Backyard Gardens Models for Food Security and Nutrition of the Belizean households by Carlos A. Itza

Backyard gardening in nothing new to the rural areas in Belize. But the tradition of farming is being lost for younger generations and even school have little contribution in assisting that student be interested in agriculture as a science.

The village of Succotz displays a very particular community that would accept backyard gardening as a form of securing home food production due to the fact that it is a village that has many farmers and preserves some form of traditional farming practices. The village has suffered many years of cultural and traditional erosion that is very common to other Mayan communities. With this, precedence of obesity, hypertension and other coronary and dietary problems have been identified as are starting to be common.

Villagers has constantly expressed the interest of contributing to alleviate the problem being faced with, therefore one of the first initiative was called the Succotz Waste Disposal Project and the River Keeper initiative for a better clean and environmental village, and the introduction of Backyard Gardening Project.

 Stages of development of a family backyard Garden for the village of succotz.

·        1 Stage: inception stage where technical personnel conducted assessment of the place and the surrounding, the family interest, the family capacity and the required skill to initiate in the process of farming.

·         2 Stag: The family initiate activities in their backyard, received some technical assistance, and a lot of exchange in seasoned backyard gardeners in the area. This stage requires a lot of mentoring and technical assistance.

·        3 Stage: The farmer enters full production with the establishment of infrastructures required and elaborates all needed agricultural input.

·        4 Stage: The farmer is able to satisfy its family needs and has made great improvement in the involvement of all the family.

·        5 stage: The family is commercializing extra production or doing agroprocessing of the product, with some value adding.

·        6 Stage: The family is associating and making a steady and cyclical income.

·        7 stage: The family and the community are integrating other community opportunities in the business along innovation and technology transfer.

The Backyard Gardens initiated as a personal interest in providing assistance to 2 families in the Village of Succotz. Families were encouraged to plant using available space while avoiding invading family space and the ways of living.

To this date 6 Models are processing and further replication of the experience is being recommended.

The School based is the most slow moving Garden, even when it is 100% planted with 5 different variety of Vegetables. The biggest problem to school Garden is:

o  Teachers commitment

o  Student involvement at the Garden

o  Using the Garden as a teaching tool

o  Lack of incentive for producing

o  Community support because of the stealing of crops from school

Components of school Home Gardens

1.      Water harvesting – Water is indispensable for producing and animal rearing, especially during the low precipitation period in the area. People in villages generally have gutters and zinc houses that many times are not efficiency used, due to the fact that potable water is installed, therefore water for the family consumption is not a problem. But in production system, potable water contains high level of chlorine which affects major vegetable crops development, it is therefore important that the source of water is secure before anything else is done. Zinc houses have a huge surface area, that permit water catchment, it is estimated that x liters of water can be caught and stored in Rotoplast plastic drums for the required period of time, using various storage can guaranteed a secure source of water during the crop production cycle.

Water coming directly from the pipe is not recommended for irrigating plants in the backyard, due to a variable concentration of Chlorine in the water. Also village water is expensive if the family is to use this water. In the case there is no alternative, pipe water should be left stored and exposed to the sun for at least 3-5 days before using it in plants watering.

2.      Miniature seedling production units – Even though it is not encouraged to establish a seedling unit for the Model at the on-set because the family is not too trained in all the logistic aspects of seedling production and nutritional requirements. It is important that the family is able to produce seedlings at a timely manner and the production of seedling that have little requirements. (SEE Succotz Traditional Seedling Production Unit). 

It is important to emphasize the need to start with healthy and High resistant varieties of seeds, susceptible varieties can be established but planning of planting patterns and repellent plants is encourage.

3.      Rearing of small animals as a source of manure or meat – The rearing of local chicken and Rabbits and other pets is heavily encourage for this type of system, especially when their manure is usable. It is important that removal of manure do not add extra work to the family, but it needs to be done in a way that the manure falls directly to the site for composting or vermicomposting, this technique will be expanded.

In the absence of composting and manure within the system, the family needs to import from a reliable source. Cattle, sheep or rabbit manure are heavily encourage and it is advisable that they are in the last state of decomposition or composted before use, so as to avoid burning of plants.

