Homestead Gardening: An Emerging Venture Towards Achieving Food Security & Nutritional Security - A Study of Selected Areas of West Bengal

Although India is becoming relatively self-sufficient to meet the hunger of its people, in the developing world 800 million people currently face food and nutritional insecurity is a mere fact, and the challenges of meeting these needs are likely to become greater in the years ahead. Homestead gardening, an oldest form of agro-ecosystem, is in existence since the dawn of agricultural practice of human civilization, which contributes to household food security as well as nutritional security by providing direct access to food that can be harvested, prepared and fed to the family members, often on a daily basis. Even very poor or near landless people practice gardening which also ensures active family participation. The outcomes of home garden are more equally shared among members of the household and neighbours. Though copybook ‘Nutritional Garden' is not found in the homestead of rural households across the third world as it misses the peoples' standpoints to a great extent. This paper focuses on the aspects of home garden and its impact towards achieving food and nutritional security based on the study we had at chandirampur village in Nadia District. We had our experience there, felt peoples' need and tried to incorporate the pros and cons of this farming with their livelihood,. Ultimately we tried to recommend some ways to them. In spite of its great prospect to achieve food and nutritional security, it fails due to fragmentation of homestead land due to transformation of joint to nuclear family, inappropriate garden design, improper management and monitoring, unrealized expectations and obliviously less focus on the research and extension agenda. Having mitigated food and nutritional insecurity & towards a better life, we must address sincerely with a better planning, proper land utilization pattern, replacement with a variety of profitable crops, fence crops, integration between the sub-components and their trade-offs and lastly the government should step forward and put forth recommended initiatives. This study examined the contributions of homestead farming to food security as well as the nutritional security in West Bengal. The authors tried to draw an inference to the easiest path to make the deprived section get rid of impoverishment and malnutrition.