Growing nutritious food
Read about our food security and nutrition approach.Trees provide nutritious fruit, nuts, and leaves, giving people stable supplies of food, even when other crops fail. They provide an alternative, reliable source of food, supporting farming communities to adapt to the effects of the climate crisis.
Through agroforestry, trees also increase the productivity of the land, improving crop yields when grown side-by-side.
This is our food security and nutrition approach.
Why is this needed?
When you rely on farmland for your food and income, the climate crisis makes life tough and unpredictable. Too much or too little rain, rising temperatures and poor-quality soil mean that smallholder farmers struggle to grow enough food.
In many cases, families are forced to eat only once a day and fill up on starchy food like rice, which lacks vital nutrients. As a result, malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies are common where we work, especially in children.
How do we help?
We work with farming families to grow and protect trees because they keep land fertile, and help crops to thrive.
If crops fail because of flooding or drought, trees survive, providing nutritious fruit, nuts and leaves to eat or sell. This gives people stable supplies of food in the face of the climate crisis.
The magic of baobab
We grow trees that have products that are rich in important nutrients.
Take the baobab tree. The baobab fruit is a superfood, packed with vitamins. Likewise, the moringa tree, whose nutritious leaves are ready to eat after just three months of growth
Leaves For Livelihoods
The food security and nutrition approach is at the heart of our Growing Food & Incomes project. During this project, we have grown nutrition gardens with communities in Burkina Faso, which produce nutritious food and incomes for communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis.
