Emphasis laid on preparing kitchen garden for nutrition

Dibrugarh: Scientists of Krishi Vigyan Kendra here, as part of the Union Government's National Nutrition Month celebration, has been organizing several awareness-cum-mass sensitization programmes at various locations in the district since the first week of September this year

The Government of India is celebrating the National Nutrition Month since 2018 during the month of September to reduce stunting in children aged between 0 and 6 years from 38.4 per cent to 25 per cent by 2022. According to UNICEF and WHO estimates, in India every second child belonging to that age group is affected by some form of malnutrition such as stunting (low height for age) with 35 per cent of the children, wasting (low weight for height) with 17 per cent and 2 per cent overweight. So there is an urgent need for every household to run an effective kitchen garden to help in the country's war against malnutrition because it is affordable, cheap and beneficial.

Speaking on the occasion, Hemchandra Saikia, Subject Matter Specialist in Agricultural Economics, urged the participants of farming community of Pandhuwa village of the district to prepare an effective kitchen garden with the inclusion of all the suitable vegetables, fruits, herbal and medicinal plants in every household with the adoption of improved method of cultivation.

He said, "Kitchen garden can supply almost all essential vitamins and minerals required for balanced nutrition and thus helps immensely in controlling or eliminating the problem of malnutrition among our all categories of household, be it urban or rural. As major portion of our household in our society is not economically sound enough to buy their much needed vitamins and mineral from industrial source, so in such a situation, if every household always maintains a kitchen garden according to their resource constraints, then they can easily obtain all micronutrients from the cultivation of fruits and vegetables in their kitchen garden. For rural areas it is not a problem but for urban areas also they can have kitchen garden in their rooftop or other easily available artificial means, besides using vertical gardening."

Sangita Bora Saikia, an expert in community science, explained about the dietary requirement of children and pregnant women and urged the participants to take special timely care in this regard. Gautam Bora, a technical assistant, spoke about the technique of soil sample collection and requested farmers to submit their soil sample at Krishi Vigyan Kendra Dibrugarh in order to get a Soil Health Card free of cost.

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