Homeland security planning: what victory gardens and Fidel Castro can teach us in preparing for food crises in the United States.
- 1University of Illinois, USA.
Abstract
Two
historical examples provide important insight into how federal
government policies can integrate regional and local food systems to
achieve food security during a time of acute crisis. During World War
II, American home gardeners, through the federal government's Victory
Garden program, supplied 40 percent of the nation's fresh produce, while
simultaneously maintaining pre-war commodity production policies
favoring large agricultural interests. The recent food crisis in Cuba,
precipitated by the collapse of Soviet-bloc trade in the early 1990s, is
another historical example that could inform U.S. policymakers on how
to achieve food self-sufficiency through reemphasis on small farmers
using sustainable practices supplemented with urban gardening. This
article aims to ignite government action to strengthen and integrate
regional and local food systems into federal food security planning so
that citizens can be best prepared for a food emergency. The article
first examines laws, regulations and policies put in place during World
War II that employed regional and local food networks to satisfy a
significant amount of civilian food supply needs. The article also looks
at more recent Cuban efforts to achieve forced food self-reliance when,
after the end of the Cold War, Soviet subsidies and preferential
trading of energy and food supplies ceased almost overnight.
