Garden ownership as a solution to food insecurity in urban areas of South Africa: case of food gardens in Alice Town, Eastern Cape province

Abstract

Programs like Siyazondla Homestead Gardens, Siyakhula and Massive Food Production Program were introduced by the provincial government of the Eastern Cape province with the aim of improving household food production, nutrition and food security. However, full ownership of food gardens by households has been a challenge. Thus, this paper investigates the factors influencing the ownership of home gardens by Alice Town households. Households in Alice Town, Eastern Cape province were purposively selected for data collection, and a structured questionnaire was employed. A binary logistic regression model was adopted to determine the factors that influence food gardens ownership among the sampled households. Results show that three variables that influenced food gardens ownership were location, land access and education level. These variables had a significance level of 5%. The paper concludes that having access to food gardens by city dwellers can help improve their food security status. However, owning a garden is a challenge due to the variables highlighted. Thus, it is important to promote associations in urban areas and provide training and workshops that can improve the productivity of home garden owners. This is how access to better nutrition and safe, rich and fresh vegetables can be achieved.