In a quaint little village named Birkhio in Umerkot, a woman named Pohno experienced loss and suffering as her cherished goats, a primary source of livelihood for her, fell prey to skin diseases and infections. The devastating floods in 2022 had not only damaged lands and taken lives in the area but had also led to a spread of infectious diseases among people and livestock both.

Sadly, Pohno’s animals were among the many thousands who had succumbed to the post-flood epidemic. As a widow and single mother of three adult children, all of whom had their own responsibilities now, Pohno found herself in a challenging situation – without any means of income.

“My primary source of livelihood revolved around the livestock we possessed. But my world was swept away along with the floods that struck Birkhio last year. The floodwaters contaminated our surroundings, leaving our goats exposed to a range of harmful pathogens. The skin diseases and infections ultimately led to the demise of most of my livestock,” lamented Pohno. She had heavily relied on her goats for sustenance and income, and their loss had left her devastated. Pohno owned a total of 35 goats, 20 of which perished due to underlying issues. The primary problem leading to their demise was the insufficient supply of proper nutrition to their bodies. The remaining 15 goats were only able to survive because Pohno started providing them with extra care.

To support households and individuals affected by the economic and social impact of the floods, Community World Service Asia and its long-term partners, Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe (DKH) initiated a humanitarian project to provide essential relief resources that would be sustainable but also income-generating.

As a participant of the project, Pohno received animal food and health kits that were designed to retain and improve the health of her remaining goats. These kits included medicines, vitamins, and hygiene products specifically tailored to increase the well-being of local livestock. Pohno also received Hydroponic seeds, which helped her produce a more nutritious diet for her livestock. “The use of Hydroponic seeds has been something new and very innovative for us. It is a novel approach that has incorporated specific leaves into the goats’ diet, enhancing their overall health and improving their skin conditions.”

During dry seasons in Umerkot, there is a huge scarcity of nutritious fodder for livestock, leaving them with little to consume apart from dry leaves, making them weak and leaving them hungry. Hydroponic, on the other hand, is a type of fodder that takes approximately ten days to grow and is then fed to the goats. It involves mixing Hydroponic grass with dry grass to provide the goats with enhanced nutrition. This proved to be a pivotal factor in significantly improving the health of Pohno’s goats. “Incorporating these leaves into the goats’ diet had a profound impact. It provided the goats with a valuable infusion of essential nutrients and antioxidants, strengthening their immune systems and equipping them to combat infections effectively. The combination of this improved diet, along with the medication and hygiene measures supplied in the health kits, resulted in a remarkable transformation in the overall health and well-being of the goats.”

Pohno was among sixteen individuals who received training under the project to strengthen the livelihoods and resilience of communities that lived below poverty and those that were most vulnerable to climate change impact. This training became instrumental in familiarising participants with the use of hydroponic seeds and their advantages for livestock survival. It also helped communities learn about proper feeding practices and timings necessary for improving the health of their livestock.

As the health of Pohno’s goats improved, they began to produce better-quality milk. This not only benefited Pohno’s own household (where she takes care of her ailing daughter) but also served as an additional source of income for her. The recovery of her goats instilled a renewed sense of hope and strength in Pohno’s life, empowering her to regain control over her livelihood.

Kitchen Gardens: A sustainable model for food security & diversity for the people of Umerkot

“We, none of us in this village, ever thought of keeping a kitchen garden. It was something beyond our thinking,” with these words Sohdi of village Charihar Bheel echoes the voice of thousands of women and men across the desert area of Umerkot. This is what they believed until Community World Service Asia (CWSA) launched the training sessions on kitchen gardening.

Now, even though they live in a sand desert, the communities of Umerkot are all farmers and livestock keepers. Their practice has long been to plough their fields in late June and sow the seeds of their seasonal crops in anticipation of the coming monsoon. For vegetables, however, they made a separate set of furrows on one side of the main field. Because the fields are outside the village, sometimes a little way off too, there was no way of watering them. Therefore, while hardy crops like guar beans, mong or millets could survive until the rains begin in July, the vegetable seeds needed watering.

Consequently, the seeds that made it through until the first shower produced a small crop of vegetables to last a few days. If the rains were good, the farmer’s family had a supply of wholesome, organic vegetables for a few weeks. And then the plants withered. That is, a farming family in Umerkot had vegetables only once a year during the first fall of summer rains. Of course there is the hardy chibhar (Cucumis melo agrestis), wild and abundant in the summer whose miniature melon-like fruit can either be stewed fresh or dried. There is also the kandi (Prosopis cinerara) tree with its leguminous seed pods that make another nourishing stew known as singri. And then, during the monsoon, the people of Umerkot have the luxury of a fine and rather abundant mushroom, even if for a short while.

