Roger Doiron is founding director of Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI), a Maine-based nonprofit network of over 20,000 individuals from 100 countries who are sowing the seeds of a healthy, sustainable and food-secure world in their own backyards. In February 2008, KGI started and led a high-profile public awareness and advocacy campaign called "Eat the View" to create a kitchen garden at the White House. The successful campaign attracted over 110,000 signatures on a White House garden petition and resulted in a new "victory" garden at the White House. Doiron is also a freelance writer, photographer, videographer, and public speaker specializing in gardening, cuisine, and sustainable food systems. His work has appeared in many media outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Organic Gardening magazine, and Mother Earth News.
Roger, I like the look of your Skype background-it's a light green, which is appropriate since you are the Kitchen Gardeners International champion. I was at the Hearst Building when you won the Daily Green Award.
Yes, that was quite a night. I wasn't expecting such a quite glitzy ceremony but I guess the Hearst people do it up right when they do it. I somehow got seated next to Alicia Silverstone for the dinner, so that was not so bad.
I was impressed with her… Actually, I was impressed with everybody at that event.
I think it's great she's turned into a very powerful spokesperson for the vegan cause.
You're not a vegan are you?
I'm not a vegan. I guess I'm not exactly sure how to refer to my diet. We do eat meat, eggs, and cheese, but not very much. We try to eat a very healthy, plant-based diet-lots of whole grains. But we're also keeping in mind, that part of having a responsible local diet has to do with where you are located and what the soils and the climate produce easily and effortlessly. And I'm in Maine, for the most of my life, which is a northern climate, and that's a place where we do produce good cheeses and good quality meats. And now I'm in Belgium for a year, which is sort of the same. So I certainly support us trying to shift more toward a plant-based diet, but I think we also have to be sensitive to what people ought to be eating in the different geographic locations they happen to be in. Because with somebody in Alaska, for example, the notion that they can be eating a purely plant-based diet from local sources is just not that realistic.
How many countries are represented now in Kitchen Gardeners?
We have now over 100 countries. I haven't done the count recently, but I think two years ago I went through our list and came up with about 100 countries. I suspect it's about 120 now.
What are the demographics for that?
We're largely Web-based. Most of our membership is in the United States, but after that it's Canada, Australia-you know, the major English-speaking countries. India's really an up-and-coming country for us. We're doing more and more there, and we've got some partners we're working with there.
I think what makes us a unique organization is that we have this focus which is, on the one hand, global, but is also as local as you get when it comes to food production-it's your backyard. And so it can be a really interesting dynamic when it comes to sharing information. You discover that certain things are very different from one place to the next, but fundamentally they are basically the same. We're talking about trying to get more people putting their hands into the soil and planting and shortening the distance between plot and plate. And I think that's really what's allowed us to bring the thousands of people that we have right now in our organization is the sense of a common purpose.
Do you think we can we be too optimistic?
I think you can have sort of misguided optimism. In a sense, if you are not aware of certain geo-political realities and you're somebody who is out there in the world communicating with other people, you're not doing your cause a service. But I think to be somebody who is on the other extreme, someone who is just saying the world is going to end tomorrow-that's not exactly the message that's going to get thousands, if not millions of people showing up on your website, or hundreds of people showing up for a demonstration or a workshop on the local level. You need to protect optimism in order to get people excited about the possibility of making a difference.
Is there anything you want to say about New York, where I am?
Let me give a shout out to a subversive, plotting friend of mine, Daniel Bowman Simon, who was a huge help in the effort to get the garden planted at the White House. He's trying to get a garden planted at City Hall in New York City through the People's Garden New York City campaign. So if you've got readers in New York, look up People's Garden New York City and figure out how you can help Daniel out. It's a great effort and we'd love to see it happen. Daniel's gotten some attention, but I think he's going to need a lot more to persuade the mayor.
Paul McGinniss, "The Green Advocate," is a columnist for www.newyorkhousemagazine.com. You can read more about green building and the sustainability movement on his blog: www.thenewyorkgreenadvocate.blogspot.com. Paul is also active in the green real estate movement and works in New York as a real estate broker and green building and renovation consultant: www.paulemcginniss.com.
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