I'm still waiting for my first ripe tomato.

Author Keith Akers, in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), notes that by arguing against the killing of plants, the meat-eater "seeks to reduce vegetarianism to absurdity. If vegetarians object to killing living creatures (it is argued), then logically they should object to killing plants and insects as well as animals. But this is absurd. Therefore, it can’t be wrong to kill animals.

"Fruitarians take the argument concerning plants quite seriously; they do not eat any food which causes injury or death to either animals or plants. This means, in their view, a diet of those fruits, nuts and seeds which can be eaten without the destruction of the plant that produces the food.

"Finding an ethically significant line between plants and animals, though, is not particularly difficult. Plants have no evolutionary need to feel pain, and completely lack a central nervous system. Nature does not create pain gratuitously, but only when it enables the organism to survive. Animals, being mobile, would benefit from having a sense of pain; plants would not."

In determining a boundary between sentient and insentient life, Peter Singer in Animal Liberation suggests that "somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster seems as good a place to draw the line as any, and better than most."

Keith Akers states further, "Even if one does not want to become a fruitarian and believes that plants have feelings (against all evidence to the contrary), it does not follow that vegetarianism is absurd. We ought to destroy as few plants as possible. And by raising and eating an animal for food, many more plants are destroyed indirectly by the animals we eat than if we merely ate the plants directly."

(Meat-eaters indirectly kill ten times more plants than do vegetarians!)

"What about insects?" asks Akers, "While there may be reason to kill insects, there is no reason to kill them for food. One distinguishes between the way meat animals are killed for food and the way insects are killed.

"Insects are killed only when they intrude upon human territory, posing a threat to the comfort, health, or well-being of humans. There is a huge difference between ridding oneself of intruders and going out of one's way to find and kill something which would otherwise be harmless."

According to Akers:

"These questions may have a certain fascination for philosophers, but most vegetarians are not bothered by them. For any vegetarian who is not a biological pacifist, there would not seem to be any particular difficulty in distinguishing ethically between insects and plants on the one hand, and animals and humans on the other."

I'd like to see a return to organic farming. In 1989, concern over the use of the pesticide Alar on apples caused many Americans to consider organic produce. We produce pesticides at a rate some 13,000 times faster than we did in the 1950s. Our environment is being flooded by pesticide compounds.

Poisons used to kill insects accumulate on crops, in the soil and in greater concentration in the tissues of living creatures higher on the food chain. The EPA's Pesticide Monitoring Journal reports that "Foods of animal origin (are) the major source of pesticide residues in the diet."

In his Pulitzer Prize nominated book, How to Survive in America the Poisoned, pesticide authority Lewis Regenstein writes: "Meat contains approximately 14 times more pesticides than do plant foods...Thus, by eating foods of animal origin, one ingests greatly concentrated amounts of hazardous chemicals."

A 1976 study by the EPA found the breast milk of mothers who consume animal products to be 50 to 100 times more contaminated by pesticide residues than the milk of vegetarian or vegan mothers.

Organic farming and Integrated Pest Management (IPM) are getting more attention today. These utilize natural insect controls, such as predatory insects, weather, crop rotation, pest-resistant varieties, soil tillage, and other environmentally safe practices.

A 1979 Department of Agriculture task force of scientists and economists came to "...positive conclusions on the importance of organic farming and its potential contributions to agriculture and society." Until the end of the Second World War, American farmers produced bountiful harvests without relying on pesticides. There is no reason why America cannot do so again.

Now FIX THE DAMN ECONOMY.

Be they vegan, carbon or chemical. This is about cost availability and general health

Author Keith Akers, in A Vegetarian Sourcebook (1983), notes that by arguing against the killing of plants, the meat-eater "seeks to reduce vegetarianism to absurdity.

The meat-eater. Right. Like they're not even people. Uh huh.

Happy civil society to you too.

It won't last long if the vegetarians ever take over.

Once they exterminate the meat-eaters, then they'll have nobody left to cut out of the human race but each other.

Did George H. W. Bush's confession cause sales of broccoli to plummet? Did Bill Clinton's famous Big Mac runs create an obesity epidemic? (OK, 25 years after Reagan declared ketchup a vegetable, I have seen bottles of ketchup touting the virtues of lycopene, but ...)

Of course one family - even the president's - can't change an entire nation's eating and farming habits. But they can impact the lives of the kids who helped them grow the vegetables (I heard the npr report where they were picking, cooking, and eating the garden produce: kids trying snap peas for the first time, and liking it). And they can become one more example in a growing set of examples. Add, say, Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" and Michael Pollen's "In Defense of Food" and the local farmers' market and the plow to plate program at school, and a family might change their eating habits to impact their own health, as well as support their local farmers. Little twigs, to be sure, but they can add up to change the course of a river.

It's leading by example. And it's a worthwhile endeavor. (For me, it will be worth it to email a picture of actual watermelons growing on the wHite House lawn to that idiot Republican who sent out the watermelon cartoon.)

You know, in all honesty, I don't really care one way or the other whether or not the White House's garden "changes food policy." Michelle Obama planted a metaphorical as well as literal seed with that garden, and it may take a long, long time to bear fruit.

In Britain, Prince Charles has, for years, been a proponent of growing locally, buying seasonable produce, and many other Earth-friendly farming proposals. But it took years for any of them to begin to catch on. It is only now, years into his efforts, that some forward motion is becoming apparent. So might it be with the First Lady's efforts.

It is not dissimilar to parenting. Perhaps my kids don't follow all the behaviors I attempt to model for them--clearing the dishes, holding doors open, saying "Please" and "Thank you," giving up their seats to the elderly and infirm, or whatever, but some of them rub off. The fact that they all don't doesn't mean one should stop the modeling. Similarly, I hope Michelle to continue to grow her garden. Hopefully, the effort will start rubbing off on others.