Have you heard about the latest item to come out of a Triscuit cracker box? Urban Farming Executive Director Taja Sevelle recently told the Ellen DeGeneres Show’s audience all about it.

Plant seeds (dill and basil) for your garden or pots on your balcony now come in every box of Triscuit Crackers. As climate change continues to show its ugly face, the world needs now more than ever to understand the importance of food security. That’s especially true on an island where we import 95 per cent of our food supply.

Sevelle’s Urban Farming organization began in 2005 when they planted three gardens in Detroit. Now they have the equivalent of 800 gardens across the U.S. and abroad. These 800 gardens provide fresh produce to approximately 50,000 people. It’s amazing what a few seeds and a little bit of will power can produce.

Triscuit Crackers has also joined the Home Farming Movement after a recent Triscuit survey revealed that nearly two-thirds of Americans are interested in home gardens, and that three of four surveyed would rather eat foods containing only a few simple ingredients. As a result, 40 million cracker boxes are now packed with dill and basil seeds.

Triscuit has also collaborated with Urban Farming and pledged to create 50 community-based home farms across the U.S. March 11 marked the beginning of that program, which will see home farms planted all over. From Dallas to Tampa, home farms will be popping up everywhere — but what about on our home turf?

Creative ideas like these are just around the corner, waiting for us all to stumble upon them — we just need a strong will and a little inspiration. Sevelle mentioned that, during the Great Wars, 20 million Americans (as well as citizens in the UK, Canada and Germany) planted vegetables, herbs and fruit gardens (a.k.a Victory Gardens/War Gardens/Food Gardens for Defense) in their yards and public parks to reduce pressure on the food supply brought about by the war.

These gardens also strengthened people’s will as they felt empowered by their contributions and excited by the direct reward of growing their own food.

These War Gardens show us that anything is possible if the will exists. But it took world wars to incite those people into action and get them thinking of tangible solutions.

Today, the war we wage is against a different enemy: ourselves. We must realize that now is the time for change, and we must all change together. We must get in touch with the planet that we live on and understand that we can no longer take its gifts for granted.

In UVic’s Restoration of Natural Systems program, we are always reminded that the food we consume everyday is a gift from nature. We are encouraged to remember this so we don’t take the food we receive for granted.

We cannot trust that grocery stores will always be there to provide us with food. More importantly, we must learn where our food comes from in order to understand the environmental devastation that sometimes goes hand-in-hand with its production.

Imagine what could happen if we in the developed world gained a better understanding of where our food came from. Ideally, we would start growing our own food and there would then be less demand for the agro-industrial complex to supply.

This would mean less need for fertilizers on our crops, which would go a very long way towards keeping chemicals out of our watersheds.

It would also reduce the pressure on farmers in developing countries to grow cash crops to export to us. This might give those farmers more control over what they grow and who they grow it for.

The list of benefits could go on. Of course, any negative costs to developing countries, such as less revenue, would have to be addressed in order to ensure that the actions taken in the developed world do not adversely affect those in the developing world.

Learning about Urban Farming and the Home Farming Movement has left me feeling very hopeful, and that is vital in today’s world. With so much gloom and doom associated with our changing climate, we must find the light and realize there is so much we can do as individuals to help alleviate the effects of climate change.

Rid yourself of any misconceptions about growing your own food, and get your hands into some soil. You will love what you can do.

And believe me, nothing tastes better on a Triscuit cracker than fresh tomatoe and basil you willed into existence.