The Role of Kitchen Gardens in Food Security and Nutritional Diversity

UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL WORK

THE ROLE OF KITCHEN GARDENS IN FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITIONAL DIVERSITY:

A CASE STUDY OF WORKERS AT JAMES FINLAY KENYA- KERICHO

BY

JOHN MBURU NJUGUNA

(C50/62987/2011)

A RESEARCH PROJECT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR AWARD OF DEGREE IN MASTER OF ARTS IN RURAL SOCIOLOGY AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI

NOVEMBER2013

DECLARATION

This research is my Original work and has not been presented for a degree in any other university.

Signature……………………………… Date………………………………

John MburuNjuguna

C50/62987/2011

This research report has been submitted for examination with my approval as the University supervisor.

Signature……………………………… Date…………………………………

Dr G.G.Wairire

Department of Sociology and Social Work

University of Nairobi

DEDICATION

This research project is dedicated to my parents, the late Samuel Njuguna and Elizabeth Mumbifor their prayers and support. My beloved Wife Mary Njokiand my children, Ruth, Nathan and Simon for their deep understanding and allowing me to be away from them at times during my study.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My heart is indebted to my supervisor the LateDr. Pius M. Mutie for his rich guidance almost through the entire project. I am equally indebted to Dr G.G. Wairire who finished the good work started by his predecessor. I acknowledge the work of Prof. Chitere, Dr. Robinson Ocharo, Prof. Yambo and Dr Agnes Zani for their help in imparting skills that helped me complete my research project.

I cannot forget to thank my supervisor at workplace Brenda B. Ochieng and former colleague Mohamed Mbarak for their moral support during the course work. Marcus, Kean, Daniel Kirui, Betty Kibiliach, Reuben Langat, Jane Ndirangu, Chris Masika and the entire James Finlay Kericho Team that facilitated my data collection for this research.

Special thanks to all my research assistants for the special role they played as participant observers during the fielding of questionnaires and to James Finlay managers at different sections who joined the various focused groups and offered vital information during the sessions.

TABLE OF CONTENT

Declaration

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Table of content

List of Tables

List of Figures

List of Platesi

Acronyms

Abstracti

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background Information

1.2 Statement of the Problem

1.3 Research Questions

1.4 Objectives

1.4.1 Specific Objectives

1.5 Justification of the Study

1.6 Scope and Limitations

1.7 Definition of key terms

1.7.1 Kitchen Garden

1.7.2 Food security

1.7.3 Nutritional Diversity

1.7.4 Food Availability

1.7.5 Food Access

1.7.6 Utilization

1.7.7 Stability

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Kitchen Gardens and African Leafy Vegetables in Nutritional Diversity

