As the novel Coronavirus continues to spread and pose a threat to food security, an agric, non-governmental organization, Agrihouse Foundation has launched its ‘1 Household, 1 Garden’, 1H1G initiative.
The initiative, primarily aims to provide households with a simple and easily accessible source of augmenting their daily food need as a sustainable lifestyle, especially as the importance of such a living was underscored by the costly restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The initiative which is in its first phase of implementation is also intended to scale-up government’s ongoing efforts to support families and communities to be more self-reliant.
Already, close to 700 homes have registered for the first phase of the 1H1G project all over the country with about 43% of households registered in Accra, 17% in Ashanti, 11% from the Northern, 3% from Volta and Eastern and 23% scattered across the rest of the regions.
In an interview, Executive Director of Agrihouse Foundation, Ms Alberta Nana Akyaa stated that the first phase of the project which will be rolled out in three schemes of implementation, has just been closed in order to allow for proper attention, impact and satisfactory service to each subscribed household.
“The second phase commences as soon as phase one household subscribers have been effectively taken care of,” she added.
She also stated that, “as an interventional organization, aside from our other roles of advocacy and conducive environments for agric dialogues and business, we identify gaps, especially in our agricultural space and food requirement, and quickly set out to devise means to fill in such gaps.”
“So, this initiative comes as our proactive reaction to the spate of food scarcity and hunger we witnessed during the onset of the recent lockdown the nation went through. Indeed, the 1 Household, 1 Garden initiative is our long-term complement to government’s ongoing efforts to further enrich the lives of households. It will not only make the average Ghanaian household self-reliant, in the area of food availability, but also add extra earnings to their coffers as they also imbibe the habit of eating garden-fresh foods, knowing what you are eating,” she added.
For its construction and maintenance, the standards used for the wooden trays, 1sqm (one square meter), is the same as that used for organic cultivation; and recyclable materials shall also be used.
The varieties of mixed vegetables being offered free-of-charge to households will include small plants (radish, carrot, onion, spinach, beetroot, okra, lettuce); large plants (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant and pepper; and vertical plants (tomato, cucumber, green beans and peas).