — suddenly, the health insurers will have an interest in your health that they don’t have now.
Stewart: That may be the worst sentence I’ve ever heard said! “Suddenly, the health insurers will have an interest in your health. Which, right now, they don’t.”

Pollan: Their business plan, now, is to keep you out of their business plan, if you’re likely to get chronic disease. And the Western diet creates a lot of chronic disease. Right now, the food industry creates patients for the health care industry; they have a very sympathetic relationship. But that might change. And, I think if that changes, you will see this very powerful industry getting on board with this growing national movement to reform the food system.

On Wednesday, Stewart’s Comedy Central Colleague Stephen Colbert struck a blow against a notoriously inedible food-like substance, Domino’s Pizza. Colbert declared Domino’s his “Alpha Dog of the Week,” in recognition of the “great new recipe” the pizza chain’s touting. Colbert played a clip from its “game-changing ad campaign,” featuring some damning assessments of Domino’s previous formula:

“Domino’s pizza crust is, to me, like cardboard.”"Worst excuse for pizza I’ve ever had.”

“The sauce tastes like ketchup.”

“Totally devoid of flavor.”

Colbert: Folks, it takes alpha meatballs to stand up and say, “America, we suck”. But now, the company that brought you the Philly Cheesesteak Pizza, the Cali-Chicken-Bacon-Ranch Pizza, and the Oreo Pizza, has a radical new product: pizza that is pizza.

Cue another clip featuring the folks at Domino’s extolling the virtues of the new version:

“We changed everything: the crust, the sauce, the cheese, now it tastes better…we started working on the cheese…we’ve got shredded cheese, it’s tastier. When you smell it, it’s got an aroma to it…it’s cheese, it’s cheese!”Colbert: So, to recap, Domino’s old pizza cheese did not taste good, had no aroma, and was not cheese. And, because they are an alpha dog, folks, Domino’s is not apologizing. After all, we’re the human garbage cans who bought these trash discs by the millions.

Speaking of trash discs, the segment trashing Domino’s was followed by a visit from sea captain Charles Moore, discoverer of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. He described how our disposable culture’s turned the ocean into a “disgusting plastic cesspool.” And we’re inadvertently consuming this toxic plastic soup:

Moore: It’s a sponge for our pollutants, absorbing all the toxics floating around in the ocean and transmitting them up the food web back to us…Colbert: Are you suggesting that we do without plastic gee-gaws and doo-dads and beer can holders?

Moore: Whatever happened to “A place for everything and everything in its place?” Or “Waste not, want not?”

Moore’s comment drew cheers from the audience; another sign of a possible sea change?

Lastly, if you missed Sunday’s much-anticipated Iron Chef America Super Chef Battle, the Food Network’s repeating it this Thursday at 8pm. It pits celebrity chefs Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse against Bobby Flay and White House executive chef Cristeta Comerford, but the true star of the show was supposed to be the secret ingredient, which turned out to be fresh produce harvested from the White House kitchen garden.

It may not have been “The Culinary Event of the Decade,” as the Wall Street Journal‘s Speakeasy blog declared. But it was cool, nonetheless, to see lovingly shot close-ups of vegetables, especially exotic ones such as watermelon radishes, lacinato kale, and kohlrabi.

“Maybe not two hours worth of cool,” as Kim Severson noted on the New York Times Diner’s Journal blog, referring to the show’s blatant padding, “but the show will serve as a cultural bookmark. See Mario’s naked calves there in the White House vegetable garden? The times, they are a changin’.”

As everyone knows by now, Batali and Lagasse lost out to Flay and Comerford, in large part because they disregarded the mandate to showcase the vegetables, whereas Flay put the veggies front and center on his plate.

I was disappointed that no one bothered to feature the under appreciated, misunderstood kohlrabi, which is my favorite (and perhaps the only) above-ground-vegetable-that-looks-like-a-root-vegetable. This omission was also noted and lamented by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

However, I have it on good authority that Batali and Lagasse did, in fact, employ the kohlrabi in one of their dishes, but it got lost on the editing floor. Perhaps they should demand a recount?

