Garden Of Plenty

Context: ‘Poshan Vatikas’ can help bridge the nutrition gap in women and children.

About Poshan Vatikas or Nutritional Gardens Programme

• Towards self-reliance and adoption of sustainable food systems to address nutrition security amongst women and children
• Ministry of Women and Child Development to set up Poshan Vatikas across all anganwadi centres with the aim to provide a fresh supply of fruits, vegetables and even medicinal plants.
• Strategy: Encouraging community members to grow local food crops in their backyards and secure them with an inexpensive, regular and handy supply of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Significance of Poshan Vatikas Programme

• A successful global practice: School-yard Garden in the US, Nutri-garden in South-Africa, some trials also done in Nepal.
• Potential to address multiple goals of diet diversity, nutrition security, agri-food cultivation, local livelihood generation and environmental sustainability.
• Potential to bridge the nutrition gap in women and children: By promoting healthy dietary behaviours.
  • Addresses micro-nutrient deficiencies and protein requirements by establishing gardens with backyard poultry and fishing.
  • Improve awareness: Educate children for consumption of fresh food produce.
• Economic potential:
  • Generate alternate economic activity for local cultivators and village industries.
  • Land resource utilisation: As the scheme identifies potential land spaces that can be utilised to set up the Vatikas, including anganwadi centres, panchayat areas, government schools, vacant lands or any other patch of community/government land available in the locality.
• Emphasises on collective action by the Ministry of AYUSH, Ministry of Environmental Affairs, the MGNREGA scheme, Poshan Panchayats and mother groups.

Challenges ahead: Expected barriers for implementation may include access to cultivable land, availability of a water source, protection against grazing, bandwidth and skill sets of anganwadi workers, supply of seeds and inputs, and coordination between diverse stakeholders for translation of technical know-how on setting up of nutri-gardens.

Conclusion: Poshan Vatikas as a platform can provide the opportunity to make radical shifts in multi-dimensional arenas.