There are a variety of tradeshows and we have an assortment of projects going on around the country at all times. It is, of course, necessary for us to attend the tradeshows and check up on our projects from time to time. In one such instance, my boss purchased and read "The Omnivore's Dilemma," a book that traces lineage of the food we eat in America. It was found that, in most cases, our food begins in some way in a cornfield.  Whether it's soda sweetened with high fructose corn syrup or beef fed on an all corn diet, Americans eat heaping piles of corn.

Not long ago a movie was made on this very premise entitled "King Corn." A couple of guys made a film exploring the fact that, at least in America, people are basically made of corn. What they discovered is that America produces a lot of corn, most of it low in nutritional value and essentially used as a raw material for production of further food products.  They also found that the production of the crop is basically unprofitable, except for the Federal subsidy program which makes it a sustainable operation. I'm only commenting on the fact that this current state of affairs and not on the rights or wrongs of such a situation.

The point of all this backstory is to say that a home vegetable garden is a great way to ween yourself off some of this surplus corn.  Garden vegetables are better for the environment because large commercial growing harms benefial organisms in the soil, whereas a home garden is usually organic. It also enables you to eat less commercially produced food, which takes advantage of low cost corn to produce sometimes unhealthy food products in an environmentally unfriendly manner.  A home garden produces food that is high in nutritional density.  A home garden allows you to be much more diverse in the foods that you eat, and by extension, in the assortment of vitamins and minerals you intake.

Now don't get me wrong, I love hamburger and McDonalds's and Coca-Cola and all the good stuff like that - all of which take advantage of inexpensive corn as a production material.  But, I also enjoy delicious tasty food.  And that, for me, is the best reason for a home garden.