Originally published on The Green Fork

First Lady Michelle Obama and White House Chef Sam Kass set a great example this spring when they planted their vegetable garden on the White House lawn. The garden has taught D.C. kids where their food comes from, fed heads of state from around the world, and hosted last month’s Healthy Kid’s fair. Most importantly, the garden has shown families across America that you can eat healthy, affordable, responsible food right out of your own backyard.

This winter, the First Lady can take it one step further. Eating from the garden doesn’t only have to be limited to March-October. Michelle Obama is in a perfect position to show us that local food is possible outside of the summer months, no matter where you live. She can bring the country’s attention to the creative ways that people like Eliot Coleman and Will Allen manage to grow food in all four seasons.

Washington D.C. is located in the USDA hardiness zone 7, which means that with the help of a few basic supplies, the White House garden could be producing food all year round. Putting up cold frames — a wooden frame covered with glass — brings the zone up 1.5. Putting up a hoop house — a simple plastic structure that uses passive solar energy (as opposed to a greenhouse, which is heated) — brings it up another 1.5, to a zone 10. To put it in perspective, that’s the equivalent of southern California or Florida! These affordable and efficient structures mean the Obamas (and Bancroft Elementary students) could be eating salads, greens, radishes, carrots, turnips and more throughout winter. Think of what a great example they could set for the whole country. And they would be doing themselves a favor, too: vegetables such as kale and carrots actually get tastier and sweeter when left in the cold soil.

The White House could start by covering their raised beds with cold frames now, and planting various salad greens and kale, cabbage and other hardier greens. Also, by spacing the plantings, they’ll be sure to have a ready supply from November through to spring. It’s too late to plant root vegetables for a winter harvest this year, but according to Sam Kass, the White house already has a makeshift root cellar and can keep what they harvested a few weeks back fresh.

That’s why the White House should start planning for the next four seasons right now. An ambitious winter schedule would have them planting carrots, parsnips and beets in mid-August to be ready for a mid-November harvest. They could plant the same seeds again in October (when it’s still pretty warm in D.C.) for a January harvest of the same vegetables. Greens such as broccoli, cabbage, collards and Brussels sprouts could be planted a few weeks after the root vegetables as they require less time to mature and this would space out the harvest. Throw some spinach, mesclun, radishes and green onions under a cold frame inside the hoop house, and you’ve got great food all year round!

The White House garden plan displayed here shows my suggestion for an ideal placing of hoop houses and cold frames that could be planted in any number of ways.

Michelle Obama wants Americans to eat healthy, fresh food in season, and she can show us that people in colder parts of the country don’t have to give up on responsible eating come December and February. She’s in a great position to do that with what is certainly the country’s most well-known vegetable garden. Mrs. Obama and Sam Kass should make winter gardening a priority of theirs, and begin planning for their 2010 winter garden.

Originally published at Slow Food USA

Yesterday the White House released a video featuring First Lady Michelle Obama and assistant chef and food initiative coordinator Sam Kass telling the story of the White House garden. The video is around seven minutes long, and features footage of the building of the garden, with Kass giving details about the history of gardening at the White House (there is even some historical footage from “Victory Gardens” a 1944 government film to encourage people to grow at home, which you watch in full here), soil amendments, the seeds from Thomas Jefferson’s Montecello garden, and even a time lapse video as the garden was growing.

This short film also features the Bancroft Elementary students who helped to plant it. “We wanted the focus to be on kids,” the First Lady said, “because you can affect children’s behavior so much more easily than you can adults.” She also said that the garden was largely about setting an example for other families through changing her own family’s diet, specifically through “eliminating processed and sugary foods,” and encouraging eating together around the table. She continued, “the garden is really an important introduction to what I hope will be a new way that our country thinks about food”

As Obama Foodorama reports:

The White House Kitchen Garden has been a critical part of the paradigm shift in the national conversation on health and nutrition that’s been steadily coming out of the East Wing since January. Mrs. Obama is the only First Lady in the history of America to actually have a food policy team, it should be noted, led by Kass, and including advisers Jocelyn Frye and Melody Barnes. Bestselling author Michael Pollan has referred to the Kitchen Garden as “the most important event in sustainable agriculture this year,” and he’s right. But it’s important for all other kinds of Obama policy initiatives too, including health care reform.

