Victory Gardens Produce Nearly Half of America’s Fresh Produce in WW2. With Today's Supply-Chain Meltdowns, Are They Ready for a Comeback?

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2023

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

Victory gardens are perhaps the U.S. government’s most successful and long-lasting propaganda campaign. It began during World War One, when the War Garden Commission offered free handbooks for garden tips and published stories in newspapers to encourage citizens to plant food crops in any little piece of unused land so citizens could help provide food for America’s allies fighting in Europe. The idea caught on, and by the end of the war, over 5 million gardens were planted, producing nearly $10 billion (in today’s dollars) worth of food. By World War 2, nearly 60 percent of U.S. households had some kind of garden. Over 40 percent of the nation’s fresh produce was grown in a local garden. Today’s guest is Maggie Stuckey, author of “The Container Victory Garden: A Beginner’s Guide to Growing Your Own Groceries.” With a renewed interest in home gardening during the 2020 lockdowns, she realized the astonishing surge of gardening activity was a modern-day version of wartime Victory Gardens, when Americans planted a few vegetables in whatever little patch of ground they could find. And even more surprising was how eerily the tragedies mirrored each other through the decades: World War I with its gardens and its influenza pandemic, World War II with its gardens and its devastating loss of life, and 2020’s gardens in response to the coronavirus pandemic. We look at the surprising relevance of Victory Gardens today.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This guy here with another episode of the History and Plug podcast.
0:07.5	One of the most massively successful government programs it ever existed is when you probably
0:11.8	have never heard of.
0:12.8	It's called the War Garden Commission, and it started during World War I when the government
0:16.7	went to encourage people to plant food crops and any little piece of unused land to help
0:20.8	provide food for America's allies fighting in Europe.
0:23.3	It started with short stories and patriotic essays that were distributed to newspapers
0:27.2	across the country and some handbooks for garden tips.
0:30.1	But the idea went viral and soon millions of Americans were gardening.
0:33.9	By 1918 they produced $9 billion of produce in today's dollars.
0:38.3	The movement was even more massively successful in World War II.
0:41.2	Nearly two-thirds of Americans were gardening and they did it almost everywhere they could.
0:44.9	In front yards, on vacant lots, sometimes even in cemeteries.
0:48.4	By 1943 Americans had produced more than 15 billion pounds of food, roughly 40% of the
0:54.6	fresh produce Americans consumed that year.
0:56.8	The idea of victory gardens had in the 50s and 60s, the age of jello molds and casseroles,
1:01.5	but they were revived during the COVID lockdowns when millions of people started gardening again
1:05.6	and even more today with questions of supply chain security and national food production.
1:10.6	To talk about this issue as today's guest Maggie Sucky, she's the author of the book
1:13.8	The Container Victory Garden of Beginner's Guide to Growing Your Own Groceries.
1:17.0	We look at the beginning of victory gardens, stories of personal wartime food production
1:21.5	for World War I and World War II, and the major relevance these stories have for today.
	...

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