Home gardens: eat what you sow and sell the surplus
Sow, reap, eat, sell – home gardens as tools of empowerment. Photograph: Hat Margolis
Could global food security
be achieved by growing tomatoes up a wall and pumpkins on a rooftop? It
sounds unlikely, but food security isn't just about full stomachs.
Adequate nutrition
is also crucial, and helping women in particular to run productive home
gardens could save millions of lives in developing countries.
Research published by The Lancet just ahead of the Nutrition for Growth summit in June revealed that malnutrition kills 3.1 million children annually,
and caused stunting in 165 million in 2011. Micronutrients such as
vitamin A, iron and zinc are essential, particularly in the first few
years of life, and it is women who tend to be responsible for feeding
families.
But women also have unequal access to land and, according to the FAO, receive only 5% of agricultural extension services globally.
This is why some development agencies are putting the tools for good
nutrition into women's hands, helping them make better use of one space
they can control: their homestead garden.
In 2009, Care
International launched an EU-funded Food Security for the Ultra-Poor
(FSUP) project targeting 55,000 women in the north-east of Bangladesh, which included training in homestead gardening.
"The
training showed the women how to use the small space available around
their homestead," says Sekhar Bhattacharjee, FSUP team leader.
"It
demonstrated the use of trellises to grow vegetables, growing
vegetables in plastic bags on the ground, and how to use the roofs of
homes to grow vegetables. The women received training in summer and
winter vegetable cultivation, and were given vegetable seed packets to
begin their own gardens."
The crops grown as part of the project
include cucumber, gourds, red amaranth, spinach, papaya, carrots,
tomatoes, and beans, and they're grown both around homesteads and in
shared community gardens. The harvests may not be huge, but they provide
a year-round supply of nutrients to communities who would otherwise
rely heavily on rice alone.
Homestead gardens have not only
increased access to vegetable and fruits, but have also provided
participating women with income from selling surplus produce. A sample
of 1,614 families taking part in FSUP showed that between December 2012
and March 2013, households produced an average of 53kg of vegetables and
fruits, consuming on average 36kg and selling on average 18kg.
The
impact of this income is just as important as what is eaten directly,
says Larissa Pelham, food security adviser at Care International UK.
"I
can't emphasise enough the importance of getting money into women's
hands," she says. "Suddenly they can make choices in how they spend for
the household. This has a phenomenal impact, and research has shown that
when women have control over household resources, they are likely to
spend it on the wellbeing of the household overall."
This is backed up by findings from Helen Keller International's homestead food production programme which launched in Bangladesh in the early 1990s and has since expanded to Nepal, Cambodia
and the Philippines. HKI works with local NGOs and extension workers to
establish Village Model Farms (VMFs) in villages, which serve as
training and support hubs for women to learn to manage their own
homestead gardens.
"They identify a farmer, preferably female, who
has adequate land for a model farm, and that farmer will get training
and inputs," says Victoria Quinn, HKI's senior vice president of
programmes.
"Other women then come there around once a month in
groups of 20, and the village model farmer who has been trained will
share their knowledge with those other mothers and provide them with
seedlings so they can go and do it themselves."
In a study
of its programmes between 2003-2007, HKI found that in Cambodia, 92% of
households engaging in homestead food production spent the income
earned from garden products on buying more food for the household. In
Bangladesh, the figure was 70%. However, having more food – even a good
variety – doesn't automatically translate into better nutritional
outcomes on its own.
"You have to improve not just food production
but practices too," says Quinn. "You have to provide access to
healthcare and hygiene training, because if children are sick it will
just come out the other end."
Care found evidence for this through another project – Shouhardo
– which bundled training in home gardens with support in maternal
health, nutrition, immunisation and financial services to women. This
package of interventions reduced the incidence of child stunting from
56.1% to 40.4% in less than four years.
"The gardens have an
important role in dietary diversity, but you need a range of other
things going with it," says Pelham. "You need to teach women and
families about sanitation, health and hygiene too. Without that, the
gardens are not a silver bullet."
Meanwhile, climate change is also an increasingly pressing issue for women engaging in homestead gardening, just as in other forms of agriculture.
Flooding in Bangladesh is becoming more unpredictable and severe, and
the 2009 cyclone there increased soil salinity in more than a third of
home gardens but also showed resilience in certain crops, according to
Lalita Bhattacharjee, a nutritionist with the FAO in Bangladesh.
"These
included Indian spinach, sweet pumpkin, and okra. Kang kong, or water
spinach, also flourishes naturally in waterways and requires little
care, making it resilient to the effects of climate change. There's a
need for awareness and knowledge among those households who are reliant
on home gardens for their food and income. Women farmers should be given
training on key salinity coping practices such as mulching with rice
straw to increase retention of water in the soil."
Home gardens
have thrived in Bangladesh and other parts of Asia, and HKI is also
actively promoting them in sub-Saharan Africa now. Perhaps the biggest
challenge, though, is to convince more policymakers that what women grow
in their gardens can actually make such a difference.
"I think a
lot more work has to be done in advocating that this is a really
important part of the solution to food insecurity and undernutrition in
these countries," says Quinn.
"Fruits and vegetables and small
animal husbandary gets short shrift in ministries of agriculture, so we
need to promote the fact that you can produce a lot of highly nutritious
crops this way that will help address the chronic problem of
undernutrition."
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