Sunday my wife and I watched the PBS program "Victory Garden" which featured a "victory garden" project in San Francisco last summer. This consisted of about 2 acres on a plaza in front of City Hall which was transformed via sandbags and imported soil into an urban garden. Green beans, corn, tomatoes and other assorted veggies were being grown – organically we're told – in round sandbag encircled plots. Water was supplied by an in-ground plastic drip irrigation system.
The show's reporter swooned and burbled over the wonderful benefits of this project. He interviewed two young waspish males who were the project managers along with the SF mayor who was equally enthusiastic. The garden had attracted a large number of sightseers who wandered among the plots as if they had never seen garden vegetables growing before.
Viewers were informed of the origins of the "victory garden" concept and name (wartime government propaganda to encourage civilians to grow their own food) and were repeatedly told about the healthful benefits of organic produce and sustainable gardening. On cue Berkeley berchef Alice Waters arrived parroting the same mantra. News clips showed what were described as volunteers doing some of the original planting.
The project managers were also promoting a citywide urban-gardening program and eagerly hoped this would go nationwide. More puzzling was why the PBS reporter took all this at face value, as if growing garden vegetables was some brand new idea. Every week on "Victory Garden" there is a segment about using garden-grown vegetables in soup, stew or salad. Yet here it was touted as breaking news.
As sometimes backyard gardeners ourselves, I asked my wife just how sustainable this project really was. I couldn't resist doing a rough calculation of what this project might cost.
Assuming a short three-month growing season, I arrived at the following:
- direct cost of soil, sandbags and sand, nursery grown starter plants, irrigation system, transport to site, $25,000
- cost of two project managers ($60K/yr each) for three months each, $30,000
- cost of one 24-hour security guard on site, 3 guards ($60K/yr) for three daily shifts for three months, $45,000
- cost of one project office/utilities, @ $1,500/month for three months, $4,500
- cost of on-site water and power, $500/month, $1,500
This conservative estimate totals $106,000. Security might seem expensive but you aren't going to have a successful garden in downtown San Francisco if it isn't guarded around the clock from dogs, drunks, the homeless, vandals and other poachers. Project managers don't work for free either. I didn't include removal costs either; those sandbags aren't going to last forever.
Based on the TV footage only about 15% of the actual area was cultivated. My estimate is a potential of about 1,000 servings of vegetables under cultivation. Due to disease, weather, fungus and insects, I assume about a 60% viable harvest from the total potential yield, or 600 net servings.
Dividing the total cost of $106,000 by 600 yields $176.67 cost per vegetable serving. Assuming that a normal portion (4–5 oz.) of organic produce costs about 50 cents retail, this public garden project (using free planting and harvest labor) is about 353 times more expensive than your local supermarket or organic food emporium. This is a liberal production estimate since certain crops like corn often fail in small plots and San Francisco summer weather is notorious for fog and cool temperatures. This analysis also ignores the subsidy of free land and labor.
Conveniently the "Victory Garden" episode did not address the ultimate crop results from this garden.
Upon hearing the term "sustainable" by the reporter for the umpteenth time (he was positively giddy over this project) and my rough financial calculation results I launched in to full rant mode before the show was over. My long suffering spouse offered consolation.
"This is the secular equivalent of religion," she assured me, "so these claims aren't meant to be taken seriously. These are articles of faith, not science."
And right she is.
This type of food production is only "sustainable" if you can wheedle a $352.50 subsidy out of someone else to make it possible. Of course no one voluntarily pays this. It is "sustained" totally by money extorted from hapless taxpayers.
Readers of LRC know the only way this madness is sustainable is at the point of a government gun.
We know that voluntary market exchanges – which happen tens of thousands of times a day in grocery stores and markets nationwide – are the only true sustainable form of agriculture. You pay your fifty cents for a bag of fresh organic green beans and sustain an entire supply chain going back to the farmer.
Of course the government subsidized PBS network will not follow you into the market to marvel at this miracle happening every day. Nor will anyone be gushing over how sustainable it is. Instead we take its (sustained) existence for granted.
This "Victory Garden" style religion of sustainability exists only in the fuzzy nexus of statist logic, where concrete municipal plazas burst forth with yummy organic veggies at a cost of only $176 per helping. Prices do not matter to socialists at PBS and San Francisco municipal government. Costs are irrelevant in the new religion of Green Sustainability. In this belief system "sustainability" means that the trivial barriers of economic reality are of no real concern.
This is sustainable of course, so long as the government doesn't run out of bullets and prison space to keep plunder flowing to the new state funded priesthood of Sustainability. Who are we to question their revealed Truth? Economic reality is for unbelievers and heretics.
Don't those $176 green beans taste really, really sustainable? Just shut up and eat your veggies…
February 2, 2009
