“The COVID-19 pandemic has affected my family in so many ways,” says Toikam, mother of a 1-year-old baby girl named “Lijao.” Toikam lives in a village in Mon district, Nagaland, with her husband and in-laws. 

Mon district is the northernmost district of Nagaland, bordered by Arunachal Pradesh to the north, Assam to the west, Myanmar to the east, Longleng district to the south-west, and Tuensang district to the south. Mon is one of the country’s 250 most backward districts. This district is the homeland of the Konyak Naga tribe, and it is interesting to observe tattooed faces adorned with feathers in this region. Most people depend on agriculture or agri-allied activities for their livelihood and are involved in ‘Jhum’ or ‘slash and burn’ agriculture, a process where land is cleared of trees and vegetation and then burned before crops are planted. 

Nutritious food is difficult to find in the poorer rural areas, where most people are dependent on staple foods with very little dietary diversity. This is especially challenging in the far northern-most districts of Nagaland, where geographic remoteness, low education levels, and poor economic conditions limit access to green vegetables. The situation worsens during the rainy season, as most of the green vegetables are brought in and sold by the neighbouring state of Assam. To make matters worse, the pandemic and lockdown made the availability of nutritious food even scarcer than it already was. 

Toikam is a homemaker, while her husband is a marginal farmer (a farmer cultivating more than one hectare of land) who works in the field. Along with her household chores, Toikam also supports her husband in the field, while her mother-in-law looks after her daughter. 

The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide lockdown brought Toikam’s family’s livelihood to a grinding halt. The district administration and the village administration enforced strict lockdown restrictions, making it impossible for Toikam and her husband to sell their produce in the local market. Additionally, since the field they were cultivating was far from their house, they were unable to access the vegetables they had grown there. Adding to their already existing miseries, a neighbour tested positive for COVID-19, leading to the sealing of the entire area for 14 days. This left Toikam and her family stranded at home with no source of livelihood or income. It was during this time that Toikam’s World Vision (WV) India-initiated kitchen garden became a lifeline for her family. 

To promote the benefits of kitchen gardening and increase the use of organic green vegetables, the Mon Area Development Programme (ADP) of WV India, in technical collaboration with Semina Agro Trading Pvt. Ltd., selected individuals to educate the community on the importance of kitchen gardens in January this year. Little did they know that a global pandemic would make the kitchen garden a lifesaver for many families. 

A kitchen garden consists of a small piece of land (20’ x 20’) in the backyard with 10 manageable beds (each 10’ x 3’), where a judicious mix of different vegetables is grown, yielding up to 250 kg to meet the nutritional needs of a family of five. The crops are divided into three seasons, as rotating these crops according to the season stimulates growth and productivity. The garden requires around 30 minutes to an hour a day to monitor its general health, progress, and the daily task of irrigation. 

For the project to be successful, Mon ADP, with the help of Semina Agro, conducted an orientation programme to inform the community about the importance of setting up kitchen gardens. According to field staff member David, “One of the major myths that needed to be debunked was the idea that it was enough to eat food just to quench hunger, without paying attention to nutritional intake. Although most families had enough food to feed their members, many of the children remained undernourished because of a primary diet consisting of carbohydrate-rich foods like potatoes and yams, which did not contribute to their growth due to the lack of nutritional content. Therefore, the entire community needed to be educated on the importance of nutritional intake and diet diversity to prevent child and adult malnutrition.” 

Toikam was one of the beneficiaries of the kitchen garden initiative. She says, “Apart from the cost-saving benefit, the kitchen garden helped to ensure food security and improved the nutritional status of my family. Especially during this time of COVID-19, I have realised the benefits of maintaining a personal kitchen garden. It has improved my social status and my awareness of the importance of providing a healthy diet for my children. For some of us women, this has also been an opportunity to sell some of our garden produce in the local markets and earn a secondary source of income.” 

Due to the constant consumption of carbohydrate-rich foods like ‘yam’ and ‘rice,’ Toikam’s daughter, Lijao, weighed only 6.8 kg during the first-quarter screening in December 2019. However, after Lijao began eating the nutritious food from her mother’s kitchen garden, her weight increased to 8 kg during the second-quarter screening in March 2020. 

Toikam is delighted with the drastic improvement in her daughter’s health and weight within just a few months. She hopes that all the children in her village will be fed nutritious food and become healthy. She thanks WV India for spreading awareness about the importance of diet diversity and kitchen gardens in her area. 

Along with Toikam’s family, 396 other families in Mon district also benefited from the kitchen garden initiative and were able to sustain themselves during the pandemic and lockdown. Additionally, as part of WV India’s COVID-19 response in the area, 2,018 families received cash assistance to meet their basic needs. 

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Semina Agro Pvt. Ltd. is a new generation company that focuses on the overall wellbeing of farming communities. It was established in the year 2014 with the goal of achieving livelihood sustainability in the area of agriculture, by increasing quality of life. The company has a team of professionally qualified and well-experienced persons in the field of agriculture and livelihood sustainability.  

To know more about the company, you can visit them on their website www.seminaagro.com

Labels: #agriculture #child #children #coronavirus #covid-19 #kitchengarden #livelihood #lockdown #nagaland #nutrtion #worldvision #worldvisionindia