One of the easiest ways of ensuring access to a healthy diet that contains adequate macroand micronutrients is to produce varied kinds of vegetables in the Kitchen garden. This is especially important in rural areas where people have limited income-earning opportunities and poor access to markets. Nutritional gardens are also becoming an increasingly important source of nutrition and any surplus and income for poor households in rural and peri-urban areas. A well-developed kitchen garden has the potential, when access to land and water is not a major limitation, to supply most of the non-staple foods that a family needs every day of the year, including roots, tubers, vegetables, fruits and legumes. As India’s population grows, demand for vegetables is expected to increase to about 220 million tons by 2020. To combat the bane of low nutrition intake amongst the pregnant women, lactating mothers , infants children, and adolescents nutrition gardens can be a blessing for tackling the scourge of low nutrition intake, under nutrition and malnutrition.Its important features are:
Additional income generation for rural families is also promoted, not only through direct sale of home produce but also from indirect savings as a result of reduced health care expenditure and savings on expenditure of vegetables. Nutrition Kitchen Garden can improve dietary diversification and increased consumption of micronutrient-rich food by target groups. It is expected that each plot can yield 600 kgs of vegetables in three seasons.