Home Gardens for Improved Food Security and Livelihoods

With food and nutritional security being a major global challenge, there is an urgent need to find innovative ways to increase food production and diversify food sources while increasing income-generating opportunities for communities faced with hunger and poverty. This book shows how home gardens are particularly significant for resource-poor and marginalized communities in developing countries and how they offer a versatile strategy towards building local and more resilient food systems. Home gardens provide not only a basic or supplemental source of fresh and nutritious foods and income, but also a number of other benefits such as ecosystems services and conservation of local natural resources. The book provides a conceptual overview of social, economic, environmental, and nutritional issues related to home gardening in diverse contexts, including gender issues and biodiversity conservation. It presents country case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America, highlighting home gardening experiences and initiatives. The book concludes with a synthesis of key lessons learned and ways forward for further enhancing home gardens for sustainable food security and development. It is shown that, implemented properly, home gardens can become an integral part of sustainable food security programmes.