In the case Natural grow plots are established, it is advisable to enrich manure with natural carriers of nutrients, but for those producing in general, mixture of mineral fertilizer can be done.

The Backyard promoter should be sensible to family traditions, family preference, knowledge of cooking patterns, religious believe, so that animals that are not accepted is forced to be reared. Also small animals that present a human health hazard should be discourage for rural areas, which are near the living population.

4.      Recycling and usage of disposable material – Families in villages generate a high range of disposable materials that can be classified as biodegradable and none biodegradable. The first category can be used in creating barriers that can be used for planting space, once they are not toxic to the environment and the family nor are considered contaminants.

In the second category, biodegradable, they can serve as a food source to your animals being reared or they can be composted, meat and other sources of food that stimulate zoonotic pathogens are discouraged. Composting of this material is encouraged either at the ground or containers, or even the use of worms. The complete techniques of using vermicomposting is heaving encourage, but required knowledge in Worm management, especially the type of food for obtaining high enriched compost. Rabbits have been demonstrated to be a source good vermicomposted material if fed with plants of high level of protein and nutrients. SEE Protein banks.

5.      Composting and vermicomposting

Composting materials is well documented, also the technique of using worms to eat and breakdown biodegradable is, as mentioned before, it needs to be learnt and integrated to the rest of the activities. Worms can also serve as a good source of protein for chickens and other birds. This can reduce other sources of protein required combined with carbohydrate or concentrate use, other sources can be explored or produced in the same farm.

The worms can be feed with news paper (wet) and can be done in small areas, back yards, or small housing with palms, so as to keep cool the area and to protected from getting wet, but there most me some structure from keeping it away from predators, such as birds, rats, cattle, so that they don’t destroy the area.

6.      Cleanliness of backyards/ Sanitation

It is important to note that many villages live in the middle of garbage surrounding their backyard and streets. These are just symptoms of the consumption patterns of children and inhabitants of those homes in villages. The introduction of backyard make villagers clean the spaces available while later understanding that even plants require clean areas while beautifying the area. Family resisted the ideas at the start but gradually accept the standard, especially when Garbage is classified and bins are provided. SEE Recycling

7.      Indigenous seed cultivation, for seed saving and replanting

The initial stage of the initiative we became cognizant of the fact that in Villages there is local or indigenous seeds saved by farmers in the area, but it does not cover all the plants that family usually plant. This is complemented with the fact that even household request seed or have identified a seed company as the main source of seed, sadly the majority of seed encourage or that farmers mention that have many benefits were Hybrids seeds, even over their local. This initiative demonstrated that local seeds are more sustainable for backyards, since the family is able to save more adaptable varieties every year without having to buy every year.

8.      Landscaping and site beautification (making home backyards a place to relax while producing)

Production of crops is not growing of a specific crop for a specific product, but each crop and the design of the whole backyard can be done in a way that it adds beauty to house and the yard. Additionally it can serve as a way of admiration and landscape beauty in annual competition of cleanliness that is conducted.

9.      Multicropping and crop diversity  of non-traditional crops

The amount of species found in gardens can dramatically increase every year, it was a challenge to change the ideology of only producing plants that are eatable, instead of other plants that have a beneficial effects in the system. Families were tempted to produce only those plants that they eat (Tomato, peppers, cabbage) than others that are used as plant repellents, nutrient contributors and biological pest attractants. They were mentioned that to be successful we have to mimic nature as much as possible

10.   Reduction and none use of Pesticide - Even when farmers were tempted to use pesticide in the first stage of pest attacks and crop loss, farmers were encourage using different innovative methods of pest control. Insects were handpicked and destroyed, while other fungal and bacterial problems triggered the use of house made biopesticide. Farmers were encouraged to use the following formulations, extracted from many bibliographic publications, therefore they were tested. Many of this formulation are currently used and further trials were encouraged, even with farmers in the community having the same problems and bigger acreages.

11. Integrated Pest Management – even when farmers are not completely comprehensive on the term of IPM, designing and introduction of varieties, planting system and biopesticide usage, the technical assistance provided introduces many techniques before hand to make the backyard garden a success from inset, daily inspection is encourage by family and weekly by volunteer technicians is conducted.

