ABSTRACT
School garden programmes integrate aspects of education, health, nutrition, and agriculture aimed at improving food consumption behaviour and nutritional status of children. A surge of school garden programmes in developing countries has happened in the absence of evidence for impact. This paper synthesizes the results of three recent impact evaluations, using cluster randomized controlled trials, of school garden programmes in Bhutan, Nepal, and Burkina Faso. This was the largest evaluation of school garden programmes to date. The results show that school garden interventions significantly improved children’s knowledge about food and agriculture in all three countries. For Bhutan and Nepal, the results showed improvements in children’s awareness of fruit and vegetables and their stated preferences for eating them. In none of the countries did these improvements translate into an increase in the frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption nor in the number of different fruits and vegetables consumed. These findings confirm the results of two major reviews of school garden programmes in developed countries. The results therefore suggest that for school garden programmes to contribute to healthier food choices a more holistic intervention design may be needed that addresses the household-level supply of healthy foods and influences the food choices of parents.
