Vegetable interventions as a humanitarian response: Best practice guidelines and assessment tool

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These guidelines were developed for humanitarian practitioners engaged in emergency and recovery programs with a vegetable production component. This includes home garden projects for improved household-dietary diversity or those that recover and/or rehabilitate irrigated vegetable production within a larger region. The need for this set of guidelines arose after it became clear that organizations were increasingly investing time and resources into vegetable production activities in response to slow-onset, rapid-onset, or complex crises, but that project designs tended to lack a supportive theory of change and connection to the project context. The guidelines present commonly used project approaches, objectives, and impact pathways (Sections 1 and 2), and introduce challenges that projects frequently encounter when implementing vegetable interventions, and some best practices (Section 3). A set of exercises is also provided, that practitioners can use to fine tune their proposed approach, and evaluate potential impacts on vegetable production, potentially in combination with an irrigation component, on either food and/or nutrition security and income generation in the project area (Section 4). Guidance on data collection is provided in the Appendix.

Irrigation and seed are given special attention because of their importance to the success of vegetable production projects. The guidelines do not, however, discuss irrigation or seed projects that are conducted without a vegetable component, such as projects that improve irrigation infrastructure or maintenance. Seed aid projects should consult the guidance provided in the Seed Emergency Response Tool (SERT) and SEADS Handbook prior to provision of vegetable seed, to ensure that seed is indeed bolstering seed security, whether provided directly, or through cash, vouchers or in-kind. These guidelines follow the SEADS Handbook distinction of slow-onset, rapid-onset, and complex crises, and aims to give practitioners further information on the requirements needed to grow vegetables as part of a successful humanitarian response. These guidelines are based on results from an evidence review and a series of virtual workshops. The review systematically analyzed 45 selected technical reports and peer-reviewed articles to understand the design and implementation of vegetable interventions in crisis and their impact. For the workshops, 33 technical experts and humanitarian practitioners were convened to discuss the common challenges and best practices found when implementing vegetable interventions in humanitarian response projects.