Press "Enter" to skip to content

Quick Pic: President Obama in the Kitchen Garden

Governor Dennis Daugaard likes self-reliance. Does he have a kitchen garden at the mansion? President Barack Obama has one at the White House:

You've got to like a President who makes a bigger deal out of raised beds than the Lincoln bedroom.

9 Comments

  1. Vincent Gormley 2012.08.03

    Should be subtitled 'because our First Lady rocks'.

  2. Ken Blanchard 2012.08.04

    If you like making Portlandia feel good, this makes sense. Otherwise, not. Having a garden or buying locally produced flora and fauna may provide you with fresh food, but it does nothing for the environment. Transportation costs make up about 1% of the cost of food production. All the rest is at the production site. Concentrating food production on big farms and in places where the conditions are ideal is more efficient and has a smaller carbon footprint than spreading it out. Oh, and there is the issue that not importing food from abroad impoverishes folks in other countries.

    Maybe more greenhouse gases and energy use and starving Peruvians is a small price to pay for buying locally. I am not sure what this has to do with the Lincoln Bedroom.

  3. caheidelberger Post author | 2012.08.04

    Concentrated ag means fewer jobs, more pollution, lower quality food.

  4. Barry Smith 2012.08.04

    Ken Blanchard would have us believe that only Portlandia types are gardening, when the fact is, it is still one of the most popular hobbies in America. As a matter of fact I cant hardly think of anything more traditionally American than the kitchen garden. With centalized food production continuing to increase it is becoming less of a tradition all the time, so much so that Ken no longer recognizes it as one.
    Having a kitchen garden is beneficial on so many different levels not least of which is the the quality of the food as noted by LK. Garden.org is a good online source for info. Smart move for the President to tap into a very popular hobby and Ken you can have your cardboard tomatoes from the grocer, I will stick to the ones I get stepping out my back door.

  5. larry kurtz 2012.08.04

    We're so entitled.

    Hundred day growing seasons have kept the northern plains from becoming population centers; and, protein from European animal sources evolved to replace the slaughtered indigenous ungulates.

    Obesity is worn like a badge in the chemical toilet: we're the Olympians of Fat.

    Walking through Family Thrift on East St. Pat reminded me of the story of Boris Yeltsin's 1989 trip to a Houston grocery store

    Box elder trees provided sugar for the tribes, yucca made soap: Wasúton Wi - Moon of the Harvest.

  6. larry kurtz 2012.08.04

    It's going to be all about water very soon, Cory: the volume of animal protein grown on private ground will decrease as aquifers collapse to raise ethanol.

    Expect more lawsuits over water rights: most of Colorado is a civil battleground.

Comments are closed.