Abstract
The study identified different food crops, fruits and vegetables found around homes, constraints of home garden practice, and also socio-economic factors influencing home garden contribution to household’s food consumption. Primary data were collected for the study. Two-stage random sampling procedure was used to select80 respondents for the study. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as percentages, means and Heckman sample selection model. The result shows that different food crops, fruits and vegetables that are majorly planted by most respondents include maize (82.5%), mango (50.0%) and fluted pumpkin leaf (81.2%) which are used for different purposes such as food, medicine and ornaments. The result from the Heckman two-stage analysis shows that in the first stage marital status (-1.7912) and female household size (0.3748) are statistically significant at 1% probability level, while income (4.6e-06) was statistically significant at 5% probability level on the home gardening practice. In the second stage, experience in home gardening (1.1089) was statistically significant at 1% probability level on contributions of home gardening to household’s food consumption. The study revealed that home garden practices was constrained by factors such as high cost of inputs, inadequate access to water, pest and diseases etc. The government and concerned agencies such as NGOs should provide and subsidize these promptly to households as incentives to increase their home garden practices. The study recommends there should be institutionalization of those socioeconomic factors that promote home gardening practice.
 Key words: home-gardening, food consumption, Heckman-model
Highlights
There is problem of hunger and malnutrition faced by people living in developing countries under substandard living conditions (Galhena et al, 2013)
In order to meet world food security proposition, food production is estimated to increase by 70% in order to meet average caloric requirement of the world’s population by year 2050
Home gardening helps to increase food production. This is encapsulated in year-round production of food and a wide range of other products such as fuel wood, fodder, spices, medicinal plants and ornamentals (Wang and MacMillan, 2013; Tamiru, et al, 2016)
Summary
There is problem of hunger and malnutrition faced by people living in developing countries under substandard living conditions (Galhena et al, 2013). Home gardening helps to increase food production This is encapsulated in year-round production of food and a wide range of other products such as fuel wood, fodder, spices, medicinal plants and ornamentals (Wang and MacMillan, 2013; Tamiru, et al, 2016). It enhances food and nutritional security in many socioeconomic and political situations. Households find home garden to be important to provision of varieties and nutritive foods that meet household’s food and nutrition security, improvement of health (provision of medicinal plants), income generation as parts of the produce such as vegetables and fruits are offer for sale, shelter, climate regulation, and shade (Guitart et al, 2012)
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