Backyard gardening: a Convenient and year-round food basket
Submitted by Agri-impact Malawi
“Worrying about where to buy vegetables when it’s late in the evening is the story of the past; now, even in the middle of the night, I just get a torch, get into my garden, grab some vegetables, and quickly prepare food for my family.”
In Malawi, high population density is putting major pressure on land, as more of it is required for settlement, resulting in land fragmentation. The subsequent reduction in the land-holding size allocated for farming activities is negatively affecting food production. The situation has further escalated other challenges, such as food insecurity, and a lack of alternative sources of income among rural farming communities is further challenged in vulnerable households such as those affected by HIV/AIDS.
This situation has been of serious concern in many parts of Malawi, including communities targeted by the Household Nutrition and Economic Empowerment Through Vegetable Production Value Addition and Marketing (NEVAM) Project supported by the Egmont trust at Traditional Authority Chadza in Lilongwe district.
Despite having limited land for farming activities, Gladys Foliyamu of Mninga village in Traditional Authority Chadza, was convinced that if she was to improve her household food security and lack of year-round access to nutritious foods, she had to adopt the home gardening innovation that the NEVAM project promotes in the area. As such, she did not hesitate to participate in a series of foundational capacity-building workshops that were facilitated by Agri-Impact Malawi. These training sessions included mindset change and life skills, vegetable crop production, agribusiness, entrepreneurship, and establishment of home gardens with diversified vegetable crops.
Barely a week later, she was one of the first ten people who established a rainfed home garden where she planted different types of indigenous vegetables and other improved vegetable crops, such as orange fresh sweet potatoes, which she received from the project to enhance crop diversity.
Gladys and her rain-fed home garden which she established soon after vegetable production training.
Due to the success of her home garden, she became a model among her peers and began helping fellow members establish home gardens. Now, she is an immense advocate for home garden innovation in her area. She explains to others the importance and benefits of having a home garden with different types of local and improved vegetables.
"I always encourage friends and family, even those outside the project, to have a small vegetable garden within their compound, as they are important and the easiest way to access different food groups as they don't require many resources to establish,” said Gladys. “Vegetables such as spinach, pumpkin leaves, and other local vegetable are easily accessible, and these can do much to improve the nutrition of not only the children but the whole family as they can access nutritious food within their home."
In addition to home consumption, Gladys wants to position this vegetable production as her side business to support herself and her family's needs. As such, she plans to expand the size of the garden from 3 by 5 meters to 5 by 10 meters in preparation for the dry season, when vegetables are in demand and more profitable.
