Food Independence Through Victory Garden Clubs

During both world wars the government advertised and taught the concept of Victory Gardens. These were home gardens that would augment or replace food staples, like potatoes, vegetables, fruits, and beans, with things grown in the garden. But an improvement on this is is a Victory Garden Club, which takes the individual garden plot to a whole new level of good independence.

Food independence doesn’t mean 100% of your food is grown by you or in some mutually beneficial arrangement with other people. It means you have the capacity to meet all your basic nutrition needs through such arrangements if you need to. Instead of merely stockpiling food supplies as preppers do, through the expansion of the Victory Garden to a Victory Garden Club you can always be assured of a self-sustaining food supply.

Basically, the way this works is you have a local network of people. Some are good at gardening. Some have land. Some have money. When anyone contributes some units of value, called Shares, based on either land, time, expertise, money, equipment, or supplies, or some combination thereof, they get a proportional share of the final product.

If you are good at gardening but don’t have land or have land but don’t do gardening, if you have time but not money, or money but not time, you can still participate in a VGC, Victory Garden Club. A VGC with, say, 120 members, and access to around 5 total acres of land, may be able to grow enough food, conceivably, to feed 500 families at any given time.

First, the participants get shares of food bssed on their investment, then the excess may be sold, portions may be canned or preserved and stored, and portions may be used to charity. The proceeds from sales may be partially reinvested in the Club’s assets and provided as dividends to members.

A VGC could actually become profitable for members or, at the least, so financially self-sustaining that eventually members essentially get free food.

The goal is Food Independence. The things grown or raised or what have you are calculated, preferably in coordination with a nutritionist, to ensure the basic nutritional needs of all members could be met through things produced by the VGC. Unlike other “garden” clubs, the VGC might also include chickens for eggs and food, cows or goats for milk, a fish farm, rabbit farms, and other ways to produce meat for members.

A VGC connected to a hunting and fishing club might also supplement the dietary needs of members.

You may not use the term “Victory Garden”, perhaps you prefer “Home Farming Club” or “Food Independence Club.” We like the term “Victory Garden”, even though our version is more expansive and includes raising animals, as an homage to Americana. The Victory Gardens of World War Two, for instance, played a major role in sustaining our population in the battle to end the Nazi scourge.

Here is an example. The Upadarian Society of America is planned as a fraternal benefit society with a focus on Christian kinship, missional living, and providing refuge for ourselves and other fellow Christians in crisis. At the very local chapter level, a Microshire of around 500 members, we plan a Victory Garden Network of 3-5 Clubs that also includes a few sponsored Farmsteads for larger-scale food production.

The aim of the VGN is to produce all the basic food staples plus natural medicinal products within assets owned by the VGN. Additionally, a cafeteria which exclusively serves food produced by the VGN would provide low cost meals to members, including prepared meals for Common Houses (our version of a lodge) where members gather for common meals, free food to people in need, and food ar regular prices to the public as a means of reaching financial self-sustainability.

This illustrates how the VGC can become adaptable and expandable. But it can begin with just a few people and grow as it goes.

The crux of this is taking concrete action at the local level to achieve Food Independence because when you don’t need to rely on the corporate mass market or the government for food and when your supply of food cannot be effected by extra-local disruptions, you are that much more materially independent. Independency is a state of not being materially dependent upon extra-local systems or any system that seeks influence and control that isn’t in your best interest.