More Gaia worship crap in the NY Times

This article in yesterday’s NY Times is a combination of Gaia worship crap, and another one of those stories where liberals think that now Obama is president, things will magically get better.

After being largely ignored for years by Washington, advocates of organic and locally grown food have found a receptive ear in the White House, which has vowed to encourage a more nutritious and sustainable food supply.

The most vocal booster so far has been the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has emphasized the need for fresh, unprocessed, locally grown food and, last week, started work on a White House vegetable garden.

Comments

[Sheila Tone]

Can't she just admit she wants a flippin' garden because she wants one? No, she's got to spin her Martha Stewart hobby into a save-the-Earth thing.

I've seen children's books lately that tout Earth-saving alongside recommendations to plant vegetable seeds. I don't see the connection.

[The Undiscovered Jew]

The Grooooovy one is way out of his league:

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/284727.php

Obama on 60 Minutes, Punch Drunk

I wrote yesterday about Obama's pathetic interview on 60 Minutes, which will air tonight. More details are coming out:

"His remarks came in a “60 Minutes” interview in which he was pressed by an incredulous Steve Kroft for laughing and chuckling several times while discussing the perilous state of the world’s economy.
“You're sitting here. And you're— you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about money—’ How do you deal with— I mean: explain. . .” Kroft asks at one point.

“Are you punch-drunk?” Kroft says.

“No, no. There's gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day,” Obama says, with a laugh."

You know what gets me through the day? Pretending that there isn't a tittering nincompoop in the White House.

[Relieved]

Finally Washington has taken interest. As we all know, unless the entire apparatus of the Federal gov't and the President himself gets involved, nothing can happen. I remember the dark days when Bush would send his jackbooted stormtroopers to pull up the organic vegetables that farmers had planted. Thousands of organic farmers were killed, imprisoned and exiled and the whole movement went underground. You couldn't get an organic, sustainably harvested persimmon for any price at Whole Foods.

[Dan Kurt]

Here is the landscape architect's mock up illustration:

http://tinyurl.com/cv9umu.

Here is the location after a year of the Obamas' redesign:

http://tinyurl.com/cs4wec

Dan kurt

[Dan Kurt]

In my above post [ March 22, 2009 at 10:11 PM] the first URL works if the DOT is removed from the end of the address. It should be

http://tinyurl.com/cv9umu

Dan Kurt

[superdestroyer]

If one really depend on locally grown, organic food, then the White House kitchen would be without produce for more than six months out of the year. Outside of parts of California and Florida, it is impossible in the U.S. to have locally grown produce year round. In addition, locally grown in most of the U.S. would mean eating a limited number of fruits and vegetables for a couple of weeks a year as they come into season.

I doubt if any SWPL would be willing to follow such a diet.

[Maciano]

It's pretty depressing, both liberals and conservatives are completely ridiculous. Common sense is something they only like if it suits their particular ideological fetish.

The alternative is libertarianism. I flirted with that one for a while, but it's just too kooky with all the open-borders-and-legalised-harddrugs-for-all talk.

15 years ago, I remember having a lot of faith in the future. "All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain..."

[dearieme]

I welcome an exception to the lugubrious, earnest solemnity, routinely misrepresented as intellectual seriousness, that so mars US politics. Though I would welcome it less if the chap proves to be just a giggling ninny.

[Turambar]

This movement is is irrational.

Why should the food being local to you make any difference. And since Michelle has only been in DC for 3 months, should she be eating Chicago local food.

[kurt9]

The organic food people may be in for a big disappointment with Obama and the democrats. It seems that there is a bill, H.R. 875, that would radically increase the regulations involved in growing food and selling it commercially that would effectively end much organic farming and farmers markets in the U.S. The "Crunchy con" Rod Dreher has been talking about this on his website.

[Wade Nichols]

Why is Michelle Obama becoming the arbiter of all things considered important, according to the NY Times? Laura Bush was never granted this authority by the Times, except maybe a grudging acknowledgment that she was once a librarian.

Today we have:

"The most vocal booster so far has been the first lady, Michelle Obama, who has emphasized the need for fresh, unprocessed, locally grown food and, last week, started work on a White House vegetable garden."

Yesterday's posting about high fructose corn syrup gave us:

"But the widespread criticism of high-fructose corn syrup — the first lady, Michelle Obama, has said she will not give her children products made with it — has made sugar look good by comparison."

What will tomorrow give us? Michelle's scholarly opinion on how many uranium centrifuges the Iranians have?

