There's an old saying: "an army marches on its stomach."

It's something that Europeans didn't quite figure out back during the "War to End all Wars" when an entire generation of young European men was decimated for questionable causes that historians still aren't clear about. Since these men were busy getting butchered in the trenches instead of working on farms, it should not have been a surprise that food shortages were an epidemic during the First World War.

The American farmer was a beneficiary of this situation; our country didn't get involved until 1917, and as you might guess, there was a big market in Europe for American grain and produce such as root vegetables. In March of that year, when U.S. involvement started looking inevitable, millionaire Charles L. Pack started a campaign, urging everybody to plant "War Gardens." A generation later during the Second World War, "Victory Gardens" again became an important institution. It was not only a way to free up agricultural resources that could be used to feed the Armed Services, it also helped families cope with rationing and the high cost of fresh produce – and gave them a certain sense of pride, realizing they were doing their part in the war effort.

Well folks – looks like the Victory Garden is once again making a comeback, though perhaps for different reasons.

It's interesting to note how this history is repeating itself in more ways than one. Back during World War II, then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt caught some flack from the Secretary of Agriculture for planting a Victory Garden on the White House grounds, fearing that it would hurt commercial agriculture. Nonetheless, within a few months, the USDA was publishing and distributing instructional literature on the topic, and by 1945, there was as much fruits and vegetables being grown in people's backyards and community gardens as there was on the nation's farmlands (around ten million tons).

Recently, Michelle Obama raised a few eyebrows when she brought back her predecessor's Victory Garden as the White House Kitchen Garden. Despite its detractors, that garden just passed the one-year mark, and is doing well – as it inspires private citizens all over the country to follow suit.

Today, it's less about the war effort and more about people taking control over their food supply. It's true that nobody cares about your diet as much as you do, and with salmonella and e-coli scares as well as concern over pesticides, GMOs and chemical fertilizers, folks are finding that the only way to be sure about what's going into their food is to grow their own.

There's a more practical angle to all of this. At current trends, within the next forty years we're going to have nine billion mouths to feed on this rock. Roger Doiron, founder of Kitchen Gardeners International, summed it up this way:

"...we will need to produce more food over the course of the next 40 years than civilization has produced over the course of the past 10,000 years combined...small food gardens are going to play a big role in making this happen.”

Get to work, folks.