Urban Farming: Independence

The war gardens of World War I and victory gardens of World War II made growing food in cities part of self-sufficiency that supported the nation’s war effort. In 1944, an estimated 200 million gardens yielded 8 million tons of food and 40 percent of the nation’s vegetable supply (although this figure includes individual homeowners growing in less than urban circumstances). The National War Garden Commission set up demonstration gardens in Bryant Park and Union Square in New York City, on the Common in Boston, and in parks in Chicago. According to their own 1917 bulletin, Standard Oil of California transformed the borders and sidewalks of their gas stations from flowers to vegetables. Various other gardening, women’s, and civic associations manned the efforts in both wars until agribusiness began to flourish in the postwar 1950s and urban farming declined.