[Jardine]

God forbid anyone wants a garden because they you know, like gardening or want to save money. No, when it comes to Obama and the Missus, there must be some sort of transcendent, uplifting, spiritual, moral, ecological, environmental message of goodness and righteousness that will show the ignorant the proper way to live and feed one's self.
This story, by the official organ of the Party, is just cover for our new president's fuck ups(and there are many, so fucking many). Yeah, great a fucking garden at the White House, that' the ticket.
Meanwhile, in the real fucking world, the one that the rest of us live in(except for liberal idiots, but they'll get their rude awakening, you'll see), Obama's weak, pathetic, video message to the murderers in Iran flopped. We got flipped the bird and then laughed at. Now the press tells us that they are loonies(funny, we didn't hear that for about the last 4 or 5 years). This guy is so fucking weak, everyone is lining up to take a shot at us.

[Half Delta]

Why do people feel it is not possible to grow the food locally? You get 30 times more strawberries per acre in a hydroponic greenhouse than you do the regular way. Best of all it is 100% organic. The reduced cost of food due to transportation savings, not to mention the reduction in fossil fuels burning makes locally grown food a step in the right direction (because like you know, cleaner air is cool).

[tommy]

"Why do people feel it is not possible to grow the food locally? You get 30 times more strawberries per acre in a hydroponic greenhouse than you do the regular way. Best of all it is 100% organic. The reduced cost of food due to transportation savings, not to mention the reduction in fossil fuels burning makes locally grown food a step in the right direction (because like you know, cleaner air is cool)."

If it were economical at this point, then you wouldn't need any promoters. People would be growing strawberries this way. I have no doubt that we will continue to see advances in hydroponics and that such strawberries may eventually be cheaper than the regular ones, but we aren't there yet.

[Half Delta]

"If it were economical at this point, then you wouldn't need any promoters. People would be growing strawberries this way."

This statement is bullshit along the same lines of corporate executives deserving their salaries and all the other crypto capitalist baloney that is floating around regarding the free market. The fact of the matter is zoning laws and agricultural interests prevent more efficient methods of food production (and healthier food) from becoming the defacto business choice for those wishing to enter the farming profession.

Another reason it is not implement is that economical in this day and age of ponzy schemes and bubbles with triple digit returns backed by tax payer dollars make large capital investment unpalatable to industry and investors. Everyone is thinking of the next quarters profits.

If you get 30 times yield I highly doubt that it costs 30 times more to grow. The fossil fuel savings alone is enough to make me suspicious.

You should know by now that a lack of implementation in this day and age does not imply that something is economically impractical. The constant ranting on this site about inefficiency is two sided. No one can come down and actually claim that encouraging independence of food is a good thing now that status seeker types are doing it. Funny because a lot of conservatives pride themselves in growing all their own food.

[Awake]

HS-

As much as i get a sour taste in my mouth whenever I see Gaia worship in the NYT/MSM, I can't agree with you on this point.

It really wouldnt be a bad thing if more people grew a little bit of their own food in their back yard. Ours gets plenty of fertizilizer since the only other thing that it gets used for is when our dogs do their business all over it.

[Turambar]

The Times story contains the following, which sounded suspicious to me :
"In mid-February, Tom Vilsack, the new secretary of agriculture, took a jackhammer to a patch of pavement outside his headquarters to create his own organic “people’s garden.”"

According to Obama Foodorama http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2009/02/tom-vilsack-secretary-of.html the whole thing was PR puffery.
"global veggie garden extravaganza, complete with ropin' the First Lady in, a fake picture on USDA's website, a fake composting program, fake plans for the garden, fake plans to donate vegetables to DC foodbanks, and new, fake comments about the project posted on USDA's website. It's The People's Gardengate! Read on for all the details of Vilsack's masterful spin campaign...."

Apparently they are just going to plant grass, there is no staffing for maintenance, and no mechanism for donating the food.

In the Whitehouse case the interesting part is that the organic dalliance is straight out of the SWPL play book:
-Michelle dug the garden in Jimmy Choo boots
- the black press ignored the pictures but HuffPo had 10 stories on the event and NYT had it on the front page.

[Linda Seebach]

Hydroponic strawberries are not "organic" in the eyes of true believers, because they grow in a bath of chemicals. And the cost of transporting food (even halfway around the world) may be less than growing it where it is consumed if the climate is less suited to it.

[Half Delta]

There are no chemicals involved only dissolved minerals. Also climate has nothing to do with growing plants indoors and they can be grown year round increasing the money you make versus farmland. I understand what you are saying about marketing value, but the type of people most likely to shun pesticide treated foods are same kind to respect the technological sustainability factor and be thrilled that the food has no additives.

[Underachiever]

Half Delta,

Environmentalists are not always logical. They might imagine that growing food indoors is unnatural; therefore, strawberries grown indoors might not be edible for them because they are somehow "tainted".

Nonsense aside, hydroponics sounds interesting. The problem is that basic foods are already inexpensive, so decreasing the costs some more won't help people as much as say decreasing the cost of medical care. However, if it is cheaper, it should be done and there probably is some money in it.

[eddie]

Here is another NYT story about kids that are obsessing about food because of their SWPL parents:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/health/nutrition/26food.html?ref=dining

[rob]

Farming in cities:

http://nymag.com/news/features/30020/