The Obamas first harvest: Salon News

Quoted via Salon:

Reuters/Jonathan Ernst via SalonJuly 6, 2009 | WASHINGTON -- It was harvest time for the first wave of crops from the local vegetable garden, so the kids who had helped plant it a few months earlier came back to visit recently. Working with a few professional supervisors under the eye of their host, they pulled up a big bounty: 73 pounds of lettuce, 12 pounds of peas and one cucumber (which had originally been white but was yellow by the time the kids got to it). And then they all went inside to cook, before returning to the garden to eat.

That wouldn't have been particularly newsworthy, of course, except that it all happened at the White House, and the host for the harvest lunch was Michelle Obama. "My hope is that [through] this garden, we can continue to make the connection between what we eat and how we feel and how healthy we are," she told the kids, all from a D.C. neighborhood about three miles from the executive mansion. The harvest a couple of weeks ago was the culmination of a few whirlwind months at the White House, taking the crop from seeds to salads amid a media frenzy.

Before President Barack Obama took office, the progressive food community was in such a frenzy expecting changes in the way Americans think about, grow, buy and eat their food that more than a dozen famous chefs threw a dinner party the night before his inauguration to celebrate. Obama had paid slightly more attention to food policy on the campaign trail than most other recent presidential nominees, pledging to help support small independent farmers, not massive corporate agribusinesses. Six months later, though, the garden is probably the most significant step the administration has taken toward the broad goals the campaign laid out last year. The Agriculture Department has only recently filled crucial positions dealing with policy, and what's likely to be the year's biggest showdown over food issues -- legislation in Congress to reauthorize the federal school lunch program -- looms later this summer. more