With each passing day, it seems the United States of America, “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave” is becoming more and more like the Communist Russia I learned about in elementary school where people weren’t allowed to grow their own food unless the State “allowed” it.
In this latest crackdown on citizens simply trying to provide for themselves using the most basic of skills – gardening – the USDA’s Rural Development Agency is forbidding Rosie, an industrious 4-year old girl in South Dakota from using a small, unused area outside her subsidized housing unit to grow green vegetables.
Rosie’s mother, Mary (names changed to protect the child’s identity), is single and severely disabled. She and her daughter live on a fixed income disability payment of $628/month. The garden vegetables growing just outside her backdoor lovingly tended by Rosie provide a fresh and healthy addition to their diet that they could not otherwise easily afford.
Rosie started the garden in May 2013, but now the property management company has ordered the garden be removed this week!
The reason?
The property management company claims that gardening goes against the rules set by the USDA’s Rural Development Agency which forbids residents to have structures of any kind within landscaped areas. It seems to me that the practice of growing vegetables by the most needy in our society would take precedence over landscaping, wouldn’t you agree?
I wonder if the USDA plans to establish “rules” about breathing air in subsidized areas too?
The Federal bureaucracy seems to think that it owns those individuals who receive any sort of government assistance and that their behavior is completely within its jurisdiction to control no matter how ridiculous or blatantly un-American the power-tripping “rules” they decide to put in place may be.
Think this is an isolated case? Â It’s not. Â I write regularly on this blog about these outrageous situations where ordinary citizens are bullied by out of control bureaucrats, the most recent being a Mother in Maine who was harassed and threatened by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for feeding her healthy, robust 3 month old son homemade goat milk formula instead of horribly unhealthy commercial formula from the store laced with rancid vegetable oils and GMOs!
What You Can Do Now to Help Rosie
It is truly unfathomable that our country has degenerated to the point where a person can no longer garden without permission from bureaucratic thugs who get paid with our hard earned tax dollars to think up these rules – Â not laws –Â rules that have never been voted on by the elected representatives of the citizens expected to abide by those rules.
If you recall, this is exactly the sort of authoritarian insanity that started the American Revolutionary War (tea party anyone?).
Tell the USDA where it can put its “rules” against gardening by those living in rural, subsidized areas.
Sample Email to USDA
You can copy/paste the email template below to send directly from your email provider. Template provided courtesy of Kitchen Gardeners International, the source of this story.
To:Â [email protected]
Cc: [email protected], [email protected]
Subject:Â Allow USDA-subsidized housing residents to grow vegetable gardens
Message body:
Dear Director Meeks,
I urge you to make a loud and clear statement to all the property management companies your agency contracts that USDA-subsidized residents have the right to keep their own vegetable gardens provided that these gardens are actively maintained. Vegetable gardens grow healthy and affordable foods as well as a sense of community. Rather than preventing low-income and disabled residents from providing for themselves, we should be doing everything we can to encourage them. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely yours,
(Your name, your town, your state)
Important Updates to This Story
8/27/2013:Â FINAL UPDATEÂ and details on Rosie’s Victory Garden!
8/26/2013:  A detailed update to this story is provided here.
8/25/2013: Â Roger Doiron, Director of Kitchen Gardeners International, has provided more details on this emerging story. The USDA has claimed in email correspondence to Mr. Doiron that it has no written rules preventing Mary and Rosie from having a garden (despite the property management company’s insistence to the contrary). On the other hand, the USDA hasn’t come to Mary and Rosie’s defense either and by allowing the property management company it has a contract with to call the shots and bully Mary and Rosie it is essentially enforcing such a rule no matter what is claimed via email.
Bureaucratic rules are notoriously confusing to understand let alone interpret, but if the USDA stands behind its assertion that there are no “rules” – written OR unwritten – against gardening in subsidized housing, it should stop the property management company under the auspices of the USDA from forcing Mary and Rosie to remove their garden.
