In Ethiopia, the average person eats just 42kg of fruit and vegetables per year. This is far below the WHO recommendation of 146kg per year. Fruits and vegetables are excellent sources of vitamins and minerals, vital for our body.
Deficiencies can seriously affect our physical health, increasing the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and certain types of cancers, which in turn increase the risk of premature death. In Ethiopia, poor quality diets are now considered as one of the main underlying causes in the rise of non-communicable diseases in the country.
The problem is fruits and vegetables are often too expensive and unaffordable for most. In Ethiopia, the average household would have to spend more than 10% of their income to meet the international recommendation of two servings of fruits and three servings of vegetables per person per day.
To increase the availability of fruits and vegetables, the government of Ethiopia is promoting home gardens at a large scale across the country. Since 2016, Ethiopia’s targets for homestead gardens are: 40% of rural households by 2020, and 25% of urban households by 2020.
Home gardens are an area around the house used to grow fruits and vegetables for the family. In contrast to traditional smallholder farming, the cultivated area is small and the plot is close to the house which allows year-round cultivation as it can be watered using the home’s water source.
It’s not a new idea. Many non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as the Helen Keller International, have launched home gardening programs. These were designed to teach families how to grow fruits and vegetables for their own consumption and to improve their nutritional knowledge. In Africa, these programs have been implemented in more than 20 countries over the past decade.
But there are valid reasons to doubt whether these programs provide a sustainable and cost-effective way of addressing poor nutrition. Read more…
