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By Adekoya Alex Akande
Harvesting fresh vegetables from your garden is a way to improve your household’s nutritional intake. Nigerians are currently grappling with food insecurity, and food inflation is still above 20%.
The cost of living is beyond the reach of low-income earners. Food inflation is yet to recover from the naira devaluation, and logistics because insecurity in North Central Nigeria.
According to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics (NBS), “in October 2025, the price of food in Nigeria went up 13.12% compared to the same month in 2024. From 1996 to 2025, food prices in Nigeria went up by an average of 14.14 percent. In June 2024, they reached an all-time high of 40.87 percent, while in January 2000, they hit an all-time low of -17.50 percent.”
Homegrown food would improve the nutrition and food intake of families, as it provides them with access to a wider range of fresh foods. It has both current and future possibilities in the fight against hunger and malnutrition, as it is one of the traditional community methods of food supply that remains relevant today.
Home Garden as Food Support and Financial Relief
This article identifies two major areas home gardens often serve: they support household food security and reduce the family budget for food.
1. Reduces household food insecurity
Research shows that many Nigerian homes practice gardening, which for a long time has had impacts on food insecurity and sources of nutrition for households. Having a garden could:
Increased Availability and Dietary Diversity: During the harvest, households have access to fresh food, such as tomatoes, peppers, and vegetables with high nutrients for family consumption. Research shows that families that engage in gardening can harvest about half of the household fruit and vegetable supply within the garden. These practices help households with their dietary diversity, prevent malnutrition in children, and support them with vitamins from fresh food.
Support price stability: Anytime the households can harvest fresh and staple foods from the garden, they are less vulnerable to the incessant price increases in the market. The households are not likely to rebuy the produce they have gotten from the home garden, which would reduce the cost of going to the market and any other related logistics.
2. Direct impact on the national food inflation
While the home garden itself may not directly impact the inflationary rate, the more people who can provide the fresh food and vegetables they need from their backyard, the less the majority would have to spend. The impacts would include:
Reduce household bills: Harvesting food in the garden will reduce household bills on such food, which will allow the household to save money and allocate more money to other areas of need, such as health or education.
Sources of Income: Any surplus food from the garden is always preserved and sold for more income for the family. The family can start a home business with the excess produce from the garden, such as tomatoes, peppers, and vegetables, which become another source of income for the household. Research shows that about 87.5% of households in Southeast Nigeria participate in home gardening for extra income.
Donation to the food-insecure family: The surplus food from the garden can be donated to the food pantries, NGOs, and other community members who are food-insecure.
Strategies to Support the Home Garden Movement
Having a garden within the communities is not always an easy task because of limited space, knowledge of gardening, and restrictions on using insecticides in residential areas. To achieve some level of food security in Nigeria, the society must encourage household gardens as a strategy to complement the farm produce in the open market.
Local government advocacy: The local government can provide households with seedlings, fertilizers, and biological pest control at affordable prices.
Community Training Facilities: Provide continuous training about green farming and vertical farming methods with potential high yield in limited spaces.
Community Land Banks: Landowners or other underutilized community open spaces can be converted into a vertical farming system, allocated to youth for a community garden, thereby creating jobs.
In conclusion, homegrown food would be a simple strategy to meet the family’s food shortage and complement total family purchases from the open market. The aim is to provide more food-secure families in Nigeria and encourage people to eat a diversity of foods without breaking the bank.
