Kitchen gardens for rural women in Pakistan: “Vegetables helped me fight poverty.”
How an FAO project enabled rural women in Pakistan's flood-ravaged provinces of Sindh and Balochistan to start growing their own vegetables for improved food security, nutrition and much more.
“Vegetables helped me fight poverty. I was able to buy new clothes for my children, and my husband repaid a PKR 6 000 loan,” said Shahzadi, one of the beneficiaries of an FAO kitchen gardening project in Wazir Bux Khoso, a village in Kashmor, Sindh. “I even gave gifts to my neighbors and relatives — something that I could never afford before,” she added.
Shahzadi and her husband Abdul Nabi have eight children, and Abdul Nabi used to struggle to earn income for his family by growing wheat and rice on a rented four-acre lot of land. “No matter how hard I tried, there was never enough money to make ends meet,” he said. In 2010 and 2012, severe floods dealt yet them yet another blow. Their village was flooded, and like many of their neighbors, they lost their house, standing crops and livestock. Abdul Nabi and Shahzadi were desolate.
Luckily for the family, Shahzadi was among 2 500 women to whom FAO offered support through a DFID-funded kitchen gardening activity. A kitchen garden is an important tool to enhance food security in vulnerable communities: it can supply up to half of all non-staple food needs and a significant share of vitamins and minerals for the household.
Each of the participating women received a package of vegetable seeds and fertilizer, along with training on how to prepare soil, how to plant the seeds for the best yields, and a variety of other techniques for vegetable husbandry. Within a month, they were able to see results: first, tomatoes and onions were ready to harvest; soon after that, okra.
In her share of the garden, Shahzadi produced enough vegetables for her family to use for more than three months. She also put 60 kg of onions in storage for future use. Her children liked eating fresh vegetables, while Shahzadi enjoyed working side by side with her neighbours, picking vegetables and cooking her own produce.
“Kitchen gardening provides a food safety net for the family, and it’s fun to cultivate, sell and store the vegetables I grew with my own two hands,” she said.