Teaching children about food production and environmental stewardship
It’s been a while since I wrote anything on Medium.
Well, today as I was sitting down at home thinking about what I was going to write about, I remembered that last weekend was a completely interesting weekend when I took my kids to go garden.
And so I would like to dedicate this article to those looking at going into urban gardening and to urge them to have their kids tag along.
I believe this article holds significance because, now more than ever, city residents are overlooking the delight and significance of gardening. In Kenya, we refer to this as heading to the shamba.
A while back, I read in a certain World Bank report that said, ‘Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s fastest urbanizing region, with an annual urban population growth rate of 4.1 percent (Kenya’s is 3.7% (2022), in comparison to the world’s rate of 2 percent (2017)’. In plain language, this means that the rate at which people from sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are moving from rural areas to cities is twice as fast as the global average. This suggests that African migrants, due to their urban migration, are rapidly disconnecting from their rural origins, including the knowledge of farming and gardening. As a result, children born in the city have very limited practical experience in growing food or raising domestic animals.
Having been raised on a farm, this statistic naturally sparked my curiosity. It’s a topic I believe is worth exploring, especially in the context of how urban kids are becoming increasingly disconnected from nature’s marvel and rural life. That’s one part of it. The other part is equally significant: the need to acquire sustainable food-growing skills.
In fact, in 2022, I found the inspiration to address this problem and developed an innovative product known as the Edible Grow Kit for Kids. The idea behind this kit was to enable children to learn how to cultivate tomato plants, coriander, or sunflowers with the assistance of a plant tracking app. I was thrilled when the innovative idea won the Best Innovation award in the Student Category at the Safaricom Hackathon 2022, which was held during the University of Nairobi’s Nairobi Innovation Week.
Nevertheless, I’d like to revisit the beginning of this story, which is when I recently introduced my children to the experience of planting food on a shamba for the very first time.
Back in my own childhood, we were fortunate to live on a farm, where we could witness the entire process of planting and harvesting various crops, from maize and beans to bananas and groundnuts. We also learned how to care for chickens, tend to cows, milk them, and engage in various farming activities throughout the seasons. We weren’t just passive observers; we actively participated in every aspect. At that time, it was something we took for granted.
However, later on, when I moved to Nairobi for school and work, I transitioned to urban city living, and these experiences became distant memories. Fast forward to when I got married and had children of my own, I began to realize the disconnection between urban life and the essential knowledge of farming, animal husbandry, and food production. This realization led me to take my kids to the shamba, even though there were workers handling most of the tasks. I wanted to ensure that my children had the opportunity to gain that vital exposure, which, in my opinion, is incredibly valuable.
I’d love to recount the experience my kids had. It was a wonderful day. We arrived a bit later, after the workers had already been toiling in the fields, preparing the soil. On that day, my children and I brought lunch for the workers who were assisting us on the farm.
What was particularly fascinating was the infectious enthusiasm. For my kids, this trip was a grand adventure. They were all decked out in their gumboots, and I had thoughtfully applied sunscreen to protect them from the sun. They had even borrowed Mommy and Daddy’s safari bucket hats for extra shade. It was incredible to witness how resilient the kids were in the face of the heat, and their genuine interest in learning about crop cultivation was evident. Together, we sowed our Bambara groundnuts, a variety of underutilized groundnut, that possess the potential to contribute to improved dietary and environmental sustainability. They are not easily accessible, and some consider them a rare delicacy, often prepared by mixing them with red kidney beans and maize (Githeri) and reserved for special occasions. (You can refer to the picture above for a visual of Bambara also known as Zimbande in my mother tongue).
We also sowed flower seeds that I had collected during a trip to Nanyuki, where I purchased ammi whites, dahlias, zinnia elegans, snapdragons, and bells of Ireland.
The workers and I also demonstrated how to apply manure to the plants. We used farmyard manure, placing it along the rows where the seeds had been dropped at intervals, and then the workers would cover up the seeds. The entire process was quite exciting. For my children, it was their first experience to plant food, and it was truly wonderful. They had never been exposed to the intricacies of crop cultivation before — from the precise number of bean seeds to place in each hole, to the subsequent steps of adding manure and covering the seeds with a jembe (hoe) properly to bury the seed.
On that day, we cultivated more than 15 diverse types of local food plants, including both Irish and sweet potatoes, transplanted pineapples, traditional vegetables like murenda (jute mallow), mitoo (slender leaf), sakaa (spider plant), and kunde (cowpea leaves), pinto beans, groundnuts, Bambara nuts, millet, sunflowers, cabbages, onions, carrots, coriander, muhogo (cassava), and a variety of ornamental flowers.
I believe that those few hours will be etched in my kids’ memories.
Going forward, I am committed to ensuring that I continue to take them to the shamba because I consider this experience to be just as crucial as their formal education. It’s an essential skill that allows them to learn and grasp the intricacies of food production and organic farming.
Many children in urban cities are typically aware that their food originates from supermarkets or groceries market, often lacking insights into the timeline required for crops to grow and the complexities involved in the process of production, harvesting, and ultimately stocking the shelves. I’d like to maintain the hope that my children will not fall into that category.
I’d like to extend an encouraging message to all parents raising their children in urban environments: consider introducing your children to the process of food cultivation. This could involve occasional visits to their grandparent’s countryside farm to engage in gardening, or it might entail taking them to the plot of (city) land one has acquired to teach them how to grow short-term crops like carrots, onions, beans, peas, potatoes (both Irish and sweet), carrots, and tomatoes and for long term crops try maize, millet, sunflower, and even fruit trees.
Today, gardening is an invaluable skill, on par with intellectual development. It not only fosters an appreciation for nature but also instills love for the environment, emphasizing that the soil is the source of our sustenance. Children should grasp this through practical experience — feeling the soil, tending to the plants, and witnessing the entire growth process from planting to harvest.
In addition to acquiring the knowledge of food production and reaping the associated health benefits, children also develop a profound respect for and commitment to conserving our environment. Through these experiences, we can nurture a generation of children who will serve as custodians of the environment, safeguarding it for future generations.
References
Tan, X.L. , Azam-Ali, S., Von Goh. E., Mustafa, M., Chai, H. H., Ho, W. K., Mayes, S., Mabhaudhi, T., Azam-Ali, S., Massawe, F. (2020, December 10). Bambara Groundnut: An underutilized leguminous crop for global food security and nutrition. Front. Nutr., 10 December 2020, Sec. Nutrition and Sustainable Diets 7, 2020. doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2020.601496
World Bank. (2022). Urban population growth (annual %) — Sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.GROW?locations=ZG-KE License: CC BY 4.0
World Bank. (2017). World Development Indicators 2017. © Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/26447 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.