텃밭: 재배해 먹고, 남은 걸 팔다

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 ofBangladesh, 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 ofagriculture. 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."