Home gardening must shift from production fix to nutrition strategy – Prof. Marambe

The notion that home gardening can be treated as a blanket remedy for Sri Lanka's deepening agricultural crisis is fundamentally misplaced, Senior Professor of Crop Science at the University of Peradeniya, Buddhi Marambe has warned.

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Delivering the keynote address at the Science Forum on Food Security held at the National Science Foundation (NSF) on 29 April 2026, Prof. Marambe cautioned that while home gardens have an important role, they cannot substitute systemic solutions required to address structural weaknesses in the country’s food production sector.

Speaking at the forum, held under the theme, ‘Facing Agriculture Crisis—Home Gardening as a Tool’, Prof. Marambe said Sri Lanka’s food security challenges were increasingly shaped by shrinking agricultural land per capita, climate volatility and rising input costs.

He noted that global agricultural land per person had fallen sharply from about 1.45 hectares in 1961 to 0.6 hectares in 2023, while in Asia it had declined to 0.35 hectares. In Sri Lanka, he said, the figure had dropped further from 0.17 hectares to just 0.13 hectares over the same period, underscoring severe land constraints.

Against this backdrop, Prof. Marambe said home gardening could not be expected to compensate for the loss of large-scale production systems such as paddy cultivation, which depended on wetlands that could not be replicated in residential spaces.