Roger Doiron is founder and director of Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI), a Maine-based nonprofit network of over 20,000 individuals from 100 countries who are taking a (dirty) hands-on approach to relocalizing the food supply. The group is a network of gardeners and good food advocates who work to make local foods even more “local” and broader.
In 2008, Doiron and KGI worked to campaign to have “high impact gardens” put in high profile places in order to promote growing food. What is a better place for this than the U.S. White House – a location that ohad been a edible landscape both for animals and people years ago. The idea of a food garden at the white house had been proposed by Michael Polland And Alice Waters – but the efforts had never resulted in a garden being planted.
Doiron and KGI led a successful proposal and petition campaign to replant a kitchen garden at the White House which gathered over 100,000 signatures and international media coverage. Together, gardeners and good food advocates pitched in on March 20, 2009 – to help White House and the Obamas plant a healthy kitchen garden on the White House lawn.
KGI is working to get gardeners around the world to work together on feeding a growing population which has a degrading natural resource base and changing global climate.
There are currently over 1 billion hungry people in the world and that number is set to rise as the global population rises from 6.7 billion to over 9 billion in 2050. Doiron and the KGI promote the idea that planting more kitchen gardens – behind homes, schools, and in vacant urban lots – will be part of the solution
In his TED talk given in Spring of 2011, Doiron gave a humorous talk called, “A Subversive Plot – How to Grow a Revolution in Your Own Backyard.” Doiron starts out talking about how food is a food of energy and power, and how when we encourage people to grow their own food – we are encouraging them to get power over their food, health, and money.
If you have not seen this talk yet- I recommend checking it out – and starting now to plan your plot in your yard for Spring of 2012.
Links:
TED Talk – Roger Doiron – “A Subversive Plot – How to Grow a Revolution in Your Own Backyard.”
Video about the Petition of the Garden on the Whitehouse Petition