2.3.1 Food Accessibility and Vulnerability

2.3.2 Food availability

2.4. Theoretical Framework

2.4.1 Techno-Ecological Theory

2.4.2 The Adoption of Innovation Theory

2.4.3 Conceptual Model.

CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.0 Introduction

3.1 Research design

3.2 Site Description

3.2.1 Unit of observation

3.2.2 Unit of analysis

3.3 Target population

3.4 Sampling procedure

3.5 Types of data

3.5.1 Data collection

3.5.1.1 Household interview

3.5.1.2 Key informants

3.5.1.3 Focus Group Discussions

3.5.1.4 Desk Review

3.5.1.5 Observation

3.6 Data analysis

CHAPTER FOUR: DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS

4.0 Introduction

4.1 Demographic Characteristics

4.1.1 Respondents Household Distribution

4.1.2. Distribution of Respondents by Sex

4.1.3 Marital Status

4.1.4 Distribution o Respondents byAge

4.1.5 Education level

4.2.0 Main Findings

4.2.0 Introduction

4.2.1 Kitchen Garden Set Up

4.2.2 Size of gardens

4.2.3 Source of Help and Organization

4.3 Kitchen Garden Food Security Effect

4.3.1 Value of Food Supply

4.4 Kitchen Garden Effect on Nutritional Diversity

4.4.2 Nutrition Diversity of Kericho District

4.4.3 Value of Nutrition Diversity

4.4.4 Vegetables as a Source of Protein

4.5 Challenges Faced by the Kitchen Garden

4.6 Correlation between attendance and food supply value

4.6.3 Solution to the challenges

4.6.4 Improvement recommended by respondents

4.6.5 Vegetable production in Containers

CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Summary of Findings

5.3 Conclusion

5.4 Recommendations

5.4.1 Recommendations to JFK

5.4.2 Recommendations to other investors in Agriculture

5.4.3 Recommendations to Government

5.4.4 Recommendations to Development Agents

5.4.5 Further Research

REFERENCES

APPENDIX 1...... 1

Questionnaire...... 1

APPENDIX II...... 12

Key Informant Interview Guide...... 12

APPENDIX III...... 13

FGD Guide...... 13

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1 Village Distribution of the Respondents...... 26

Table 4.2 Gender...... 27

Table 4.3 Marital Status...... 27

Table 4.4 Age Group Distribution...... 28

Table 4.5 Education level...... 29

Table 4.6 Size of the Garden...... 35

Table 4.7 Vegetables Bought Before...... 39

Table 4.8 Vegetables Bought Today...... 39

Table 4.9 Value of Food Supply to the Respondents...... 40

Table 4.10 Vegetables/Fruits Grown in Kericho District...... 43

Table 4.11 Challenges faced by the Kitchen Garden...... 47

Table 4.12 Correlation between attendance and food supply value...... 48

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Distribution of hungry people in the world in millions...... 15

Figure 2.2 Conceptual framework...... 20

Figure 4.1 Sources of design help...... 37

Figure 4.2 No of variety grown in households...... 41

Figure 4.3 Respondents value diversity...... 43

Figure 4.4 Frequency of buying meat...... 46

Figure 4.5 Solution to the challenges...... 49

Figure 4.6Improvements recommended...... 51

LIST OF PLATES

Plate 4.1Demarcation with wood...... 31

Plate 4.2 Garden layout...... 32

Plate 4.3 Hibiscus hedge...... 33

Plate 4.4 Green hegde at the beginning of the project...... 34

Plate 4.5 Workers in one of the early gardens...... 34

Plate 4.6 Side Garden in Umoja Village at Tiluet Estate...... 35

Plate 4.7 Compost pit...... 36

Plate 4.8 A Banana Stool in One of the Kitchen Garden...... 45

Plate 4.9 Nutritional board near a dispensary...... 50

Plate 4.10 Strawberry growing in improvised containers ...... 52

Plate 4.11 Banana stems used as containers for vegetable production...... 52

Plate 4.12 Vegetables growing in upright sack containers...... 53

Plate 4.13 Vertical Multistory Garden...... 54

Plate 4.14 Vegetables growing in hydroponics...... 55

ACRONYMS

FAO- Food and Agricultural Organization

JFK- James Finlay Kenya

WHO-World Health Organisation

OECD-Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

FGD-Focused Group Discusions

ALVS- African Leafy Vegetables

UN-United Nations

DFID-The Department for International Development

ABSTRACT

Food security and nutritional diversity is one of the key areas that a developing country should address. With varying local opportunities and challenges, the kitchen garden forms a panacea that can address food insecurity and bring in self reliance, sovereignty and dignity. Households have labour power– the physical ability of household members to generate income (Christopher, 2006). When this labour power is used in the Kitchen garden it has the ability to improve food security and nutritional diversity of the household. Even with the dwindling land resource small areas around the house as small as ten square meters can make the difference in the lives of many.

This research was undertaken on workers at James Finlay Kenyato investigate the role of kitchen gardens in addressing food security and nutritional diversity.The research used both qualitative and quantitative approach to collect data from households and stakeholders. Stratified sample was used to pick household respondents.

