Public Health Nutrition Editorial Highlight: ‘Demonstration gardens improve agricultural production, food security and preschool child diets in subsistence farming communities in Panama’.

Undernutrition is an ongoing problem in developing regions worldwide. In rural areas, intensified and diversified agriculture can improve nutritional outcomes for children, and agricultural interventions have sprung up around the world to harness the power of household food production for improving nutrition.

In our study, we followed an agricultural intervention in rural, subsistence farming communities in central Panama. This intervention worked to teach participants about agricultural methods that could better conserve the soil, intensify production of staple crops, and diversify production of micronutrient-rich produce, all within the context of working together weekly in a shared community garden. The garden also served as a central location from which seeds, fertilizers, and produce could be distributed for home use.

We were interested to see the outcomes for child diet diversity, but we recognized that diet has multiple, interconnected drivers, and so in our methods we set out to measure these, too: attitudes about agriculture, techniques learned in demonstration gardens and used in home plots, amount and diversity of produce grown, domestic animals kept for food, and household food security.

To understand the impacts of this intervention better, we followed households over one agricultural cycle. Households were from 15 communities with varying lengths of exposure to the intervention: 5 years, 1 year, and communities just beginning at the time of the study. This allowed us to examine the effect of different lengths of exposure to the intervention. Further, amongst the communities with 5 years exposure to the intervention, half had discontinued their community gardens the year of our study, which allowed us to examine whether this impacted our measured outcomes.

We found that after a year in the program, households had learned and applied more new farming techniques in their home plots, were growing more staples, and had improved household food security and child diets during lean seasons of the year. After five years, household production was diversified, households produced more chickens for home consumption, and children’s diets were further improved.

We observed some key differences between five-year communities that had maintained their community gardens and those that had not: households in communities with gardens continued to use more of the farming techniques they had learned that helped to protect the soil and improve production, and children ate more micronutrient-rich foods, particularly those rich in vitamin A, which are important for immune function and growth.

As the pandemic continues, and we consider how to support rural, subsistence communities, the question of how to continue genuine and effective community interactions remains important. Our results suggest that projects such as community gardens are of great importance for households’ nutritional outcomes, and finding ways for these to continue to bring people together in safe and healthy ways will have ongoing consequences for nutritional outcomes of children. As we think ahead to recovery for all communities, we need to remember that the learning and mutual support from group endeavours, such as community gardens, can be protective against undernutrition and can create conditions for future thriving.

Access the full article here ‘Demonstration gardens improve agricultural production, food security and preschool child diets in subsistence farming communities in Panama’ by Rachel J Krause, Marilyn E Scott, Odalis Sinisterra and Kristine G Koski. Click here to view all Editorial Highlights from Public Health Nutrition.