Kitchen Gardens for an Endless Supply of Vegetables at Home

MADHYA PRADESH, INDIA – Kitchen gardens are a simple way to boost families’ nutrition. For the Good Farming, Good Food project in India, promoting kitchen gardens helps to build strong community relationships while ensuring that women and their families have access to more nutritious food. 

Planting a Home Garden

One farmer, Shanta Bai Malviya, shared her experience with the East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation team. Shanta Bai lives in Gurukhedi, a village in the Agar Malwa district of Madhya Pradesh. With EWS-KT’s support, she grew her first kitchen garden in March 2021, planting bitter gourd, coriander, spinach, sponge gourd, cucumber, tomato, and okra.

Around the world, nutrition has suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for already vulnerable populations. But Shanta Bai has her own supply of healthy food. She simply walks over to her kitchen garden to find fresh vegetables and use them in her daily cooking. During the pandemic lockdowns, she was especially happy to have access to fresh vegetables at home.

Teaching Others

Community members like Shanta Bai learn how to grow their own vegetables from local EWS-KT trainers. Komal Yadav is proud to be one such trainer.

Komal lives in the Dewas district of Madhya Pradesh, and she has been a Rural Extension Worker with EWS-KT for close to 3 years.

“I am very happy to work as a Rural Extension Worker in my village,” she said. “It gives me the opportunity to work with women farmers and increase their knowledge base. What could be bigger than being able to support fellow women farmers in acquiring farming knowledge?”

In 2021, the Good Farming, Good Food project helped to set up 58 kitchen gardens in rural areas of Madhya Pradesh, providing families with convenient and sustainable access to nutritious vegetables.