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    Growing food

    Growing food: Small farms, home gardens and school gardens that feed families.

    Small family farms grow about 35% of the world's food on 12% of its farmland. About 2 billion people live in small farming households.

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    Ryan K. Hertel · heyitskenton

    The problem

    What we're up against.

    • Most farms are tiny.

      About five of every six farms in the world are smaller than two hectares.

    • Small farmers are often the poorest.

      In Ethiopia, 48% of small farmers lived in poverty, against 30% of all people.

    • Children missing vegetables.

      In the US, 49.1% of young children didn't eat a vegetable every day, and only 2% of high schoolers ate the vegetables federal guidelines recommend.

    • A harder climate for farming.

      Farm productivity has kept rising, but climate change has slowed that growth around the world.

    What works

    Proven, and ready to grow.

    • Home gardens for mothers and babies.

      In a randomized trial in Burkina Faso, a homestead food program for women reduced anemia, wasting and diarrhea among their young children.

    • More kinds of food on the plate.

      In Bangladesh, a homestead food program nearly doubled women's and children's odds of eating a varied enough diet, and across programs, farming designed for nutrition consistently widened young children's diets.

    • School gardens.

      In a randomized trial across 16 Texas schools, a gardening, nutrition and cooking program raised children's vegetable intake. Most studies find a small, positive effect on what children eat.

    • Gardens with clean hands.

      In Nepal, school gardens paired with nutrition and hygiene lessons raised children's fruit and vegetable eating and cut parasite infections.

    • Bigger harvests on small farms.

      An independent analysis of a randomized trial of One Acre Fund in Kenya found maize yields up about 34% and profits up almost 20%.

    What a family could fund

    Where the money goes furthest.

    • A farm family's season.

      One Acre Fund spends about $77 a farmer to deliver its full program. The farmer repays about $58, leaving about $19 for funders to cover.

    • Home gardens, at scale.

      Helen Keller Intl's homestead food program has reached nearly 1.9 million families across Asia-Pacific and Africa.

    • Gardens at school.

      Only about 15% of America's school food programs run a garden where food is grown.

    Honest limits

    What money can't promise.

    • Gardens rarely change growth.

      A review found very little evidence that farm programs reduce stunting or underweight in young children, and in Bangladesh, a homestead garden program didn't improve anemia.

    • More vegetables, same weight.

      The Texas school garden trial didn't change children's weight, and many garden studies are small and rely on what children report eating.

    • Results swing with the weather.

      One Acre Fund notes 2025 was a stronger harvest for everyone, including farmers it doesn't serve, and its trials can be thrown off by drought and disease.

    • Gains may not last.

      Former clients in a trial's comparison group farmed no better than people who had never joined. And decades of farm research and advice have shown more about what fails than what works.

    Hard questions

    Asked and answered.

    1. You might ask

      Why not just give food?

      Ryan

      In a crisis, yes. But families who grow more eat better through the lean months: One Acre Fund's longer-term clients were 34% less likely to have gone a whole day without food, by its own comparison.

    2. You might ask

      Do school gardens change what kids eat?

      Ryan

      A little. The best US trial found more vegetables but no change in weight, and results vary with how long a program runs and how involved parents are.

    3. You might ask

      Can't governments do this?

      Ryan

      Sometimes they do, and it changes the picture: in Kenya, a government fertilizer subsidy cut demand for One Acre Fund's own supplies.

    In the slider

    See what your fortune could do here.

    Growing food

    The slider prices this cause with these numbers:

    • About $19 from funders, on top of what a farmer repays, gives a family a season of One Acre Fund's full farm program.
    • The whole need is the more than 50 million African families who farm small plots and could benefit, by One Acre Fund's count.
    • That price leaves out overhead, so the full cost is somewhat higher, and the gains are One Acre Fund's own measures.
    Try it in the sliderTalk to Ryan

    More of the Blueprint

    Keep reading.

    5 more chapters on the way

    Back to Keep 100

    Sources

    Every number in this chapter, and where it came from.

    1. Source 1: Small family farmers produce a third of the world's food (opens in a new tab)

      Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 23 April 2021. Checked 16 October 2026.

    2. Source 2: Realizing the potential of digital development: The case of agricultural advice (Fabregas, Kremer and Schilbach) (opens in a new tab)

      Science, 13 December 2019. Checked 16 October 2026.

      A review pooling studies of farm advice sent by phone and other digital means.

