Assessment of food gardens as nutrition tool in primary schools in South Africa

Urban Farm DB summary

A cross-sectional survey of 90 primary schools (10 per province across South Africa's nine provinces) participating in the National School Nutrition Programme collected questionnaire data from 66 garden administrators, 55 garden workers, 687 educators and 2,547 learners, with an observational checklist completed for 66 gardens. Sixty-six schools (73%) had a food garden, ranging from 100 to 6,000 m² and growing a variety of vegetables but few fruits. Reported problems included lack of funds (59%), lack of tools and infrastructure (47%), lack of garden workers (53%) and lack of technical support (50%), and few gardens received external funding. In 50% of gardens crops grew for more than six months, and 30% supplied fresh produce to school meals more than twice a week; 54% of learners were involved in school gardens and 67% had food gardens at home, with 68.4% of learners and 86.4% of educators reporting they liked eating vegetables every day.