Contribution of homestead food gardens towards food availability in Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality-Region 7, Gauteng Province of South Africa

Abstract

The government of South Africa has a political and economic incentive to guarantee that people have access to enough nutritious food to always meet their needs, but many households in the nation still struggle to attain food security. Among its various initiatives, the South African government has introduced a Homestead Food Garden (HFG) program that aims to increase food production to combat hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity. Even though the struggle to achieve food security at household level in peri-urban areas of Gauteng Province dates back a long period, it has remained as a challenge goal even today. The study's objective was to determine how much HFG contributes to the availability of food in households in region 7 in the City of Tshwane and the factors that influence this availability using the Ordered Logistic Regression (ORD) model. A total of eleven explanatory variables were included in the pragmatic model. To ensure a representative sample size, 258 individuals were chosen at random from the study's survey design, which was quantitative in nature. Face-to-face interviews were conducted to gather data using a semi-structured questionnaire. The results showed that 83% of the participants continued to cultivate their homestead gardens after receiving support from HFG program; thus, the program improved food availability in the households of the gardeners. Food availability was positively and significantly influenced by age, other support program received, and the availability of homestead gardens (p<0.01). From seasonal perspectives, there were more food available from domestic gardens in the summer than in the winter. In addition, more food was available in spring season gardens than in summer and winter. The type of food crops cultivated by majority (65%) of the participants was spinach. As such, HFG program improved household food availability mostly during spring and summer. Therefore, it is advised that policymakers should encourage targeted communities and youth to utilize vacant space in their backyards for food gardening. As part of HFG program, government should provide training about rainwater harvesting techniques to enable gardeners to conserve water for sustainable production throughout the year.