While significant progress has been made on food insecurity worldwide -- there are 200 million fewer hungry people around the world compared with 25 years ago -- some 790 million people still do not get enough to eat, and an estimated 3.1 million children worldwide die of malnutrition each year, accounting for about 45 percent of all child deaths in 2011.
One strategy to tackle the ongoing issue of world hunger, particularly in developing parts of the world where less progress on food insecurity has been made, is the proliferation of school gardens, argues a story on the Christian Science Monitor’s Change Agent blog platform published earlier this month.
In the post from Global Envision, a blog partner of the platform, Maya Rait argues that school gardens increase awareness of healthful, more nutritious eating and help dispel the myth that fresh fruits and vegetables are “poor people’s food” compared with the highly processed fast foods that are becoming increasingly available globally.
In addition, Rait points to research showing that school gardens can improve students’ understanding of and attitudes toward the environment. Other recent research has shown that school gardens can encourage students to exercise more as well as improve their test scores.
Among of the examples of a successful school garden program outlined in the story is the EduPlant initiative in South Africa, which supports the efforts of schools attempting to get new gardens off the ground. Another, the GATE program in Belize, has expanded to more than 40 gardens nationwide, Rait reports.
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