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July 5, 2008

Soaring food, gas prices have people digging in the garden

By Deb Kelly

TERRE HAUTE — As reports warn of food prices soaring, even “skyrocketing,” and as fuel prices stretch budgets, more and more Wabash Valley folks are getting down and dirty — in their own backyard gardens.

It has not taken long for some families to embrace the new, yet very old, way of saving some money. The spring and summer season 2008 has seen an increase in vegetable plant sales, and some people are planting for the first time ever.

Seeds of Change

Many claim that food prices are causing people to dust off their green thumbs, but whatever the reason, gardening is in.

The impact has been felt at seed companies nationwide and at area garden centers.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported in early June that W. Atlee Burpee & Co. had doubled its seed sales this year. The seed company, which started in 1876, has struggled in recent years as modern families moved away from growing their own food.

Susan Goodman, garden center manager at Paitson Bros. Ace Hardware near 25th Street and Wabash Avenue, said not only has the store seen an increased interest in gardening, but also the store has had to order at least 50 percent more starter plants than usual.

Goodman said she has met many people who are growing for the first time and seeking advice. Most have been expressing concerns about rising food prices, Goodman said.

Customers are seeking “herbs, vegetables, anything they can grow on their own,” she said.

To help with the demand, Goodman said she started to answer gardening questions in an online newsletter for customers, and Ace also started some gardening classes.

“We increased our actual inventory of vegetables and herbs tremendously,” Goodman added.

Ryan Cummins, one of the owners of the Apple House in Terre Haute, said sales are strong at the garden retail center, “and they are certainly up over the previous year.”

Cummins added that seed sales also have increased.

“There certainly seems to be more interest in people growing their own gardens,” he said. “We have lots and lots of regular customers, but we have noticed new faces in the vegetable plants.”

Some area residents, feeling a budget pinch, have pulled out trowels and rented tillers, and many are starting to reap the rewards.

Victory Gardens

Juanita Juneau of Terre Haute said the No. 1 reason she chose to plant a garden this year was “the cost of food.”

“It’s so outrageous, and I’m on a fixed income. I’m retired, 70-years-old, I just really can’t afford the high food prices,” Juneau said with a chuckle during a recent interview. “I have a little victory garden,” she said.

“Back years ago, during World War II, and after I was born right after the Depression, things were still kind of tough, and everyone had a garden, everyone called it a little victory garden. I know Mama had one; she called it her victory garden,” Juneau said.

Victory gardens came into fashion during the first World War, when the U.S. government askedk citizens to plant gardens to support the war effort. The idea continued through World War II and beyond.

The term is coming back into use, and not just among people who remember those days. One effort, at www.revivevictorygarden.org, encourages citizens to grow gardens as a way to combat global warming.

Juneau’s 3- by 10-foot victory garden features lettuce, bell peppers, beets, onions, cucumbers and “beautiful tomato plants,” she said.

“I don’t buy anything fresh from the market anymore,” she said proudly. “I have been eating cucumbers, green tomatoes, and my bell peppers are in full bloom. My green beans are in full bloom. My lettuce I’ve eaten every day … I planted one little short row, and I’ve fed the whole neighborhood!”

Juneau said she has arranged to trade lettuce with a neighbor in exchange for his zucchini and yellow squash.

“I’ve always tried to eat fresh,” Juneau said. Mama always did, we always ate out of the garden … I hesitate sometimes to buy fresh because I don’t know where it comes from and I don’t know what they put on it,” she added.

Juneau said she has lived in apartments until recently, when she moved to a house with a big yard.

“It’s a very therapeutic thing for many people; it’s a very therapeutic thing for me, and it’s good exercise,” she said.

Several area gardeners who are taking to the soil for the first time — or for the first time in many years — went out and rented a rototiller, a machine with engine-powered rotating blades used to lift and turn soil.

One of those novice gardeners, Cheryl Frazer, has turned her entire back yard on Ohio Boulevard into a vegetable delight.

“We eat a lot of vegetables, salad and stuff … and it gets very expensive. We’re retired on a fixed income, and food prices just kept escalating, so we wanted to cut them down,” Frazer said.

Frazer and her husband decided they had the time, and lawn upkeep was becoming costly, so they started a compost pile and rented a rototiller.