    3. Source 3: The economic lives of smallholder farmers (Rapsomanikis) (opens in a new tab)

      Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2015. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Household surveys from nine countries.

    4. Source 4: Fruit, Vegetable, and Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Intake Among Young Children, by State, United States, 2021 (Hamner and others) (opens in a new tab)

      Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 17 February 2023. Checked 16 October 2026.

      Children aged one to five, from a national survey.

    5. Source 5: Percentage of Adolescents Meeting Federal Fruit and Vegetable Intake Recommendations, Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, United States, 2017 (Lange and others) (opens in a new tab)

      Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 22 January 2021. Checked 16 October 2026.

      High school students.

    6. Source 6: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Summary for Policymakers (opens in a new tab)

      Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2022. Checked 16 October 2026.

    7. Source 7: A 2-year integrated agriculture and nutrition and health behavior change communication program targeted to women in Burkina Faso reduces anemia, wasting, and diarrhea in children 3-12.9 months of age at baseline: a cluster-randomized controlled trial (Olney and others) (opens in a new tab)

      The Journal of Nutrition, 22 April 2015. Checked 16 October 2026.

      A program run by Helen Keller Intl.

    8. Source 8: Impact of a Homestead Food Production Program on Dietary Diversity: Seasonal and Annual Results from the Cluster-Randomized FAARM Trial in Sylhet, Bangladesh (Waid and others) (opens in a new tab)

      The Journal of Nutrition, 21 October 2023. Checked 16 October 2026.

    9. Source 9: Nutrition-sensitive agriculture programs increase dietary diversity in children under 5 years: A review and meta-analysis (Margolies and others) (opens in a new tab)

      Journal of Global Health, 19 February 2022. Checked 16 October 2026.

    10. Source 10: TX Sprouts: A School-Based Cluster Randomized Gardening, Nutrition, and Cooking Intervention: Effects on Obesity, Blood Pressure and Diet (Davis and others) (opens in a new tab)

      Current Developments in Nutrition, 29 May 2020. Checked 16 October 2026.

      A conference abstract of the trial, in Texas.

    11. Source 11: Increasing Fruit and Vegetable Intake among Children and Youth through Gardening-Based Interventions: A Systematic Review (Savoie-Roskos, Wengreen and Durward) (opens in a new tab)

      Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 7 December 2016. Checked 16 October 2026.

    12. Source 12: Nutritional and health status of children 15 months after integrated school garden, nutrition, and water, sanitation and hygiene interventions: a cluster-randomised controlled trial in Nepal (Shrestha and others) (opens in a new tab)

      BMC Public Health, 3 February 2020. Checked 16 October 2026.

    13. Source 13: The impact of One Acre Fund's small farm program (Deutschmann and Tjernström) (opens in a new tab)

      La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 20 April 2018. Checked 16 October 2026.

      An independent analysis of a randomized trial in Kenya.

    14. Source 14: 2025 Annual Report (opens in a new tab)

      One Acre Fund, May 2026. Checked 16 October 2026.

      One Acre Fund's own figures.

    15. Source 15: Nutrition (opens in a new tab)

      Helen Keller Intl. Checked 16 October 2026.

      The organization's own count of families reached by its homestead food program.

    16. Source 16: Farm to School Census Results Overview (opens in a new tab)

      US Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service. Checked 16 October 2026.

      The census of the 2022 to 2023 school year.

    17. Source 17: Effectiveness of agricultural interventions that aim to improve nutritional status of children: systematic review (Masset and others) (opens in a new tab)

      BMJ, 17 January 2012. Checked 16 October 2026.

    18. Source 18: Impacts of a Homestead Food Production Intervention on Anaemia and Micronutrient Deficiencies Among Women and Children in Rural Bangladesh: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial (Wendt and others) (opens in a new tab)

      Maternal and Child Nutrition, 19 May 2025. Checked 16 October 2026.

    19. Source 19: Rigorous evaluations (opens in a new tab)

      One Acre Fund. Checked 16 October 2026.

    20. Source 20: Can Smallholder Extension Transform African Agriculture? (Deutschmann, Duru, Siegal and Tjernström) (opens in a new tab)

      National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2019. Checked 16 October 2026.

      A randomized trial of One Acre Fund's program in western Kenya. A working paper, not yet peer reviewed.

    21. Source 21: Evaluating the impacts of school garden-based programmes on diet and nutrition-related knowledge, attitudes and practices among the school children: a systematic review (Chan, Tan and Gong) (opens in a new tab)

      BMC Public Health, 24 June 2022. Checked 16 October 2026.