Self-Reliance is Back

(Published in the May '09, Merchant Magazine and Building Products Digest.)

When the First Lady planted the White House vegetable garden this spring, it did more than just promote home gardening. It harkened back to the Victory Gardens that were commonplace during the Second World War, when our society pulled together for the war effort, and our culture was imbued with the virtue of self reliance. And it seems that our culture, which has been criticized over the last generation as being both selfish and disposable, might be taking a taking a sharp turn toward self-reliance and sustainability. Anecdotally, this seems true. A friend of mine has forsaken anything packaged and has taken to making her own cleaning products, toothpaste and yoghurt. On a recent trip to Portland, I saw more rain barrels and front-yard vegetable gardens than I could count. Though I don’t know for sure, I’m inclined to believe that book sales for Emerson and Thoreau are on the upswing, as well. All this, of course, creates opportunities for the savvy retailer in our industry.

Let’s start with gardening. Not only were sales of organic gardening products up last year, but more households were growing their own food. According to the National Gardening Association, an estimated 36 million households participated in food gardening in 2008 and projected that number to increase 19% to 43 million households in 2009. In a separate report, they find that “9 out of 10 households, believe that it’s important to maintain their landscape in a way that benefits the environment,” although only about half are knowledgable about how to do so. That gap is the retailer’s opportunity – a budding population of food gardeners with a thirst for knowledge.

For those dealers with garden centers, (those without might reconsider), it should be relatively easy to source organic soils, plant foods, pest control products, and drip irrigation kits, as these product categories have been growing for years and most L&G distributors stock them. Seeds can be a different matter and here I recommend Seeds of Change, (www.seedsofchange.com,) who stock a wide variety of organic and heirloom varieties. Getting your staff educated is also a key component. In California, there’s a fantastic program called Our Water Our World, (www.ourwaterourworld.org,) a non-profit funded by state and utility grants that provides free training and education for store staff on pesticide-free methods for controlling typical garden pests. There are similarly focused non-profits and organic gardening organizations around the country, so they should be easy to find.

There’s lots more to household self-reliance and sustainability than simply planting a garden. For example, installing a rainwater harvesting system, which I wrote about last month, adds another key input toward the sustainable food garden. But along with inputs come the outputs, such as waste. Households generate lots of organic waste, with food scraps accounting for a big chunk of what goes to the local landfill, where it’s consumed by anaerobic microbes that produce methane, a green house gas that is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. The solution is simple: composting. Composting organic waste produces a nutrient rich soil amendment, which every gardener knows is essential. There are some good composters on the market that look attractive on the retail floor, such as those from EnviroCycle, Terracycle, and the Earth Machine. Some, like the Green Johanna even work in cold weather and can handle meat and bones. An alternative to conventional composters is the worm bin, such as the Worm Factory, which works well for those folks without a yard.

Little “economic recovery” gardens, irrigated by rainwater, with soil amended by composted organic waste – a great story all around, full of merchandising opportunity for the savvy and self-reliant retailer.