Family Food Security
From reading through student descriptions of their projects, the majority of the projects have at least one component in them relating to malnutrition. The underlying causes to malnutrition are complex. They can be related to climate change, desertification, extreme poverty, a lack of knowledge of family nutrition, insufficient farmland, or a lack of knowledge about home gardening.

But these underlying causes all contribute to the concept of food insecurity. The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”. Commonly, the concept of food security is defined as including both physical and economic access to food that meets people's dietary needs as well as their food preferences.

According to the World Health Organization, 49.7% of rural, indigenous Guatemalan children are malnourished. One of the reasons, is because as generations of families have grown, the amount of land available for growing staple food crops per family member has decreased. So today a corn crop which is normally harvested in November may only last a family until August. So they run out of his staple four months before the next harvest.

In other student projects we see an increasing shortage of water is reducing the level of crop production. Sometimes community members simply don't have the funds for simple tools, fertilizers and appropriate seed. The solutions to these problems may be outside of a family's ability to solve.

We can see that there are many facets to a lack of food security and I'm looking forward in this group to exploring the issues that each one of you come forth with.

I'm particularly interested in family gardens as a partial solution to the food security dilemma. But studies are few and the results of the studies are inconsistent. Some studies show that a majority of the requirements of leafy greens and vitamin producing fruits and vegetables can be provided by a family garden, and that family gardens can even generate income in the sale of surplus vegetables. Other studies are so positive.

However, for many people living in the cycle of poverty, the idea of starting a kitchen garden might seem overwhelming. It could be the time investment, it might be perceived costs. It might be a lack of know-how: what to plant, how to plant and how to care for a garden.

Be sure to visit our Family Food Security Working Group.