Obama Gets In On the Act

Ok, so you know that everyone has been buzzing around about how there *should* be a Freedom Garden or Victory Garden on the White House lawn. Welp, the First Family is going to do just that. Amazingly, there will be children from a local school to help the First Lady dig up her lawn for her garden. Can't beat that.

Setting an example to the public is a good thing, but already we've begun to feel the crunch. Several seed websites and forums I have visited recently have already started talking about the seed crunch. They are already having problems coming up with the seed to meet demand of certain vegetable items. One such site in the UK, states that they are just not going to offer individual packets anymore, they are going to focus more on sets of seeds and this is due to the current state of the economy.

The people of the world have already begun to start focusing on where the crisis at hand is leading instead of living in the now. We've heard all the talk of future events due to peak oil, over urbanization and global warming. The disappearing polar ice and with it the polar critters comes to mind. The future has been shoved at the populace so much, it appears that it has taken effect and people are trying to at least begin to prepare for their future. I've also noticed that some of my favorite seed sites have run out of certain popular seeds much faster than I remember it in the past, so even if they have not posted to their site on that fact, it shows there, too.

With luck, the program that the Obama family has begun on their lawn, will spill into many more but I also can't help wondering where all of these people are going to get their seeds. Seeds are already becoming a precious commodity and the garden fever hasn't even really taken root just yet, the word of the impending White House lawn (the First Lawn?) food production only being out for a short period of time. While many gardeners save their seeds, it isn't practiced by everyone so next year the crunch will really be on. My father buys his tomato plants, the seed for beans and peas, and such, and has never in his life practiced seed saving for all the farming he has done and neither has any of our family. What is to become of them next year?

Save your seeds. It is more important now than it has ever been. The lessons we have learned from certain eras such as the famous failed crops of the past and also during the Great Depression, should be ringing true in the ears of every single person on this planet. Now it isn't just the idea of a failed crop it is the idea of countries that export their cash crops now holding in reserve. Rice is a good example of this.

With biofuels at the forefront, Thailand isn't producing rice like it once did, focusing more on biofuel materials than the tons of rice that it used to export has already begun to touch the market. Rice prices are already rising higher than historical averages as the Thai government holds in reserve to feed its own instead of the rest of the world. And Thailand isn't the only country, China stated last year that they would be raising the price bar. It also doesn't help that the idea of using rice as a biofuel took hold in Japan in 2007. And this is all mostly old news.

We can't even really feed the world much less save the seed as a species. So I ask again. Where is everyone going to get their seeds? I have a nice fat stock pile of my own and I share and swap with whomever I can nail down to get that one thing I have never tried to grow. While I have built my own network of really awesome people that I enjoy not only swapping with but chatting with, future gardeners may not be able to jump right into that clique - mine or anyone elses.

I just can't stress enough the importance of saving your seeds. In a world where the economy is in shambles, the food production is going down in favor of finding the replacement to black gold, and people are popping out families faster than the polar ice caps are melting and food riots are expected by 2012, no one's got your back but you and if you aren't saving, you aren't watching your back very well.

So save your seeds and watch as the Obama's start their own garden setting examples to the country and hopefully the world, but be wary of the fact that we are not a small population any longer by any stretch of the imagination. Demand is much larger than supply and even with the massive amounts of seed companies out there, we still have to contend with the fact that Monsanto is destined to own patients on every genetic code for every seed out there and when they do, the home garden is finished. Moving into areas where lands have been farmed for generations and taking people to court so they can shut them down for infringement. I'm betting the price of grow lights will go up sooner than later in that case. I think I'd become an expert in hydroponics damn quick.

So I guess I answered my own question. We'll all be getting out seeds from Monsanto soon enough. I wonder if Obama will endorse that.