Ration Victory Gardening Ww2 Simble

Beyond the World War II We Know

Victory Gardens Were More About Solidarity Than Survival

During World War II, millions of Americans grew their own vegetables, but the movement was driven much more by government and corporate messaging than by the threat of starvation.

Credit... National Archives

July 15, 2020

In the latest article from " Beyond the World War II We Know ," a series from The Times that documents lesser-known stories from World War II, we recount the history of victory gardens and some of the misconceptions of how they emerged after the United States joined the conflict.

Of all the celebrated nostalgic markers of World War II, few are as memorable as America's victory gardens — those open lots, rooftops and backyards made resplendent with beets, broccoli, kohlrabi, parsnips and spinach to substitute for the commercial crops diverted to troops overseas during the war.

The gardens were strongly encouraged by the American government during World War I as part of the at-home efforts, yet they became immensely more popular with the introduction of food rationing during the Second World War as processed and canned foods were shipped abroad.

It's often said that this later era of victory gardens emerged out of grass-roots collective action to prevent the risk of running out of food, which was already hurting countries all over Europe. Despite the millions of pounds of food being diverted from American kitchen tables for the war effort, there was little threat of citizens going hungry. Rather, the victory-garden movement was driven much more by government and corporate messaging meant to invoke American solidarity.

"Americans like to portray that they worked hard and would have starved had they not gardened," said Allan M. Winkler, a distinguished professor emeritus of history at Miami University of Ohio. "Victory gardens were a symbol of abundance and doing it yourself, but that was more symbolism than reality."

Nearly two-thirds of American households participated in some form of national harvest; even Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden on the White House lawn. By 1943, close to 20 million families planted seven million acres of gardens across the United States, producing more than 15 billion pounds, or roughly 40 percent, of the fresh produce Americans consumed that year.

Public service advertisements urging Americans to grow vegetables and to can them peppered libraries, community centers and newsreels in movie theaters. They offered motivational messages such as "Your country needs soybeans," and "Can all you can. It's a real war job!" One poster featured a fresh-faced girl in overalls holding a hoe and a basket of bounty, with the tagline "Grow vitamins at your kitchen door."

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Credit... National Archives

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Credit... Library of Congress

Still, food-production levels throughout American involvement in the war were pretty stable. The peak year of rationing in the United States was in 1943, and food shortages never neared those in Europe and Asia. In 1942, for example, Americans consumed 138 pounds of meat per capita, a mere three pounds less than the prior year, according to Amy Bentley's 1998 book "Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity." Americans were pressed to leave more for troops, with government campaigns stressing that fighting men would get their strength from meat.

"Look and Life magazines were where people got information," said Bentley, a professor of food studies at New York University. "Citizens had a clear understanding of the threats of war and what their efforts were supposed to be, and corporations wanted to be associated with that."

The National Victory Garden Program, which was created by the War Food Administration in 1941, got early and strong support from corporations. It was a very top-down movement, with a board composed of chief executives from agriculture companies who saw the gardens as an exercise both in expressing their patriotism and product placement, according to Anastasia Day, a scholar in the University of Delaware's history department. Many of the companies gave packs of seeds — often labeled "Victory Seeds" — with purchase of their products. In return, corporations received tax breaks for promoting the war efforts to consumers.

"I think one modern-day analogue is how big oil companies promote alternative energies and green washing, ostensibly working against their own interest," said Day. "Just as Green Giant peas were big supporters of victory gardens."

The messaging from the top also attempted to shift American eating habits through promotional campaigns and even changing nutritional guidelines that often celebrated specific sectors of agriculture. For example, as the government tried to further ration meat intended for servicemen, Americans were pushed to enjoy soybeans, peanut butter, eggs and organ meats. Newspapers printed how-to columns on building chicken houses and caring for hens.

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Credit... National Archives

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Credit... National Archives

While it feels easy to draw narrative lines between victory gardens and the organic, local food movement of today, in truth the fresh-vegetable trends of World War II were almost immediately subsumed by postwar Jell-O molds, cake mixes and frozen dinners — all markers of modern living at the time. Many women did most of the cooking and enjoyed being free of domestic gardening and canning, and celebrated all forms of culinary convenience during the baby boom era. That was especially true of white families who populated the newly developing suburbs after the war.

"The rise of suburbs was the culmination of this urge that owning property and having your own space of land is something that is inherently American," Day explained. "Victory gardens were a transitional phase on the way to the promise that was largely fulfilled for white, upwardly mobile working-class Americans as they moved to the suburbs," where victory gardens all but disappeared.

The gleaming new suburban developments tended not to include garden plots. What is more, entrusting corporations with food preparation was the ultimate postwar cultural shift (so cleverly captured in the show "Mad Men").

As a result of the new processed food trends, American tastes evolved too, trending away from fresh flavors and seasonal produce. A generation later, those preferences would return to become the centerpieces of upscale restaurants in the contemporary United States. While many Black families in the South and Latinos in the Southwest kept up gardening traditions, predominantly white suburban homes were big on shelf-stable products to fill newly expansive pantries, and technology that had gone toward the war effort was transplanted to things used in the home.

"The golden age of food processing created a plethora of products, and consumers were enamored by them," Bentley said. "Fresh-tasting produce becomes less important than convenience, shelf stability, price and storage capacity. People also learned they like the heavy sugars and salt used in canned vegetables and fruit."

This spring, there was a spurt of new attention to the wartime victory gardens, and a search for lessons and inspiration for Americans locked down in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Some citizens were turning to their own gardens for dinner. There was a spate of replanting onions from scraps and a run on seeds. But that attention has been eclipsed by ominous news from the home front, where coronavirus infections and deaths have surged, and backyard gardening in 2020 has lacked a unified, depoliticized social movement to fuel it.

"As I think about the victory gardens of World War II, I think their most important value was in getting the public to feel involved in the war," Winkler said. "In the Covid-19 pandemic, there is some of that. Wearing masks is protective, and necessary, to be sure, but it also gives us a sense of doing our part."