Addressing Community Food Security Through Gardening: A Review (Published)
As many residents struggle with access to fresh produce (fruits and vegetables) and continue to face food insecurity issues, community gardens can be used as a strategy in alleviating these challenges and helping families reduce pandemic-related economic losses by supplementing their diets with nutritious foods. Community gardens are a great way to increase food security, improve public health and reduce crime rates. With a variety of setups, locations, and goals, they can play an important role in making healthy, ethical, and sustainable food available to all people. Having abundant fresh produce readily available in the community reduces grocery bills for families and provides food options when they are low on groceries. Saving money and reducing food insecurity are two benefits. This was crucial during the pandemic when many people experienced financial losses due to unemployment, and it is still crucial given the rising price of food today. This paper, through a rigorous literature review, examines the contributions, and the positive impacts of community and home gardens towards addressing food insecurity and the overall well-being of household members and determines the type of gardening people practice, and common crops grown.
Citation: Buabeng F., and Aduteye E.K. (2022) Addressing Community Food Security Through Gardening: A Review, International Journal of Agricultural Extension and Rural Development Studies, Vol.9, No.4, pp.1-13
Keywords: Community, Food Security, Livelihood, backyard, garden, home gardens, urban farming
Rural Strategies for Flood Resilience: Analysis of Community Actions in Narayani River Basin, Nepal (Published)
In the context of Nepal, the most devastating disaster is flood in terms of the number of human causalities, livestock, livelihoods losses and damages. There are structural, soft structural, and nonstructural methods to reduce flood risks. In addition to these methods, there are also community actions being used for several years in the rural communities to mitigate, respond, and recover from the impacts of floods. The main objective of the research is to present an analysis of such community actions in the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) cycle, livelihood capitals, and Early Warning System (EWS) and then to summarize the conclusion. Accordingly, research was carried out in two communities, Kudiya and Paklihawa of Narayani river basin at Susta Rural Municipality, Nawalparashi-west, Nepal. The paper illustrates overall rural strategies adopted by community people to cope, withstand, and recover from the impacts of flood. The paper also includes an effective and efficient holistic approach to explain community-level empirical evidence. The paper illustrates the overall findings about community actions contributing to flooding resilience and these empirical evidences are found relevant, realistic, practical, and durable solutions in reducing the flood risks in the rural context of Nepal.
Keywords: Community, Flood, Livelihoods, Resilience, actions, capitals
Concerns on Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Security in East Africa (Published)
This is a paper review of work presented at the Machakos University second International Conference in Kenya. Using library research and reflection, document and content analysis were used to generate data, The East African region covered in the paper is that of the six countries set up as the East African Community in 2000. Their economies are reliant on agriculture with low agricultural productivity demonstrating some inabilities in poverty reduction as the majority of the farmers are smallholder farmers engaging mostly women labor. Food and nutrition security are not assured. The agricultural commodities for exports are not so competitive because of the low agricultural value chain with little value addition. The countries are sliding into being net importers of food despite having a huge potential for agriculture and the natural resources possessed. A green revolution, alignment of research and value addition of agricultural commodities including better infrastructure and markets will better their economies.
Keywords: Agriculture, Community, Productivity, Value addition, food and nutrition security
Community Participation in Rural Finance Institutions Management: Evidence from Nigeria (Published)
The study is institutional, focusing on an appraisal of the participation of Community Development Association (CDA) in the management of community banks in Nigeria. Thirty nine (39) regulators of the programme, drawn from the National Board for Community Banks; the then supervising agency, were the respondents. Structured questionnaire was used to obtain data on the roles and depth of involvement of the CDA in the bank’s management. Also the success of such roles and the challenges faced were examined. Simple and multiple percentages as well as chi-square (X2) were the statistical tools used in data analysis. The study found that even though the acquisition of the controlling equity by the CDA, as statutorily provided, was not fully successful, they were however involved in the bank’s management. Notable challenges such as the difficulty of using CDA when conflict exits in the host community, the presence of unfit CDA representatives in the bank’s board and tussles for board membership among the villages or communities owning the banks were evident.
Keywords: Bank Regulators, Community, Community Banks, Community Development Association, Community Participation