Mum & Child

Home gardening will prevent malnutrition, food insecurity, Oyo govt explains how

A diverse diet, rich in various food groups, is crucial for preventing malnutrition, as it ensures adequate nutrient intake, particularly for children, who are more vulnerable to undernutrition (wasting, stunting, and underweight) and micronutrient deficiencies.

Consuming foods from four or more food groups is a key indicator of Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices and plays a crucial role in preventing malnutrition, particularly undernutrition, which is a significant global health problem, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

Interventions like home gardens that address household food insecurity are crucial for improving dietary diversity and nutritional status. Several case studies highlight the effectiveness of home gardens in improving nutrition and food security:

Home gardens are located near or within households, primarily used to grow fruits, vegetables, and other crops. These gardens can provide a consistent supply of fresh vegetables, even during times of scarcity, ensuring that households have access to essential nutrients throughout the year

In Oyo State, home gardening is one of the intervention that have been thought about to sustain the gains made by the Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria (ANRiN) World Bank-assisted project. The project was to address stunting and micronutrient deficiencies in the community, resulting to stunting reducing from 34.5 percent to 23.1 percent but wasting increased from 3.9 percent to 14.4 percent.

Director of Nutrition, Oyo State Primary Healthcare Board and Project Coordinator for ANRiN, Dr Khadijah Alarape said the promotion of nutri-gardens for caregivers is to ensure sustainable food and nutrition security in the state as part of a 6-month sustainability plan for ANRiN gains.

“Home gardening is something that you can easily do. Even if the floor of your house is cemented, you can still make use of it. And we’ll be going to the local government’s levels to scale down this training. But we are starting with the state stakeholders,” said Dr Alarape.

Dr Alarape said home gardening as intervention can help to reduce all the three nutrition indices; these are stunting, underweight, and wasting. With home gardening, you’ll be able to reduce the three.

She added: “Also, from what you produced, you can sell and you are financially secured. Then you can also give out to other people. As we are scaling up, extending that good practise to other people, then we are going to reduce prevalence of malnutrition in the states.”

Dr Shirley Isibhakhomen Ejoh, the acting head of the Department of Human Nutrition &Dietetics at the University of Ibadan, insisted that everything individuals need for survival and well-being depends either directly or indirectly on our natural environment.

According to her, gardening doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive because with some planning, creativity and dedication, households and communities can grow their food and reap the many rewards it brings in the short and long term.

“If you don’t produce the food, how are we going to eat the food? How are we going to nourish ourselves? If we don’t know how to even put it together in a way to nourish ourselves, we will still be malnourished. So, it’s very important that we pay attention to that.

“We teach children how to grow vegetables and we teach them how to add it too. We know that they want to eat noodles. They just eat it like that. How do we make it better? We can add vegetables to it to increase the fibre and protein content. So, at the end of the day, you have diversity in that child’s plate.”

Dr Ejoh practices what she teaches; she also keeps a home garden. She added, “I haven’t bought any vegetables for like two years. Like my children say, it’s called emergency vegetable. The day that money is not plenty, we’ll pick four or five different types to make vegetable soup. It is healthier eating such soups.

“I have been doing gardening since I was a little child. It was when I got to the university that I knew that they sell things like Bitter leaf and scent leaf in the market. I felt that it always grew at the backyard, so I didn’t know that people should come and buy in the market.

“So, by encouraging households and communities to grow their food, nutri-gardens foster self-sufficiency, reduce malnutrition, enhance food security and resilience. Local vegetables are easy to grow. In three to four weeks, you’ll be eating them free of charge.”

The Commissioner for Health, Dr Oluwaserimi Ajetumobi said that Oyo State was considering indigenous ideas to improve the nutrition status of people in the state while also ensuring that cases of stunting remain low.

According to her, in collaboration with other line ministries, the gains made by ANRiN will be sustained.

“Through the Information ministry, we can educate and counsel our women and even our pregnant mothers are eating a balanced diet, even within the local confinement of whatever we have in the state. The Ministry of Agriculture is here. There are the foodstuffs that we have in the state. How do we improve on the foodstuffs? How do we plant them?”

In a remark, Commissioner for Budget& Economic Planning in the Oyo State, Professor Musibau Babatunde, assured that Oyo State government will mainstream all the necessary activities into the budget of the state government as well as ensure policy measures are put in place to take the ANRiN’s gains forward.

Sade Oguntola