Every year, 1 out of every 6 Americans falls sick from food poisoning (Nyachuba, 2010). Most recover without lasting ill effects, but some die from it. In developing nations, near half of all deaths in children under 5 occur due to poor nutrition(Shikur, Deressa and Lindtjørn, 2016). Are our food systems failing us? What can we do to minimize the risks of food poisoning and nutrition? These are fair questions to ask because health is impossible without good nutrition, and for good nutrition, safe foods and balanced diet are vital. This piece of writing explores a strategy for action track 1 – access to safe and nutritious food- for the food summit 2021. We take a look at the garden sack for Sub Saharan Africa (SAA) as a game changer!
Choumoellier growing in a garden sack providing fresh, clean, reliable, and nutritious vegetable supply for good health. Technology benefit: - Green pollution free, water and land efficient.
Please visit: https://youtu.be/Z5zLqAjKAi0
According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) organization(Merrill, Earley and Rettig, 1992) risky factors causing lack of food safety in our food systems includes unsafe sources (farms/gardens, markets), poor personal hygiene, inadequate cooking, improper holding temperatures, and utilization of contaminated equipment. It should however be noted that climate change also exacerbates the problem of food poisoning. Water scarcity for sanitation and poor-quality food e.g., due to aflatoxins increase diseases with potential increase in childhood mortality from diarrhea (e.g., bacillary dysentery, cholera) (Shirima et al., 2015). The garden sack strategy is presented to foster food safety and nutrition to developing nations especially in the context of SSA for one type of food i.e., vegetables.
What is vertical bag gardening? Is it a new technology? Well, the garden sack is not new! It has been used in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe to mention but a few, but has lacked scaling up(Gallaher et al., 2015). The vertical sack gardening uses a net shading bag as a soil potting (other materials like weevilled baskets, polythene, ordinary recycled sisal sack, etc., can be used too). After bagging the soil (mix manure and soil in the ratio of 1:1 near the site of the sack garden), then bag water the bag in readiness for transplanting seedlings. Steps on how to fill the sack will be in the next post. Please check out for this. When one eats vegetables grown from a garden sack, metaphorically s/he eats the garden sack!
GARDEN SACK RENDERS FOOD SAFE AND NUTRITIOUS; HOW?
The vertical sack garden ensures safety and good nutrition through numerous advantages it offers. A briefly look at five, often considered silver bullets.
- Enhanced nutrition from one bag!
One bag can hold a variety vegetable - mixed cropping. Each vegetable supplies unique nutrients (Brindisi et al., 2020; Murakami, 2019). By growing high quality and different types of vegetables a diversified diet is attained with adequate minerals, essential amino acids, fats and vitamins would be ensured thereby providing good nutrition and ultimately sound human health.
2. Food safety increased.
Clean and fleshly plucked vegetables for home use. Avoid ‘Wet markets’ or supermarkets where contamination chance is high, vitamins loss and vegetables may go stale.
Bags are protected; fencing excludes stray animals, including dogs, chickens, wild birds etc., from vegetable contact. Zoonosis kicked. Use carefully selected soils. Use well aged manures and avoid heavy metal contamination soils a protection from animal pathogens and contamination. Uses treated domestic water or underground water for irrigation to avoid contamination to vegetables. Safety period between sprays and consumption can be observed. Balcony can be used where land is critically scarce e.g., like urban cities. Pollutions such as sewage leaks, smells and dust from driveways eliminated by a careful selection of the location of bag within the homestead.
3. Efficient on water, labour, and time.
Drip irrigation solves the water shortage while meeting the ‘hungry diet’ for water by vegetable plants. Drip irrigation reduces the drudgery incidental of watering and weeding. Drip irrigation also avoids wetting of the leaves and thereby limits disease occurrences especially in solanaceous crops such as tomatoes. It also prevents moulds in cauliflowers and broccoli. The dense foliage from plants around the bag conserves soil moisture by reduced evaporation thus water demand is low.
Suitable for areas hit by droughts due to climate change
4. Low land requirement – as low as 3 sq meters can hold at least a bag.
Land for gardening can be a challenge in cities due to urbanization and over population. To improve livelihood, vegetable sack gardening which takes as low as 3m2 can be a solution for urban agriculture.
5. Increased production per unit area and a source income and employment
Lastly, access to enough safe and nutritious food is key to sustaining life and promoting good health. The option of the bag garden technology just demonstrated some advantages that the technology can reap towards zero hunger and good health for all. It remains to be seen whether someone would scale it up to ameliorate the daunting problem of track one – access to safe and nutritious foods amid climate change especially for developing nations including SAA.
References
Brindisi, L., Merchant, E. V., Eliver, B., Odhiambo, J., Night, E., Nyawir, T., Nyabinda, N., Weller, S., Simon, J. E. and Hoffman, D. (2020) 'Comparative nutritional analysis between African Indigenous Vegetables grown by urban farmers and those available for purchase in Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya: A Case Study', Journal of Medicinally Active Plants, 9(3), pp. 166-180.
Gallaher, C. M., WinklerPrins, A., Njenga, M. and Karanja, N. K. (2015) 'Creating space: Sack gardening as a livelihood strategy in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya'.
Merrill, R. A., Earley, L. E. and Rettig, R. A. (1992) 'Food and Drug Administration advisory committees'.
Murakami, S. (2019) Nutrition Tips For Your Health And Success—Nutrition Education Handouts For Feeding Program Recipients In Kibera, Kenya. California State University, Los Angeles.
Nyachuba, D. G. (2010) 'Foodborne illness: is it on the rise?', Nutrition reviews, 68(5), pp. 257-269.
Shikur, B., Deressa, W. and Lindtjørn, B. (2016) 'Association between malaria and malnutrition among children aged under-five years in Adami Tulu District, south-central Ethiopia: a case–control study', BMC Public Health, 16(1), pp. 1-8.
Shirima, C. P., Kimanya, M. E., Routledge, M. N., Srey, C., Kinabo, J. L., Humpf, H.-U., Wild, C. P., Tu, Y.-K. and Gong, Y. Y. (2015) 'A prospective study of growth and biomarkers of exposure to aflatoxin and fumonisin during early childhood in Tanzania', Environmental health perspectives, 123(2), pp. 173-178.