Check out the full video below:

The first sign of change is from the world’s largest snack-food company, Frito-Lay. They have initiated “Lay’s Local”, which focuses on 80 “local” farmers from 27 states. Frito-Lay’s Web site has a Chip Tracker that allows interested consumers to enter their zip code and product code in order to find out where the potatoes came from. Although Frito-Lay can’t claim the potatoes are locally grown, the advertising campaign hides the corporation behind the aura of U.S. farmers.

The second is the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation’s announcement of a newly formed Center for Food and Animal Issues. The Center’s strategy appears to be to categorize feedlot operators as just another group of people that supports animals, just like pet owners, hunters, supporters of zoos and local animal welfare organizations. “Ultimately, our goal is to assure that people who rely on animals, either physically, emotionally or economically, have the right to do so,” said Ohio Farm Bureau Federation executive vice president Jack Fisher. The impetus for the Center came after pork, poultry and veal housing legislation was introduced into state legislatures around the country, and in particular the passing of California’s Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act.

And finally, CropLife.com has announced a call to action to protest the planting of an organic garden on the White House lawn. This crop protection industry organization congratulates First Lady Michelle Obama for her effort to raise food and celebrate agriculture, but takes issue with the garden being organic. Their Web site asks “What message does that send to the non-farming public about an important and integral part of growing safe and abundant crops to feed and clothe the world — crop protection products?”

So why do I get giddy about these typical, calculated attempts to manipulate public opinion? Because I think about what we were debating just ten years ago, and how dramatically the conversation has changed in a positive direction.

Ten years ago the hot issue in the agriculture world was genetically modified crops. And despite the many legitimate concerns that were raised about health and environmental unknowns, as well as the alarming consolidation of the seed industry, roundup ready soybeans and other genetically modified crops swept across the Midwest largely unimpeded. Opponents were portrayed as petty reactionaries that were oblivious to the challenge of “feeding the world”.

The last part of the 1990s was also a time of incredible devastation in rural America. Crop prices were reaching depression-era levels, and the promises of the 1996 “Freedom to Farm” bill were nowhere to be seen. I sat through countless forums where agribusiness professionals told the farming community to relax, soon the incredible buying power of China will make low crop prices a thing of the past. Unfortunately, we spent years with most commodity prices well below the cost of production, and neither China nor any other part of the world corrected the situation for us.

Perhaps it was my lack of imagination, but I never dreamed that we could have possibly made as much progress toward community-based food systems as we have in the past decade. “Locally grown” is the hottest food trend for 2009, so hot that a leader in the corporate snack food industry wants to get in on the act. Ten years ago, someone concerned about the humane treatment of animals had to work hard to find acceptable meat and poultry; now the confined livestock industry is back on its heels because of California’s proposition 2, the excessive use of antibiotics, and continued problems with manure pollution.

Most remarkable has been the explosion in interest in gardening and backyard livestock.  The crop protection industry’s rather lame objection to an organic garden on the White House lawn reveals the difficult position that the industry is in. Who can really be against local organic production that is efficient, nutritious and cost-effective, while at the same time provides exercise and often builds community?

By no means do I mean to diminish the challenges ahead of us. As the Frito-Lay campaign demonstrates, we need to remain vigilant to make sure that words like organic and locally grown mean what the public thinks it means. Far too many people around the world and in the U.S. continue to suffer from hunger and diet-related diseases. But people are no longer willing to let a component of their lives as critical as the food system rest in the control of agribusiness corporations.

Many more people are empowered to make decisions about their family’s food, and a lot of hands are getting dirty in the fresh spring soil. Instead of us trying to create space in the corporate food system for alternative food and farming practices, the agribusiness industry is trying to create space for itself in the thriving community-based food systems. This is a welcome transition.

President Obama, on the other hand, entered his role with a stack of urgent crises on his desk. Food advocates couldn’t help but have lowered expectations of how he would address the decline of farming and of rural populations; lobbyists working in the USDA, FDA and EPA; the quality of school lunch; the 36 million Americans suffering from hunger; energy independence beyond the empty promise of ethanol, and more. The real food lobby has gotten used to these vital issues taking a back seat, but that didn’t mean they were going to stop asking our young, hip and multitasking president to change all that.

