EDITOR'S ANGLE | SUMMER 2010 EFFECTThe Recession Reminder
by Paul D. PfeifferLast winter, CNN published an article on a new trend—the Recession Garden, and it described a burst of interest in backyard gardening. Research by the National Gardening Association suggested that 2009 would see a 19 percent increase in food gardening households in the country. The seed company Burpee released a report saying a family that invested $50 in a garden would reap a 25-to-1 return on its investment in produce.
Photo by Isabel Pfeiffer
As with any investment, you’d better read the fine print, and that fine print may say something like “your neighbor’s results do not guarantee that rabbits, aphids, molds, wilts, and all manner of blights will not destroy your entire project and leave you with a well-tilled patch of weeds.”
This raises an obvious question: did we learn anything from this recession? True, a garden isn’t exactly an exotic financial instrument, but the eagerness to embrace this new trend and cash in on the fine returns sounds very familiar.
I admit I have increased the size of our garden…twice. But I’ve always gardened, so maybe it’s more like I’ve rebalanced my gardening assets. In response to the recession, my wife and I also made a concerted effort to eliminate our credit card debt. We now track our expenses more closely than ever before, and we make calculated decisions on vacations. Our home improvements have been put on hold for the foreseeable future, because our house lost more than a third of its value, and a bank would never give us a loan for the projects we have in mind. We regularly plan a menu for the week, and usually spend our food budget in a single trip to the grocery store. But these things strike me as common sense—which may be what a recession teaches.
As predicted, economic growth returned in the summer of 2009. For almost a year now, the stock market has been bullish, and for those who held onto their stocks, their portfolios have returned to health. Even the employment numbers are growing stronger. All of these elements of recovery were predicted, despite the fact that this recession was supposed to break all the rules.
Past economic cycles demonstrate that expansion is followed by contraction, which is followed by expansion again. From my unsophisticated perspective, a recession is really just a reminder of simple and natural lessons: for every spring, there is a fall; for every period of growth, there is a time for fallow fields; there are cycles of expansion and recession. We are reminded of this every time the season changes—but that doesn’t mean that we will all prepare well—and unfortunately, there will be many caught in the cold.
This is nothing new, and yet we were surprised when the bubble finally popped. Did we really believe that we’d done away with natural cycles? Did we believe we’d finally nailed that perpetual motion machine; become modern financial alchemists; discovered the key to an endless growing season; were so sophisticated now that resources would never dry up?
I’m glad the warmth of summer has returned. It was an early spring, and I’ve been enjoying fresh herbs from my garden since April. I’m pleased that more people may be interested in gardening as a result of the recession. It is a small and subtle shift from consumption to creation, and with some luck, maybe we’ll learn something in our own gardens we can apply more broadly in the future.