Using kitchen gardens to curb underfeeding

Children eating a variety of food. Photo by Paul Menya

What you need to know:

Malnutrition in Uganda is a consequence of limited or inadequate preventive and/or corrective actions. Almost half of the population is food energy deficient that is why interventions such as kitchen gardens are a welcome innovation.

When Rema Aya got married, she assumed that her husband, as expected in their culture, would provide adequate land for her to grow food to feed and support her new family.
Aya was allocated rocky land, prompting her to dig in other people’s fields to have more food at home. As such, her husband did not find the need to provide the family with financial support because there seemed to be enough food at home.
When she got pregnant with her seventh child, Aya weighed a miserable 40 kilogrammes. Her sixth born was only eight-months-old at the time. When she fell ill, Aya tried to seek medical remedies but in vain. By the time she got to the hospital, in Yumbe District, she was ill and diagnosed with malnutrition just like her sixth child.

Malnutrition, according to Usaidand ministry of Health, is a huge contributor to child mortality. It is even feared that malnourished children with HIV/Aids are more likely to die before their second birthday - a fright highlighted by the Uganda Demographic Health Survey in 2015.
The two bodies are partnering with Reco Industries Limited, a private agro-based business, to implement the Production for Improved Nutrition (PIN) project to reduce the burden of under nutrition among vulnerable groups.

Kitchen gardens
Kitchen gardens are small areas where vegetables, fruit, or herbs are grown for domestic use.
According to Brian Rwabwogo, chief of party at PIN, this will increase variety of crops since they will be in the compounds. “We do this through distributing a locally made ready-to use therapeutic food (RUTF) and supporting small scale farmers to improve their household incomes by training them in better agronomic practices and household nutrition by establishing kitchen gardens which increase availability of a varied and rich diet.”

Through this initiative, Aya was able to receive better medical attention from the nutrition unit and was started on RUTF and fast forward, three months later she has gained weight.
In spite of reporting challenges, the high default rates and the stigma associated with malnutrition, USAID/Uganda PIN supports 109 health facilities per year.

Empowerment
Now weighing 63kgs, Aya is attending nutrition counselling to learn how to prepare balanced meals even in the midst of her difficult home life. She has also returned to her parents’ home and with the small piece of land allocated to her, she has been encouraged to join a project farmer group to get skills At an experience sharing workshop, of 40 participants, held at Lake View Hotel in Mbarara on May 19, Dr Samuel Sekamatte, the medical superintendent of Gombe Hospital, said; “malnutrition is a critical problem in homes and the challenges require a lot of intervention. It is easy to find a man well fed but his children suffering.”
The workshop, the third of four planned this year including those in Arua and Jinja, also helped train health workers on their key role in creating community awareness and use of tools like the measuring mid upper arm circumference to diagnose malnutrition.

Success stories
Scola from Sironko believes she quickly recovered from an operation because of feeding more on vegetables. One thing remains certain, the fight against malnutrition will take an integrated approach with medical personnel also urged to advocate better household feeding as much as nutritionists do.
Alice Nafuna is one of the budding farmers in the Omega Farmers Group in Sironko District, who is excited about the vegetables growing in the backyard of her home.

Nafuna and most of her friends did not think vegetables or pumpkins were important in their diet. When they included them in their meals, they were in very small quantities as vegetables were expensive in the market.
They believed it was more important to buy beef or chicken. Her thoughts changed when Nafuna was invited to attend a learning session with other farmers at a demonstration garden by the project agriculture officer.

According to Nathan Turyayesiima, the PIN project technical manager, kitchen gardens are used as a preventive measure to malnutrition. “The vegetables and fruits grown in these gardens provide a cheap and constant source of nutrients like iron and vitamin A.”
To echo his sentiments, Nafuna adds, “I got an operation but they helped me recover fast. We are also not needy and ignorant anymore. We also don’t quarrel with husbands anymore because we were asking for sauce (gravy or soup for their main course) all the time.”

Challenges
While there is close supervision of kitchen gardens because they are in homes, the challenges are not any different from those affecting agriculture as a whole elsewhere.
Farmers have to deal with pests and diseases, low adaptability levels of crops, climate change and lack of equipment or seeds among others.
“Kitchen gardens are a starting point and people can get experience of better farming methods, save and sell produce to get income.
“We deliberately promote one of the vegetables and fruits to be easily sold so that the money can be used to buy animal protein to guarantee a balanced diet,” Turyayesiima says.
In spite of these leaps, there is need to change perception and mindset.

“... Our people’s mindset has got to change from the business of handouts. People cannot even sacrifice Shs500 to buy cabbage seeds,” Dr Sekamatte says.
The future however, looks promising. For example in Kamwenge, food security was at 52.5 per cent in 2010 yet only 2.5 per cent of that had fed their children on a balanced diet.
Fast forward to 2015, and the level of children having a balanced diet is 25 per cent which has helped in reducing the number of people with malnutrition.
The challenge, however, still remains in making these standards appreciated all over the country.