This, then, is the limit of their fresh local vegetables. The other source is purchasing from the city. This is done only when someone is in town for work; to go especially for vegetables would make the purchase unaffordable. Since there is no way to stock them fresh at home, the purchase is usually for two or three days and consumed in this period before the vegetables go off. Unsurprisingly, the usual diet in Umerkot was wheat or millet flatbread with chilli paste washed down with water. Variety in diet was virtually unknown for the most part of the year.

Yet, as Sohdi says, no one ever thought of preparing a patch nearer to their home to have a regular supply of fresh vegetables.

The kitchen gardening intervention, by Community World Service Asia, Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB) and Presbyterian World Service & Development (PWS&D), with relief following the drought of 2021 introduced the farmers of Umerkot to the idea nobody had thought of before: a small patch right by the house for vegetables. This is always in the charge of the woman of the household and speaking with several of them one can learn how to manage a kitchen garden for fresh vegetables: water the patch and keep it moist for three days before adding animal manure. Then prepare the furrows and plant the seeds. Flood irrigation is a wasteful idea of the past; watering should be done with a used PET¹ cola bottle with its cap punctured to deliver a small stream in the root of the sprouting plant. And the kitchen garden is ready to supply vegetables two to three weeks after the sowing.

An hour distance away, in New Subani, the very vocal Dai who is a member of every committee in the village, has no doubt how well her kitchen garden serves her family. She says she planted her first patch in March 2022 with okra, chibhar, guar, cucumber, squash and zucchini. It was very fruitful and she has never looked back since. The garden sowed in March lasted until the middle of May before withering away in the arid pre-monsoon heat. “Everyday we had vegetables with our chapatti which beats chilli paste any time. And my crops of squash, okra and zucchini were so abundant, I gave away vegetables gratis to my neighbours,” she says.

According to Dai, the fear of what to feed a visitor was banished from her life after she began her kitchen garden. That year, Dai did her second batch in July. The rains were very good and her garden lasted well into August. She kept the seeds from her vegetables and with some supplied by CWSA, planted a very successful kitchen garden again in March 2023. In July, she yet again had a little garden coming along well after the first rain of the season.

Earlier, every year Dai planted a small patch of vegetables by the side of her agricultural plot. It was always a dicey business. To get some little out of it was considered good fortune, and that only when it rained on time. But the CWSA training on kitchen gardening and this idea of having the patch next to her home has made her a supplier of free vegetables to her neighbours and anyone who comes asking.

Far away in Kachbe Jo Tar, another village in the same district, school teacher Bhammar Lal Bheel tends his wife’s kitchen garden. He speaks of the joy of having fresh spinach, okra, eggplant, marrow and pumpkin and says that the variety of the menu in his home has given him more energy than he ever had. “The millet chapati (unleavened flatbread) slides down very easily when taken with a vegetable stew,” he says with a smile.

Being the man who goes frequently into town, he knows the rate of vegetables and recounts it for the listener. Two days’ worth of greens for a family of eight members like his put one back by at least PKR 800 (Approx. USD 2.75). And even then the vegetables were not very fresh. He also knows that they are treated with harmful chemical pesticides. But now with their own kitchen garden the family has fresh, straight off the stalk vegetables that are one hundred percent organic too. It is free because CWSA provided his wife the seed to augment her stock she saves from her previous garden.

Bhammar Lal produced a MUAC (Mid Upper Arm Circumference) measuring tape. He says he first of all began by measuring MUAC in his own family and was surprised by the progressive increase in size among the children in the weeks following the addition of vegetables to their diet. Then he went around the village comparing the measurements of those families with kitchen gardens with those who did not have them. “There was such a clear difference, not only in children’s MUAC, but of grown women as well. That speeded up my personal campaign to encourage more and more kitchen gardens,” he says with visible pride. “It’s the vitamins!”

Bhammar Lal says his wife participated in the CWSA training sessions and learned how to make the best of the little vegetable garden. But there are women who were not part of the training and who are not in on this little open secret. “I go around the village instructing other women on how to make a kitchen garden. And then I follow up a few days later and if they are not at it, I encourage them to at least try it out,” he says. He is happy that by his effort, there are many more kitchen gardens in the village. To paraphrase Sohdi again: everyone is happy because chapati goes down so well with stewed vegetables.

Not too far, in Rohiraro village, the ever-smiling Gauri points out one effect of the kitchen gardens that have now sprouted almost all over the village. And this may not have been foreseen by the NGO: with the vegetable patch to look after, women have not gone to ‘Sindh’ (as they refer to the irrigated districts to the west) last year and again in 2023. In consequence, children who leave school in March to travel with the family and return after the summer vacations have had two full years of education.

In Gauri’s view, the real winner is education. That is even more important than just good health.

1. Polyethylene Terephthalate