The findings show that the kitchen gardens at James Finlay are small organic gardens which were started about six years ago. Majority of them are about 10 square meters. The size of the garden was designed to be big enough to produce sufficient vegetables for the household but small enough to be replicated in many areas in Kenya where land as a production unit has become too small. In the innovation uptake the social capital(in this case the predominant Seventh Day Adventist teaching of healthy living by promoting the use of plants as the major source of nutrients, the goodwill from the management) and the human capital in the form of traditional knowledge(71% had kitchen gardens before) played a big role. The management decision to reinforce this innovation by hiring a consultant to bring a positive change to food security and nutritional diversity of the workers acted as a trigger. Almost 48% of the respondents do not buy vegetables after establishing kitchen gardens as compared to 4.2% who were not buying vegetables before the gardens were formalised. About 99% of the respondents think that the kitchen garden has improved their nutritional diversity. Compared to the monoculture of the few gardens that existed before the formal gardens, more than 18 different varieties of vegetable and fruits were recorded in different households during the study indicating that a wide diversity has been achieved. Eighty five % have replicated the garden in their rural homes, and 98% have learnt a new skill indicating that the kitchen garden seems to be positively addressing food security and nutritional diversity and further demonstrating the central role of agriculture in meeting household needs.

James Finlay Kenya management should continue popularising the kitchen garden to bring more workers to self sufficiency in vegetable supply.As an organic garden the phosphorous deficiency should be addressed, possibly by using Finlays IPM crop division to improve the productivity of the gardens. Dudutech products from Finlays IPM approach like Rhizatec(mycelia enhancing roots system) and Vermitec(vermicompost) (Dudutech ltd, 2012) can be used for this purpose.The government can learn from this innovation and include akitchen garden in its extension program as it has the capacity to address food security and nutritional diversity and especially so with the dwindling land sizes. Further research needs to be done to establish the quantity of vegetables harvested from these gardens. This will further help to establish the cost savings from the kitchen gardens which is important in arriving to wider recommendations.

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background Information

In Kenya and world over high population growth, rural urban migration and vulgarities of weather have pushed the cost of food upwards (Silvia, 2012). The increased use of food crops in biodiesel production put further imbalance to food supply which further affects the demand/supply relationship. Non-communicable diseases add further pressure to the citizens and more so to low income groups.Theresultant of this is more people are going to be food insecure. Famine Early Warning system warned that there will be a rise from 2.2 million to 2.4 million food insecure people in August 2012 (UN, 2012).

The answer to increased food demand cannot be met by the green revolution as well as rain fed agriculture which is already showing fatigue (Pastakia, 2011) This food insecure group needs to face the current environmental and health challenges by identifying ways to better align aesthetics, ecology, and health (Denver Urban Gardens, 2012). A kitchen garden can be a part of the solution to this problem.As already proven one-size-fits all solutions cannot be applied in every area to answer the question of food sustainability(Beddington, 2011).

The higher demand for food should be met by practical innovations like kitchen gardening which not only improves availability but also answers the question of diversity required for a healthy community. The kitchen gardens can be viewed as an adaptive strategy of communities as an entry point for development. The kitchen garden can also help to reduce the gap of productivity between the technical potential and actual production levels of food crops due to low use of suboptimal inputs and low adoption of most productive technologies (Tittonell, 2012). A kitchen garden involves the very people who are the greatest resource for development in a view to improve their own livelihoods and empowerment as envisaged in the rural university concept (Mathai, 1985). The kitchen gardening is a radical transformation towards using resources more efficiently. The kitchen garden is perhaps the only available ecological space available to the poor to meet their economic needs especially so in Africa where the poor tends to rely more on natural resource base for their livelihood. Kitchen Gardens depend on the gardeners for maintenance and are spaces made meaningful by the actions of people during the course of their every-day lives. They are spaces where the gains from social capital, physical and symbolic arrangement of items of private living space are aggregated and given utility value. Above all, Kitchen garden is an avenue where the actor is totally immersed in his role (Kimber, 2012).

The British and the Americans won two world wars by growing their own food to feed their armies and the people left at home(Great Britain Ministry of Food, 1946). Kenyans can feed themselves by growing what we eat and one way to do this is adopting the Kitchen garden. The kitchen garden is a form of Community adaptive strategies that leads to sustainable livelihoods(Agobia, 1999).

