2019 ASHS Annual Conference

The goal of the project was to contribute to reduced malnutrition, especially of vulnerable women and children in rural areas of Cambodia, Kenya, Liberia, Tanzania and Uganda through the production and consumption of vegetables as affordable sources of essential vitamins and micronutrients through the accelerated production and deployment (i.e. “scaling”) of diet-enhancing vegetable homegarden seed kits. The kits contained high proportions of traditional vegetables such as amaranth (Amaranthus dubius) and African nightshade (Solanum scabrum) that were easy to grow and high in micronutrient content. The specific objectives were to 1) increase nutritional awareness, 2) increase availability and supply of selected nutrient dense vegetables, 3) build the horticultural capacity of the target vulnerable groups, and 4) accelerate behavioral change for increased consumption of vegetables. A randomized control trial (RCT) methodology, coupled with a “difference-in-difference” estimator technique, was used in intervention and non-intervention villages that were monitored before and after project implementation (2 years). Interventions were the seed kits themselves and associated agronomic training, recipe training, and nutrition awareness-raising. Through the distribution of 44,121 seed kits, 40,273 farmers were sensitized to the production techniques and nutrition messaging, and 37,299 actually adopted new technologies after the trainings. Importantly, over 49,000 vulnerable children were reached by the production and nutrition interventions. RCT data aggregated over 1,768 households in Cambodia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda showed that the interventions increased the share of households producing vegetables by 43% in Cambodia and 17% in Tanzania and households in these countries adopted a range of new vegetable production method including seed mini packets. Households were able to extend the period for producing vegetables by 4.1 months in Cambodia and 1.3 months in Tanzania and produced a greater diversity of vegetables for home consumption and selling. The results did not show significant effects on dry season vegetable consumption for any of the countries except Cambodia, which suggests that home garden interventions may need to give greater emphasis to technologies to produce vegetables in the dry season. Nevertheless, nearly all participants perceived that their vegetable production, consumption and the quality of diets had improved as a result of the seed-kit based interventions.