| dc.description.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 Kenya to 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 a kitchen 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 | en |