A kitchen garden is an integrated system which comprises the family house, a recreational area and a garden producing a variety of foods including vegetables, fruits and medicinal plants for home consumption or sale. The kitchen/home gardens have been found to play an important role in improving food security for the resource poor rural households in developing country like Bangladesh(Asaduzzaman, 2011) and can do the same in Kenya.

In addition to supplying the food needs, the kitchen gardens help in biodiversity conservation as well as a platform of socializing the younger generation into the communities’ norms as they interact with the older people while tending the gardens. While it may not directly supply the cereals need for the family, the savings achieved from not buying fruits and vegetables would be used to buy additional cereals.

Most of the African homes had a garden either by default or design which often undermine its usefulness. The spring onion which has wide usage in many households as a spice/condiment has always been grown near homestead officially cultivated and protected from animals. In many cases this garden evolves from the dumpsite where seeds from plants like pumpkin are thrown with trash, germinate and grow into plants. Eventually this dumpsite evolves into a valuable garden supplying vegetables. Many African families depend for survival on what they grow. For such families Kitchengardens are the difference between life and death. For the Kikuyus there is a saying, “ndoiganguening'aragu ,tetereukamera”, which translates “when I give up on hunger, amaranthus (vegetable) germinates and life continues”.

Ornamental or vegetable gardening is a fun pastime or hobby for many people who enjoy but do not spend much time analyzing. Many people cannot really explain why they have to plant something; before they call any place they have lived a home. In high rainfall areas like Kericho, food supply is expected not to be a problem but food is produced on land and not everybody is in control over land and hence will depend on the market forces for food supply.

In 2010, Italian NGO, Terra Madre launched an ambitious project in kitchen gardens in Africa dubbed “A thousand Gardens In Africa” which aimed to create a thousand gardens in schools, villages and the outskirts of cities(Miller, 2012).In Kenya’s Vision 2030 Public-Private Partnership has been singled out as one key driver of development (Kenya (NESC), 2007). James Finlays Kenya (JFK) is one such company that embraced this partnership way back before it was officially known.

The purpose of the Kitchen Garden Project was to help employees in the village improve on family food supplies and nutrition year round, through sustainable exploitation of the land, water and other resources around the house including the idle household labor and skills.The status quo at this time in the workers villages was a free for all situations even where some people had tried some gardening. The villages were messy with poorly cultivated and eroded gardens, un-coordinated and dirty children play areas. By growing our own food we are also helping the environment by not importing food from around the globe.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

Agricultural workers lack sufficient incomes to meet their food and nutritional demands adequately. An alternative way of improving their food supply is practicing kitchen garden farming. African countries contribute the highest human development index in terms of GDP but this has not been translated into food security (Goswan, 2012). In the developing countries food production has gone down as result of poor governance, poor land management, and marginalization of the peasant production and rural urban migration which has deprived the food production areas of the much needed workforce. Monoculture commercial production also pushed the peasants to marginal and non productive lands. The globalized system of food production and trade favors a reliance on export crops while discriminating against small-scale farmers and subsistence crops. More than 16 million people are at risk in the Sahel alone (across the semi-arid belt from Senegal to Chad) and an equal number in the Horn of Africa remain vulnerable after last year’s food crisis in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia (FAO, 2012). In such a situation of food scarcity the population on the lower end of the social class is extremely vulnerable.

The agricultural workers are the least paid all over the world and will be the most affected by food inflation. The living wage is not yet achievable in any part of the world and as the investors compete in the global perspectives solutions to food security through salary increments are not tenable. Alternative ways of helping the poor to get their food supply would be a noble method. Prevention, efficiency and the primacy of localism are the three governing principles of the self-reliant city (Grewal, 2011). Looking at Finlays as one of these cities, the kitchen garden is one efficient use of the land resource. The kitchen gardens can be an example of how to attain food security not only to Finlaysbut to the entire country when the knowledge and skills are transferred to other areas.