“We’ve got tomatoes, bush beans, pole beans, cucumbers, peas, five different varieties of lettuce, artichokes, brussels sprouts, carrots, and we have an area still unplanted,” Frazer said. “We’ve already decided our garden will be even bigger next year.”

Just like many of the other new growers, the Frazers started some plants from seeds and others from small plant starts they bought at retail garden centers.

Frazer said she has not yet noticed a dent in her grocery budget, as the garden is just starting to produce.

“I did my first harvest of lettuce on Friday. We had our first salad, and it was delicious,” she said.

Frazer said she already has learned several things in her new endeavor.

“We need to put our rows further apart!” she said, laughing. “And I’m still trying to master the art of trellising. They keep getting higher. I’m graduating sizes of bamboo as things grow,” she said.

Frazer said she and her husband work together on the garden, and they encourage their 14-year-old daughter to get involved.

“The whole thing is just humiliating for her,” Frazer said with a laugh.

Chris and Pamela Browne of Terre Haute said they also chose to start a garden because of food prices.

“In the produce section, it’s very expensive, so we wanted to save a little money on food,” Chris Browne said.

Chris, who is originally from Oregon, and Pamela, who is from California, said they do have some experience growing their own food, and they use what they grow to make salsa, as well as fresh horseradish.

“It kind of fills up our little back yard, and we’re already eating the onions, and some tomatoes and squash, and we grew lettuce so we can have our own salads. It’s making a difference,” he said.

The Cost of Food

Worldwide price increases on food have fueled plenty of debate about the causes.

Some analysts have expressed concerns about the increased demand for biofuels cutting into the food supply — articles in Businessweek and Time magazine, among others, have explored that debate. Others blame an increasing demand for meat in Asian countries for the increased demand for grain. According to a BBC report in May (The Cost of Food: Facts and Figures), meat consumption in China increased to 110 pounds per person in 2007 from 44 pounds per person in 1980 — a 150-percent increase.

From the start of 2006 to April of this year, the average world price for rice had risen by 217 percent, wheat by 136 percent, corn by 125 percent and soybeans by 107 percent, according to the Centre for Research on Globalization, based in Canada.

The Indiana Farm Bureau in early June released information that placed most of the blame for increased prices on higher energy costs.

As if all those issues had not already sent many Hoosiers toward the seed catalogs, recent flooding in the Midwest is expected to send prices soaring again.

It’s not the Food; It’s the Fuel

But are food prices really the culprit when it comes to tight budgets, and are they the real reason people are pulling out the garden gloves and wheelbarrows? Some say no.

Bob Baesler, owner of Baesler’s Food Market in Terre Haute, says the national media is overestimating the increased cost of food.

“We’re looking at a number between 3 and 5 percent [increase], and I think a lot of that, of course, is fuel-related,” Baesler said in a recent interview.

“The national news is talking about skyrocketing food prices — it’s a little bit deceptive,” he said. “The percentage rate of 5 percent on a dollar is a nickel … Fuel, no question, has skyrocketed, when you go from $2.50 to $4 a gallon, but when you’re talking about 5-percent inflation in food, that’s not skyrocketing.”

Baesler said he has not heard any concerns from his customers about sticker-shock in the produce aisle, or any other aisle, for that matter.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture projected a 3- to 4-percent increase in overall food prices for 2008, after seeing a 4-percent increase overall in 2007, according to the 2008 Agricultural Outlook Forum, published in February. The outlook named increasing fuel costs as one potential impact on food prices.

Although analysts were predicting $4 per gallon gasoline by summer, in February, when the outlook was published, the average price for a gallon of gas was still under $3 nationwide.

Joseph Glauber, chief economist for the USDA, wrote, “In the end, how the new year unfolds will be determined by the vagaries of weather … [among other variables].”

In February, neither the USDA nor anyone else could have predicted the massive flooding that would affect so much of the corn crop in the Midwest, and the impact from those “vagaries” has not yet been completely felt on the store shelves.

Baesler, who uses plenty of local produce both for its quality and to offset the high transportation costs of non-local foods, said, “As far as people growing their gardens — I think it is a way to save some money. I think people, because of the cost of fuel … they might be growing some of their own vegetables because that’s money they don’t have to spend at the store, they can spend it on fuel.”

“I think the price of fuel has caused people to change some of their ways,” he said.

Deb Kelly can be reached at (812) 231-4254 or deb.kelly@tribstar.com.

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