White House Farm

Shannon pointed out the amazing NYT article by Michael Pollan on politicians avoiding the global food crisis. He doesn't just point out that there is a crisis, Pollan has devised a very specific plan to transition from modern food processing - that uses a lot of fossil fuel - to a more energy efficient sun food production. I love it, sun food. Anyway the article is huge and requires time and a cup of coffee or two, but worth reading.
If you don't have that much time, a clip is available at Kitchengardeners.com, where you can also sign a virtual petition to the new president urging them to convert 5 acres of the White House lawn into a year round farm.
One of the initiatives that caught my eye is found on Page 8 of the Times article and urges the government to put farming education back in the schools.

We need to bring the same commitment to “edible education” — in Alice Waters’s phrase — by making lunch, in all its dimensions, a mandatory part of the curriculum. On the premise that eating well is a critically important life skill, we need to teach all primary-school students the basics of growing and cooking food and then enjoying it at shared meals.

To change our children’s food culture, we’ll need to plant gardens in every primary school, build fully equipped kitchens, train a new generation of lunchroom ladies (and gentlemen) who can once again cook and teach cooking to children. We should introduce a School Lunch Corps program that forgives federal student loans to culinary-school graduates in exchange for two years of service in the public-school lunch program. And we should immediately increase school-lunch spending per pupil by $1 a day — the minimum amount food-service experts believe it will take to underwrite a shift from fast food in the cafeteria to real food freshly prepared.

Alice Waters created an Edible School Yard in the Bay Area so why shouldn't it work?
I'm slightly clueless as to how Western Washingtonians create productive year round gardens with so little sun and so much rain, but I don't mind getting my hands dirty.