BioDesign N/L 11.04.11 April 12, 2011
"Rural people, forming the group most affected by the food crisis, do not need to play a role in boosting the world's food production. They simply need to produce enough food for their own family (”to fill their own hungry stomach“). Application of cost-effective technologies should therefore be programmed at the level of small-scale “family gardens” or “school gardens”
Growing food crops in the drylands
Drought is not new for the local people, but what makes them despair today is the fact that nature and pattern of the calamity have changed a lot. Currently drought does not just imply a state of not having enough food rather it gives rise to many problems leading to permanent loss of community and household assets and means of livelihood.
Poor rural people in the drylands, climate refugees, drought and political migrants, they all show some concern over climate change and global warming. However, their most urgent wishes, their basic priorities are not directly related to the climate, but to their empty stomach and poverty. If there is any option for us, then let us first take care of their water and food problems.
Being aware of the necessity to take care of the global warming problem (a long-term task), the international community should FIRST provide short-term ways and means to solve the food problem in all the drylands of this world. The solutions are known.
Rural people, forming the group most affected by the food crisis, do not need to play a role in boosting the world's food production. They simply need to produce enough food for their own family (”to fill their own hungry stomach“). Application of cost-effective technologies should therefore be programmed at the level of small-scale “family gardens” or “school gardens”.
It has been observed by thata meal with green vegetables is a privilege that only a few families settled near town can afford. For a common person the menu invariably includes millet-loaves with a handful of chilies throughout the long dry spell of the year. The result is obvious; hundred of people fall in victim to infections disease every year primarily due to improper diet and malnutrition.
With these family gardens, it was clearly shown that with minimal investment maximal results were made within a short time, e.g. 6 months, whereby families were enabled to grow their own food with a minimum of irrigation water.
A very simple soil conditioning method offered a maximum of chances to grow vegetables and fruit trees in two different seasons: a milder autumn-winter period and a hot spring-summer season.
It should be a basic principle that food aid starts with the construction of a small kitchen garden for every family in the drylands.
If it is possible to offer such a small garden to families in dryland area such as Tharparkar desert, it is feasible everywhere.
One needs only a small fence, a minimal quantity of a water and fertilizer stocking compound, a minimal volume of irrigation water and some seeds.
Imagine the low costs for offering fresh food all year long to rural families in the drylands.
Splendid examples of long-term combating food shortage with family gardens can be seen everywhere. One can only hope that such a success story will soon be duplicated in many similar situations, where hungry people wait for similar innovative and well-conceived practices, with a remarkable return on investment, laying solid foundations for further sustainable development. Food aid, be it with billions of dollars, can only be very effective if priority is given to local food production for the poor rural or urban people, who cannot afford to buy the expensive commercial food products in shops or supermarkets.
Small-scale family gardens, school gardens, allotment gardens and urban gardens in unused open spaces should be our strategic counter-attack against the actual food crisis.