Abstract
Home garden interventions combining training in agriculture and nutrition have the potential to increase vegetable production and consumption in lower-income countries, but there remains a need for better evidence for impact. This study contributes to filling this gap by evaluating the impact and distributional effects of a home garden intervention in Cambodia. We used a cluster randomized controlled trial with before and after data for a sample of 500 rural households with children under five and women 16–49 years old. Impact was estimated using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and conditional quantile regressions with non-parametric bounds. The results show that the intervention significantly increased the adoption of nearly all promoted gardening methods. More households (+ 35%; p < 0.01) produced vegetables, and the production period was extended by five months on average. One-month recall data show an increase in vegetables harvested (+ 25 kg; p < 0.01) and consumed (+ 10 kg; p < 0.01) from the garden. Quantile regressions confirm these findings and show that nearly all households benefitted, but households that were already doing better at baseline tended to benefit more. Seven-day recall data show an increase in the quantity of vegetables consumed (+ 61 g/day/capita; p < 0.01) and an increased quantity of vitamin A, folate, iron, and zinc contained in these vegetables. Women contributed more to the garden work than men and their time spent in the garden increased by 29 min/day on average. These results add further evidence that integrated home garden interventions can contribute to nutrition outcomes and that almost all participants can benefit.
Highlights
Home gardens make an important contribution to the food and nutrition security of poor rural households in developing countries, but they are often overlooked in research and Evidence is accumulating for the impact of home garden interventions (Bird et al, 2019; Ruel & Alderman, 2013; Ruel et al, 2018; Weinberger, 2013)
The results of this study show that an integrated home garden intervention in Cambodia significantly increased the production and consumption of vegetables for the average household selected into the intervention
Integrated home garden interventions, combining training in vegetable gardening and nutrition, increase household-level vegetable production and consumption, as this study confirmed for Cambodia
Summary
Home gardens make an important contribution to the food and nutrition security of poor rural households in developing countries, but they are often overlooked in research and Evidence is accumulating for the impact of home garden interventions (Bird et al, 2019; Ruel & Alderman, 2013; Ruel et al, 2018; Weinberger, 2013). A review of home gardens found 15 peer-reviewed journal papers in English that had studied its impact in developing countries (DFID, 2014). Ten of these 15 papers showed that home garden interventions increased household production and consumption of micronutrient-rich foods, and seven reported. In Nepal, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) study showed that a home garden intervention reduced anemia among mothers and children (Osei et al, 2016). Another RCT study in Nepal showed that home gardens combined with school gardens significantly increased home garden productivity and the frequency of children's vegetable consumption (Schreinemachers et al, 2020). An RCT study of a home garden intervention in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda showed an increase in the share of households producing vegetables and an extended production period in Tanzania, but not in Kenya and Uganda (Depenbusch et al, 2021)
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