And as if that list of problems facing the food system weren’t enough, food safety became the main domestic issue (aside from the economy) thrust into daylight of this administration, beginning with the massive peanut butter recall back in January, then followed by Nicholas Kristof’s illumination of increased incidences of the virulent, untreatable bacteria MRSA (Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus) occurring near factory hog farms in the Midwest, and now culminating in the swine flu, which might have had its origins in a Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) cesspool at a million-head-per-year Smithfield hog farm in Perote, Mexico.

It seems, however, that President Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack still view agriculture as separate from the problems we face in health care, environmental policy and energy policy. He has yet to show that he understands that in order to address food safety with lasting effect, his cabinet must address the underlying issues facing our food system first, including its reliance on oil and the unhealthy food it produces. I hate to do it, but I have to give the President a “C-” on his agriculture policy thus far, bringing the Obamas to a combined grade of “B-”.

“It’s time that our leaders engage in whole systems solutions for the problems facing not only our economy, but also agriculture,” said David Murphy of Food Democracy Now!, a sustainable food advocacy group, when asked about the matter. “Failure to do so will only lead to an increase in the number and severity of future food safety outbreaks.”

Back in March, it seemed as if Obama was prepared to change this status quo on food safety, with the announcement of a Food Safety Working Group (FSWG), following the recall of over 1500 products containing contaminated peanut butter, confirming what had been known for some time by those who study the food system: contamination in an industrial agriculture model can spread fast and far. Obama insisted with the introduction of the FSWG that he was going to take food safety seriously. But then the committee seemed to drop like a stone into the annals of policy making.

Why haven’t we continued to hear more from the FSWG? Perhaps because Former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius was held up until yesterday in the Senate, when she was finally confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Now that she is on board, there is again hope that food safety issues will be front and center (if only because of the fear surrounding the swine flu) and will hopefully get beyond the simplistic message that we can eat pork without worry.

“One place President Obama could start is to call for more regulation of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) to make sure that they operate in accordance with the clean air and clean water acts,” Murphy said. “Another step would be to phase out the use of antibiotics in livestock that are important in the medical treatment of humans. The current swine flu pandemic should be a significant teachable moment for consumers, legislators and livestock producers. There are some things we can no longer afford to ignore. It’s time to put people over profits.”

Food safety requires manageable scale. And it requires honest, unbiased risk assessment. If a hog confinement operation was indeed the origin of the swine flu, we should not be afraid to consider the possibility that the way we are raising animals for meat in this country is dangerous and will never be safe.

Let that honest assessment begin today at 9:30 am, when 20 victims of foodborne illness, including surviving family members, will be in Washington, DC to share their stories and to call on Congress to pass food safety legislation. 76 million people get sick every year from food contamination, and 5,000 lose their lives. A band-aid will never solve this problem.

There is still hope that President Obama will recognize the power of local food economies of scale. With unemployment at 8.5% as of March and growing, its time for him and his cabinet to think seriously about the original green job: farming. He can begin by initiating a “farmer corps” program to incubate new farmers, similar to one recently implemented in Japan. Furthermore, instead of just talking about ending subsidies for industrial commodity farms, he should take action, minimizing payments and thereby incentivizing diversity in growing.

As the veil is lifted and consumers continue to learn through films like Food, Inc., Fresh and Meat the Truth about the impact of the food choices we make, the voices pushing Obama to deal with our unwieldy and outdated food system will only grow louder.  I hope that following this, the President and his cabinet will address food as the serious and vital issue that it is, and the President will deserve an “A” for his agriculture policy in the next 100 days.

Thanks to Michelle Obama, there is finally going to be a bona fide – and fairly expansive – organic fruit and vegetable garden at the White House!

