Homegardens represent an especially useful strategy for promoting sustainable livelihood objectives of the poor, including secure access to land and water, improved financial security, improved leverage in wage bargaining, improved nutrition, improved social status and political status, and better access to basic infrastructure. Where poor families lack secure rights to homegarden plots of suitable size and quality, programmes to obtain and allocate land to such families will often be found to be a constructive and socially beneficial use of government resources. For such families, the benefits of obtaining ownership of land on which to construct a house and garden go well beyond other benefits normally associated with homegardening.
Where families already have secure rights to homegarden plots of suitable size and quality, governments should seriously consider investing in water infrastructure, agricultural extension and nutritional education, as well as programmes to ensure that appropriate stocks of plants and animals are available to homegardening families. Although some public funds will doubtless be necessary to establish or strengthen homegardening for landless, land poor and otherwise poor families, a successful homegardening intervention will be one in which the homegardens become a self-sustaining intervention, satisfying the particular livelihood objectives of the homegardening family, while reducing the family’s continued dependence on public resources.
International donors should consider advancing the issue of homegardening, including the issue of allocating land to establish homegardens, in three principal ways: (1) through supporting research; (2) by promoting consensus building among donors, government planners and project implementers; and (3) by directly supporting government or NGO homegarden intervention projects. Each approach may be undertaken simultaneously in any given development setting. Research and intervention projects can both drive the consensus building process and can benefit from the consensus reached at any given stage.
The process of developing and implementing a homegarden strategy will itself require cultivation and some degree of risk taking. One way to focus the sequencing of decisions is suggested above in Figure 3, which includes a strong focus on ensuring access and secure rights to land that will be used for homegardening and house construction. Donors, government planners and project implementers can gain a head start in planning by conducting rapid rural appraisal to assess the opportunities of establishing and promoting homegardens in a particular setting. Donors in particular should look for ways to encourage government planners to be assessing such opportunities, including by learning from NGO’s that have practical experience in implementing homegardening projects.
Research should generally focus on documenting and studying the costs and benefits of existing homegardening intervention projects to determine what types of models hold the most promise. A special subject of research is the ongoing assessment of homegardening intervention project impacts, particularly from a sustainable livelihoods perspective. Successful projects and resulting best practices should be reported widely in the donor community. Research may also focus on identifying which naturally occurring plant species in the target environment are most likely to do well in local homegardens, both from the standpoint of horticulture and the standpoint of local preferences, diets and markets. At the international level, donors might support research that attempts to establish uniform standards and benchmarks for measuring and analyzing the costs and benefits of homegardening interventions.
Donors may encourage consensus building among donors, government planners and implementing organizations (principally local non-governmental organizations) through sponsoring local workshops that bring together the relevant parties to share experiences. International non-governmental organizations that have practical experience in homegardening may also make important contributions to the planning and implementation process.
But research of existing homegardens and encouraging consensus building should not be substitutes for acting to establish new homegardens and improve existing homegardens. Once donors, government planners or NGO’s conclude that homegardens are likely to provide an acceptable threshold of benefits to target beneficiaries, they should fund, implement and monitor homegarden intervention projects. In this way, the potential of homegardens can be explored in the process of providing current benefits to those most in need.
