It is time those in the media stop calling a vegetable garden a "Victory garden." That's it really. Why are they recalling WWII wartime vegetable planting?
The U.S. government (and U.K) asked its citizens to produce some of their own food to make up for shortfalls affecting the agricultural industry supply during the war. Eleanor Roosevelt had one planted at the White House. There were complaints from the Ag industry, but by and large, the effort was popular and successful.
Much of this gardening ceased after the war. I'm sure the Ag business did what it could to promote this change through lobbying and advertising. Not growing some of our own food has been a 20th century invention, at least for most of us. Lifestyle changes, yes, but also the promotion of leisure and solid-state (copyright!) landscapes created a vision of wealth and prosperity that used to have the cornucopia, wheat bundles, dead fish and fowl, and grape vines as its symbol.
It does seem that little motivates people more than the desire to attain or to mirror wealth and prosperity. What the local food movement, Alice Waters, organic movement (still a movement?), etc. has done is create a new conception of wealth and prosperity that is as old as they come. Some people don't like it because it calls into question many of the hard-earned symbols of their prosperity, and requires a different set of skills and knowledge, some long-forgotten cultural memory.
But let's remember that people have always grown vegetables for their sustenance. Poor and rich alike have grown, or had their gardener's grow, their own vegetables. Late day immigrants to big cities grow their own in buckets on concrete. Its economical and provides them with the vegetables they need for their culture's recipes.
So I wonder if our culture is forcing the "V" for victory instead of vegetable because there is a sense of cultural warfare -a largely middle, upper-middle class warfare. What is middle class? What do we aspire to? Are we golf-playing, micro-waving, lawn mowing, backyard pool party lounging with cocktails middle class or are we vegetable growing, every meal cooking, CSA joining, garden party with a glass of local wine middle class?
This is not a battle I am having and I believe this to be true of many of us. Of course, these activities are not exclusive of each other, but I can't quite shake the feeling that this middle-class identity war is what's going on. Thoughts?