Victory Gardens first appeared during World War l when President Woodrow Wilson called on Americans to plant vegetable gardens to ward off a food shortage. With slogans like " Food Will Win the War" the American public took up the challenge and gardening began to serve a larger social purpose.
During both World Wars millions of Americans turned front yards, back yards, and vacant lots into vegetable gardens. In 1943, in an effort to show that anyone could successfully grow food, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden on the front lawn of the White House. That year Victory Gardens supplied 40 per cent of the produce in America. Much of that food was grown by armies of women and children. (1)
During the first World War the Federal Bureau of Education launched the United States School Garden Army which enrolled 2.5 million children by 1919. This was the culmination of the school gardening movement that was founded around the turn of the last century. Its purpose was to get children out of crowded tenements and teach them the importance of work, to care for public properties, and develop a love of nature. These school gardens were credited with producing food worth $48 million dollars at the time. (2)
Inspired by the women of Great Britain known as the Land Lassies, the Woman's Land Army of America was formed in 1917 to fill the labor shortage caused by men going off to war. Many of these 20,000 women, known as "farmerettes", had never worked on a farm before but they took up planting, harvesting, plowing fields and driving tractors. They were also paid wages equal to male laborers, and were protected by eight hour work days. During World War ll the United States again faced a labor shortage and urban students, soldier's wives, clerks, teachers and secretaries were called up to enlist in the Woman's Land Army. Including the Victory Farm Volunteers which employed teenagers, the WLA would employ 3.5 million workers. (3)
Now in 2020, as we are facing a different sort of enemy, not a foreign power, but a virus. Food shortages are already happening, with long lines of the newly unemployed showing up at food banks. I wondered if the Kansas City University Community Garden could become a Victory Garden for our community.
KCU built the Community Garden in 2010 and within a few years the garden volunteers were able to donate a nearly a ton of produce each year to Scuola Vita Nova Charter School, Della Lamb Food Pantry, Harvesters, and Grace United Ministries, as well as providing volunteer opportunities for children from local schools to work in the garden. (4) I wondered about the status of this year's garden after the KCU campus was shut down in mid-March due to COVID-19. I contacted LaDonna Campbell, Education Technician/Coordinator in the Simulation Department at KCU, and also the director of volunteers for the garden. It turns out she had picked up seeds and starter plants the day before the campus was closed. She is currently tending the garden from her patio. A date for the on-campus planting of the garden has not yet been determined.
In the mean time we can each plant our own Pandemic Victory Gardens with a little extra planted to donate to our local food banks.
Notes
1. Mandel, Kyla. Thousands of People Are Growing 'Climate Victory Gardens" to Save the Planet. Huffingtonpost.com.
2. Ibid.
3. Woman's Land Army of America. Wikipedia.org.
4. KCUMB Magazine. Kansas City University of Medicine adn Biosciences. Winter 2013.
Photo Credits
Wikimedia Commons
Kansas City University
Robyn Oro
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