Grassroots-led Kitchen Gardens: Building Community Resilience to Covid-19 and Climate Change
With the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic across the world, livelihoods and food security were particularly affected along with loss of incomes, limited access to basic services and essential household items. To strengthen grassroots organisations’ resilience initiatives and support them to deal with the combined impacts of climate change and the pandemic, the Huairou Commission provided small Covid-19 grants to 27 organisations in Africa, Asia and Latin America and Caribbean (LAC). Grassroots groups conducted vulnerability mapping during the pandemic, and found food insecurity and malnourishment to be major issues in their communities. However, our women’s groups addressed this challenge by growing kitchen gardens; with several partner groups either undertaking kitchen gardening as a new initiative or actively promoting this already existing practice.
Being an important intervention, kitchen gardens are grown widely around the world, protecting indigenous knowledge and showcasing women’s leadership – particularly when addressing risk. Very often women are the principal overseers of these home gardens as it is women who are usually in charge of household food provision. Kitchen gardening, by “enhancing their purchasing power and food production capacity has direct impact on household income, nutrition and health”1.
Five main characteristics of kitchen gardens: i) small plot sizes; ii) located close to the homestead; iii) having a diversity of crops; iv) with produce supplementing the main source of food and income; v) and easily adaptable by the poor with limited resources2.
Michelle and Hanstad (2004)
Necessity and Benefits of Kitchen Gardens
According to World Bank estimates, there has been a sharp rise in people facing acute food shortages globally, particularly due to extreme climate events and the Covid-19 crisis. Between “720 and 811 million people in the world went hungry in 2020, according to the new UN report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World”3. Kitchen gardens can provide an alternative local solution to the issue of food scarcity, income security in addition to providing strategic opportunities for women to partner with the government, preserve local seeds and expand outreach through exchange as well as empowering women.
“Home gardens can contribute to household economic well-being in several ways: garden products can be sold to earn additional income; gardening activities can be developed into a small cottage industry; and earnings from the sale of home garden products and the savings from consuming home-grown food products can lead to more disposable income that can be used for other domestic purposes”4.
FAO (2010)
Benefits of kitchen gardens include:
- Addressing Household Food Shortages and Improving Nutrition: The vegetables grown met the families need for healthy food, adding to their protein, vitamin and mineral intake and facilitated a balanced diet.
In Madagascar, Fikambanan’ny Vehivavy Tantsaha Mandoto (FVTM), found a rise in malnutrition and food insecurity in the communities it worked in. Different activities were promoted, based on the regional and climatic conditions – such as local poultry farming, growth of short cycle food crops like beans, peas, potatoes and rice and market gardening. The local municipality also donated land to women for communal gardening and reforestation, where women have created a nursery with 10,000 seedlings.
. - Diversifying Livelihoods and Increasing Income/Savings: While kitchen gardens were primarily used to feed the family, vegetables from kitchen gardens gave women an opportunity to sell their produce locally and earn some money.
In Zimbabwe, Seke Rural Home Based Care (SRHBC) facilitated the creation of community gardens. They purchased a 5000 litre tank with the Huairou grant, to provide water supply to the gardens. With the increased production and sale of vegetables, the women made an average monthly income of $30, which they used to purchase necessary household items. SRGBC worked in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, to ensure grassroots women were educated in newer agricultural methods as well as various methods of food preservation.
. - Leveraging Resources and Promoting Partnerships with External Institutions: Many organisations strengthened partnerships, and leveraged available resources to avail various free and subsidised services from the government and CSOs.
Organización de Mujeres Indígenas y Campesinas Sembrando Esperanza (OMICSE), Ecuador provided vegetable seeds (chard, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, chinese turnip, taxo and carrot) to 850 women from 22 organisations affiliated with them during the pandemic. Ancestral medicinal plants were also grown in between orchards. The project strengthened pre-existing family gardens of each of the women and contributed to improving the diet of their families. OMICSE also partnered with the church and the government of Toacazo to access farm inputs to sustain kitchen gardens and ensure food supply.
. - Preserving Local/Indigenous Seeds and Protecting the Environment: Women generally grew vegetables using eco-friendly methods. They also supported a large number of ecosystem services. Very often medicinal plants were grown along with food crops, adding to the family health at low costs.
Through its procurement department, Ecological Christian Organisation (ECO), Uganda purchased 450 kg of bambara nut seeds and 270 kgs of soya bean seeds to be distributed amongst women farmers in the community. Compared to the traditional maize, bambara nut and soya bean is more nutritious, drought resistant and has a higher economic value in the market. Five womens farmers groups, making a total of 100 women farmers were provided with a refresher training course on sustainable agricultural practices and soil management, proper crop care and pre-planting and post-harvest handling practices. High yields were reported by farmers, which led to increased family incomes.
. - Building Women’s Leadership and Recognition as Resilience Experts: Women’s management of gardens provided recognition in the community as leaders and independent producers. As primary managers of the gardens, their decision making power also increased, as production and expenditure choices as well as control of resources (for instance small plots of land) were often in their hands5.
FUNDERPROMUCOOP, Panama trained women and youth in garden management, supporting the growth of diverse vegetable crops. Twenty fruit orchards were planted by women using environment-friendly agricultural practices. They adopted alternate crops suitable to local weather conditions like tubers and/or grew plants in containers to reduce plastic waste. Home-grown seeds were exchanged by women farmers – improving food security and health. Women added poultry farming to their gardens, procuring chicks and fodder from the government. They also collaborated with government institutions for training in vermicompost and procurement of worms. In addition to food security, the self-management of projects by women led to greater respect and voice of women being heard within the community.
Grassroot-led innovative practices like kitchen gardens display their importance in addressing risk especially in times of crises such as Covid-19. The experience of Huairou members shows that kitchen gardens are an excellent way of livelihood diversification as well as income and food security. The funds provided flexible resources in the hands of grassroots women to grow food and meet their needs. There is a need to put resources in the hands of women to scale these practices.
In the face of climate change, sustainability encompasses a wide variety of actions, including recycling, greening and reducing resource usage by growing food locally. Kitchen gardening usually addresses one or more of these issues.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development specifies seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), many of which are directly or indirectly related to Huairou’s kitchen gardening interventions. SDG6 1 (no poverty), 2 (zero hunger), 3 (good health and well-being), and 12 (responsible consumption and production), all link to the benefits and impacts that kitchen gardens bring about in communities and the environment. Therefore this strategy must be strengthened and supported by the government and other institutions to create greater impact during any crises – especially to strengthen food secure practices and reduce hunger and malnutrition.
1 Kanyama A, Kaswamila A: Kitchen Garden as An Adaptation Tool to Climate Change in the Semi-arid Areas of Same District, Northern Tanzania. International Journal of Modern Social Sciences, 2015, 4(2): 130-142
2 Mitchell R, Hanstad T: Small Homegarden Plots and Sustainable Livelihoods for the Poor. 2004, Rome, Italy: LSP Working Paper 11
3 https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/agriculture/brief/food-security-and-covid-19
4 FAO, 2010. http://www.fao.org/ag/agn/nutrition/household_gardens_en.stm
5 Patalagsa, M.A., Schreinemachers, P., Begum, S. et al. Sowing seeds of empowerment: effect of women’s home garden training in Bangladesh. Agric & Food Secur4, 24 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40066-015-0044-2