How Bijapur fought acute malnutrition through millets and decentralisation

The “one cow per poor family” initiative in Rwanda seeks to increase household income and fight malnutrition by giving families a cow to raise. Once the cow gives birth, the calf is given to another family to raise, keeping the process going. Since the program started in 2006, a total of 341,065 cows have been distributed and residents say it has improved their livelihoods.

mDoc's Garden in a Box initiative distributes biodegradable seed kits to pregnant women identified through nutritional screening as having critical dietary gaps. The women are enrolled through a structured coaching and referral system in primary healthcare facilities and community outreach points, and receive ongoing support via a digital health platform. More than 300 women have been referred to the initiative and 96% collected a seed box.

The National Home Grown School Feeding program provides food to schoolchildren to support their health and education while simultaneously supporting local cooks and farmers. During its operation, the program reached millions of students across 3o states and led to a 20% increase in primary school enrollment.

The Home-Grown School Feeding Program provides one square meal a day to students in public primary schools in an effort to combat poor school attendance and malnutrition, feeding thousands of students each day. In addition to improving the economic conditions for farmers and food vendors, as well as rates of malnutrition, the program has led to a 35.6% increase in school enrollment.

Grain banks allow community members in need to access food grain by buying into a bank-like system. The grain bank system helps communities work together to feed themselves and gain more control of their well-being and livelihoods.

To address community malnutrition, 22 mothers began a savings and credit cooperative, which has since grown to 59 members. An elected committee looks for the most nutritionally vulnerable members, who are eligible for a small interest-free loan to improve the nutrition of their families. The women pay a membership fee and when loans are repaid, the cooperative gets a small percentage of the profits, which can be paid in installments until the whole amount is repaid. The group’s savings has also helped them buy animals that provide nutritious food products and organic fertilizers for their crops.

Seattle’s urban agriculture community saw a boom during the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests. BIPOC-led urban farms — like YES Farm and Black Star Farmers — had an increase in volunteers and people wanting to help provide food security, agricultural education, and land access to communities who don’t have their basic needs met. In the first half of 2020, the city of Seattle assigned plots of land to 439 new gardeners to pursue urban farming, with nearly half of them going to underrepresented populations.

The ability of community gardens to supply healthy food to those who might not have their basic needs met has grown in importance as coronavirus continues to spread across the United States. For example, the New Roots community gardening initiative in Salt Lake City helps nearly 150 refugee families raise food on plots, and about 86 percent of the gardeners report saving an average of $30 a week by growing their own food. However, the future of this program, and others around the country in New York City, Seattle, and Minneapolis, are uncertain as they face budget cuts from cities amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Haiti suffered tremendous losses after the 2010 earthquake, exacerbating the devastation in an already impoverished country. In 2015, agriculture in Haiti is a growing business backed by the United States’ Feed the Future Initiative. Nourishment and health of mothers and babies has also improved with the encouragement of breastfeeding and sweet potatoes.

The local non-profit Nuru Nigeria trained nearly 2,000 women in conflict-affected Adamawa State communities to cultivate backyard vegetable gardens, providing locals with a reliable food source. The program distributed drought-resistant, nutrient-rich seeds and taught women how to integrate balanced, vitamin-rich diets that address malnutrition. Women who participated in the program report measurable health improvements in their families, including fewer illnesses and healthier pregnancies.