The USDA pays most of the rent for Mary and thousands of citizens like her around the United States. Â It should do the right thing and insist that property owners and managers of subsidized housing permit residents to grow their own food in well cared for gardens rather than look the other way when residents are bullied for their efforts at self sufficiency. Â After all, the stated mission of the USDA Rural Development Agency is to “improve the quality of life in rural America”. Gardening surely would be supportive of this important goal.
Source
Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI).  Rosie and Mary’s real names and exact location in South Dakota have not been revealed in order to protect the identity of a minor child.  Please contact KGI Director Roger Doiron, [email protected] if you wish to further verify the validity of this story.
I has been my experience when living in Public Housing that rules against gardening are NOT about food, but about neighborhood strife when somebody’s kids decide to pick someone else’s tomatoes & pelt folks with them, etc. and about maintenance manpower needed to clean-up, after folks move and leave a mess of dead plants & unfinished garden projects.
I fully support trying to get “The Projects” across America to encourage gardening, but can’t buy into The Man Doesn’t Want Poor Folks To Have Food In Their Yard.
Better Question! Why is the USDA subsidizing house? Seems like developing rural areas (farmland) would be counter productive to there mission. Kimd of ironic that the USDA is trying to stop some one from growning food.
So is there any way we can just send these people some money? Hell, they have to eat.
Communist USSR you meant? Russia isn’t a communist country. I was born there. In elementary school, they did not provide you with accurate information. You did not need a permit to grow food, but you did need a permit to a land if you were growing it outdoors. For instance, I grew many things (onions, tomatoes, oranges, lemons, herbs, etc.) in our apartment.
There were many ridiculous things I found upon arriving to the U.S. To me in many ways U.S. seemed to still be a Wild West. But this thing is simply silly. We always grew veggie and herb gardens as kids in our schoolyard. I don’t see what authorities have gotten against this particular garden. Seems to me that this girl is more grown up than authorities working on this case.
I think they know exactly what they are doing. Much like farmers cannot use seeds left over from the year before or hold seeds to use later. They want to corner the market on all food products, so we are dependent on the government for all food products.
I live in the delta region of the south. Farmers galore. Most would be shocked at the restrictions being placed on farmers, how much land they can plant, who they can sell to, what they are allowed to grow, where the seed comes from, etc…..
There is no restriction on farmers holding over seeds, if they use heirloom seeds. If they use hybrid seeds with intellectual property rights then they have to buy seeds again every year. If they don’t then they violate the purchase agreement for those seeds and it wouldn’t help them anyway since seeds produced from hybrid crops typically won’t breed back true to the crop from which they came. And that isn’t the government making that “rule” it is the companies who spend their investment dollars to produce the hybrid seeds in the first place. They why would farmers use these seeds? Because they determine that they increase their profits. It is a choice by the farmers and not an evil plot by the government.
Visit an Amish farm or other farms where seeds are held over. No restrictions by the government. Also no ability to compete nationally because the yield is lower or crops are less pest-resistant. However, it is a choice.
Except when you grow corn, or another crop that becomes contaminated by GMO cross pollination . . .
There will come a time in America (fast approaching) When food will be so scarce that people will be digging up parking lots for the fertile ground underneath to grow food for the masses. Rules will be thrown out the window, possibly at the expense of civil war.
Let’s stick to the FACTS here. The story (twice) says the landlord — not the USDA — says the garden must go. This kind of smear and slant tactic that’s made reasonable political discussion in the country all but impossible
it clearly states this is government property and the RULES for subsidized housing say you cannot have a structure within landscaped areas. Who do you think controls subsidized housing? Who do you think makes up the rules??? Do you believe the property manager makes up the rules for the government?????
Better get your head out of the sand, unless you want to eat that for eternity!
Correct.
I think the problem with this is that they are subject to contract law (as are we all)…When they signed the contract to move in, I assume they agreed to abide by the “rules”. To take it further, we are ALL under contract to this system…We were sold to the “gubberment” by our parents (and theirs before them) when they voluntarily put us on a contract called a birth certificate, hence we are owned by the dept. of commerce, and considered a resource.