In the wake of COVID-19 and its threat to food security, an agric. non-governmental organization, Agrihouse Foundation, has launched ‘1 Household, 1 Garden initiative’.

The initiative primarily aims to provide households a simple and easily accessible source of augmenting their daily food need as a sustainable lifestyle, especially as the importance of such a living was underscored by the costly restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Already, over 600 households have registered to the initiative within one week of the project’s introduction to the public.

In an interview, the Executive Director of Agrihouse Foundation, Ms Alberta Nana Akyaa Akosa indicated that, the Phase 1 of the project, which will be rolled-out in three schemes of implementation, has just been closed for any new entry in order to allow for proper attention, impact and satisfactory service to each subscribed household. The second phase commences as soon as phase one household subscribers have been effectively taken care of.

An analysis of households already signed on indicate that 43 percent come from Accra, 11 percent from the north, 17 percent from Ashanti Region, 3 percent from Volta, 3 percent Eastern and 23 percent from scattered across the rest of the Regions.

The varieties of mixed vegetables being offered free-of-charge to households will include small plants (radish, carrot, onion, spinach, beetroot, okra, lettuce); large plants (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant and pepper; and vertical plants (tomato, cucumber, green beans and peas).

“As an interventional organization, aside from our other roles of advocacy and conducive environments for agric dialogues and business, we identify gaps, especially in our agricultural space and food requirement, and quickly set out to devise means to fill in such gaps,” Ms Alberta Nana Akyaa Akosa, the Executive Director of Agrihouse Foundation stated.

“So, this initiative comes as our proactive reaction to the spate of food scarcity and hunger we witnessed during the onset of the recent lockdown the nation went through. Indeed, the 1 Household, 1 Garden initiative is our long-term complement to government’s ongoing efforts to further enrich the lives of households,” Ms Akosa further added.