Nutrition Security through Back Yard Gardening

“Green & Fresh vegetables production & consumption enables us to fight against hunger & develops our confidence at our social structure,” says Mrs. Laxmibai, W/o Rajkumar from Ambapat village of Khandwa Disrict in Madhya Pradesh.

Geographically, the Ambapat village of Khalwa block is hard to reach with no daily supply of fresh food & other raw materials. Availability of fresh vegetables and its supply is been a concern for the people. Villagers travel once a month to Khalwa to purchase the monthly food and other items from the Haat (Local Market).

Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA), Anganwadi worker (AWW) and ANM counsel the Korku community mothers and adolescents about food diversity and its impacts on the life cycle. To improve such condition Spandan Samaj Seva Samiti, Khandwa under the SABAL programme provided vegetable seeds to some identified families in ambapat villages.

Laxmibai is a lactating mother and one of the beneficiary of vegetable seeds. She lives with her family in a Kuchcha House and both husband & wife are agri-labourers. Laxmibai realized the importance of food diversity and its impact on life and decided to start vegetable garden. A small back yard Vegetable garden was prepared in the backyard & vegetable seeds of Ladyfinger, Tomato, Sponge Gourd, Bottle Gourd & Bitter Gourd were planted.

In few weeks, the results were visible and plants started producing vegetables. Now Laxmibai and her family consumes fresh vegetables from their vegetable garden every day. The initiative helped laxmibai & her family to improve nutrition security completed with money saving. Being the member of mother’s collective group, Laxmibai promotes vegetable gardening with other members of the collective.

Lakshibai expressed that, “With the access production of the vegetables, we are now planning to sell the fresh vegetables at the village level to generate some income and bring nutritional security with food diversification. Our family likes to have fresh vegetables & we are thankful to SABAL Project & SPANDAN”.