Apparently, President Obama doesn’t favor beets, but the first family and their guests will be dining on a reported 55 other varieties of vegetables, plus berries for dessert, throughout the year. The herb patch is going to include anise hyssop (aka licorice mint), which, if you happen to be lucky enough to have any in your garden, you know is a huge favorite of bees – and there will be a couple of First Hives nearby.  The White House also made known that the seeds and equipment to start their Victory Garden cost a total of $200, a sum which pales in comparison to the produce the garden could yield.  White House gardener Dale Haney, along with the team in the kitchen (Sam Kass, Cristeta Comerford and Bill Yosses) will be tending to the garden. Michelle Obama insists that everyone will help pull weeds, “whether they like it or not.”  And the DC fifth-graders, who are helping break ground on this first day of spring and have a garden of their own at their school, will help plant, harvest and cook the cilantro, tomatilloes, hot peppers, red romaine, green oak leaf, butterhead, red leaf and galactic lettuces, and the spinach, chard, collards and black kale.

And then the words many people have been hoping for and waiting a long time to hear:

“I wanted to be able to bring what I learned to a broader base of people. And what better way to do it than to plant a vegetable garden in the South Lawn of the White House.”

While the groundbreaking on the South Lawn takes place today, there’ll be a more formal unveiling ceremony for the Obamas’ edible garden in June – just in time for fresh picks.

Here is the garden’s plan, from the New York Times:

Photo: First Lady Michelle Obama works with kids from Washington’s Bancroft Elementary School to break ground for a White House garden. The White House / Joyce N. Boghosian

Breaking News: Brian Hartman of ABC News’ The Note filed a report today that confirms that there will be a veggie garden on the White House Lawn.

Mr. Hartman seems to have sent his fellow ABC reporters Sunlen Miller and Ann Compton, who cover insider White House activity, literally into the field to track down a Park Service employee to dish on the dirt project, and they were very successful. A NPS worker who requested anonymity told the two reporters that a veggie garden will be planted on the South Lawn (pictured above), near the fountain, out of the sight-line of the White House. The anonymous source assured Ms. Compton and Ms. Miller that the White House Residence Staff will be handling all details of the garden, rather than Park Service workers, who oversee the rest of the sixteen-acre campus. This indicates that First Lady Michelle Obama will be overseeing the project, because she’s “the decider” for the Residence Staff.

There has been no official announcement from the White House, but for those who have been following the Eat The View and White House Organic Farm Project petitions, each of which has garnered thousands of signatures encouraging a garden on the White House lawn, this is a huge deal. It goes swell as a policy accompaniment to The First Lady’s building nutrition campaign; she discussed how good fresh produce tastes with White House Executive Chef Cris Comerford in their Kitchen Chat for the National Association of Governors Dinner, the text of which has now been reprinted so many times it seems like this is all Michelle discusses. Michelle has also been hinting at a garden for a few weeks, and in the new issue of Oprah’s O magazine, on news stands yesterday, she told Oprah that, yes, there will be a garden. In the same interview, she also mentioned another urban gardening project.

How visible will the garden be to the general public? The garden may be viewable from the street; there’s a little access road that runs between the Ellipse and the South Lawn, which is a frequent gathering place for tourists. Occasionally there are press conferences from the South lawn; the pic at the top of the post is from this morning, when The President spoke about economic issues, just before leaving for California. Following the address, the President got on Marine One, his helicopter, which takes off and lands on the South Lawn. Helicopter take-offs and landings are not viewable by the public, for security reasons; the access road is closed during these times, but you can watch Bam fly in from the Ellipse. (In pic: the First Family disembarks from Marine One, on the South Lawn)

In the current down economy, more and more people are turning to gardening to cut food bills, and it seems like ‘Victory Gardens’ are sprouting up everywhere. It’s a terrific move for the White House to adopt a grow-your-own project both as an economic recovery idea, as an example of going green and as an educational tool, as well as a symbol of how crucial Farmers are to America. Having your own garden is also swell, BTW, in the event of bio terrorism, which Ob Fo hates to mention, but new Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been very busy revamping personal preparedness policies. A White House garden is also a nod to White House history, and to one of the Founders most important to our ideas of being Americans: Thomas Jefferson planted the first garden at the White House, after all, back in the days when it was still called ‘The President’s House.’

Obamafoodorama wonders if Beets will be excluded, as Bam has a very public dislike of the humble root veg…

Photo: (top) The President, with economic advisers Christina Romer, Tim Geithner, and Larry Summers, via AP. (below) Reuters.

Originally published on Obamafoodorama