From a Minnesota newspaper, and rest of the story is at the link below the "snip". The bolding is mine.
I would say vegetable sales are up 20 percent from last year," said Renee Shepherd of Renee's Garden, a seed company specializing in gourmet vegetables, kitchen herbs and cottage garden flowers.
"In the past, we've sold more flowers than vegetables, but that has sharply reversed itself. It's the economy, simplifying lives, food safety, a healthy way to spend quality family time together."
George Ball, chairman of the W. Atlee Burpee & Co., said his company's vegetable seed sales are also up 20 percent as of January. He pins it all on the economy.
"Forget about the perfect storm this has created the perfect hurricane in terms of sales for our business," Ball said. "Trends like locavores (people who eat food grown or produced locally), that's what I call a fashion. But this recession is a structural trend. When you take away or reduce people's income, or reduce their nest egg by 40 or 50 percent, you have almost a depression mentality. People are quite anxious."
Ball said he noticed the cost of fruits and vegetables at grocery stores remained high even after fuel prices had dropped. So his company did a cost-analysis study, and concluded that
people who invest $50 in the vegetable garden on seeds and fertilizer can harvest the equivalent of $1,250 worth of groceries from a store. As a result, the company introduced "Burpee's Money Garden," a $10 seed purchase that Burpee estimates will produce more than $650 worth of vegetables.
"People talk about replacing a light bulb, insulating their window sills or wearing a sweater these efforts save a few dollars here and there but for a family of four with a good-sized vegetable garden, we're talking about saving a couple of thousand dollars," Ball said.
It's sometimes called "survival gardening." In this economy, this mind-set has made media sensations out of people like Clara Cannucciari, a 93-year-old great-grandmother from New York who remembers her own Great Depression garden as she cooks meals from the era and whose work can be seen on YouTube. (Check out her Poorman's Meal of potatoes, onions and hot dogs via her Web site, greatdepressioncooking.com.)
http://www.twincities.com/news/ci_11874788?source=rss