12.  Habitat conservation and biodiversity – The establishment of many plants in spaces that were not utilized has added that many local and appreciated animals find nesting and a habitat to feed and visit the area. Those that are detrimental to production are controlled, but those that are beneficial in pest control and other functioned are encouraged. It is important to note that no plants were removed from the backyard, only if it will avoid growing of crops properly. Areas around fruit trees and other plants are utilized as support for gardens, increasing available space above the ground, or for housing and support of cages for small animals. The best suited habitat is encouraged for plants and animals in the same space, while fertilizer the tree and increasing productivity. Many plants that were dying and not producing are producing a 100 fold of what they use to produce (orange, mango, sapodilla, papaya, and guava).

Trees can also served as a barrier to strong sun light and rain, while provide a very nice microclimate for any plant; it needs to be well managed.

13.  Innovation and adapting what is available

Household generally have many materials thrown all over the backyard, including reusable items. Families are encourage to continually find ways of improving on space usage, underground, ground level and upper ground, the resulting methods is initiating to build upper ground use using chicken wire and other materials for cultivating above ground.

14.  Knowledge acquiring and exchange – In our case many rural household have certain level of farming experience, but using conventional methods, high pesticide usage. The Model discourages the use of pesticide and inorganic fertilizers. Some household had no experience in farming, therefore the transition was challenging, one of the ways that was used to solve this problem was that a household with more experience was used to mentor and tutor household that had difficulty. The use of interested sons of farmers was encouraged at the initial stage and youth involvement.

15.  Youth and family empowerment – At the household level, young children in the family saw the experience as a burden and additional work, especially if they have a school responsibility. But the situation started to change when they are able to harvest and see the benefits obtain from the planting. It is important to note that young persons have a high resistance to hard labor force and patience in the time it takes to obtain an agricultural product. But using additional encourages methods and did you know? Strategies are able to attract them. Farming is still not well received by young people as an honorable work, because it is getting dirty and the perception is that farmers are poor people.

16.   Agro processing

We have not reached to this stage, but household with a Backyard garden with be used as a criteria for the selection of potential candidates to receive training in general and specific products. In this case, the women associations will be used to train this group along other interested groups. Agroprocessing is suppose to add value to the products, storage of fruits during natural disaster to be used by the household, sale of product for additional income and during excess production or adding nutritional value to the product. (This needs to go accompanied with marketing strategies, so that they know what to process and where to sell it after is done).Promotion, Presentation..Etc).

17.  Community awareness - At the first initial stage of establishing the Model, villages use to take us for Crazy. They had comments that would demoralize any individual household; because they had the perception that vegetal growing is only a science that Farmer knows best and even with this, farmer themselves have difficulty of growing many things without the use of pesticide and other techniques. The Model proof them wrong, in that it is indeed a growing process, but that it is possible.

18.  Protein banks

The growing of animals requires that adequate amount of products are produced to satisfy the daily requirements of animals that are being reared, only depending on excess or crop residue is not the answer to properly feeding your animals. Growing these plants should not take the space of desirable plant with nutritional value to the household, but instead it can be established in areas that are not used by the household, or of little attention, as barriers, wind protectors or pasturing areas. Also they can help to control de growing of weeds, thus reducing the investment in lawnmower and extra paid to someone to clean the yard

Benefits of the Home Gardens

-         Use of available spaces for a more productive area

-         More exercise by sedentary males and youths living in the house

-         Production of vegetables all year round

-         Encouraging consumption of nutritious plants and changing of dietary patterns

-         Money Earning and Savings

-         Educate youths of the importance of agriculture and about farming with the minimum pesticide used. 

REPLICATION OF EXPERIENCES IN OTHER VILLAGES   –

Transferring skills and techniques thru demonstration and illustration backyard models. Families interested are asked to visit the area and observe all the work that has been done.

The experiences will be transferred to the following villages and towns:

- Santa Elena

- Cristo Rey

- Buena Vista

- Ontario

- Benque Viejo