Impact of Home Gardening on Food Security among Households: A Case Study in Kandy District, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Home gardening is a farming practice on the area of land surrounding the family home. Kandy district has a unique home gardening system consisting of spice crops, certain food crops, timber and medicinal plants. The main objective of this study is to measure the economic impact of home gardening on households. Further it assesses the association between home gardening and food security level. A standardized questionnaire was used to collect data from a randomly selected sample ofc80 households. Chi-square and discriminant analysis were used to check the association between home gardening and food security level and to discriminate the food security levels. Basic statistic indicators of the sample were calculated using descriptive statistics. The study revealed that there is a significant positive association between home gardening and food security level of the respondents. According to the results 77.5% of households with home gardens were food secure and only 55% of households without home gardens were food secure. The proportion of earnings from home gardening to average income, ranged between 7% and 38.29%. Discriminant functions were developed to discriminate respondents according to the food security levels. The home gardens increased food availability of household resulting in increased food security level and reduced the food expenditure. The general idea of the respondents towards home gardening was positive and there is was a potential to popularize home gardening in Kandy district by "Divi Neguma" program