Dear Richmond,
thank you for sharing your Field Exchange-publication. Congratulations for this most appropriate approach to combine nutrition research, nutrition policy, and projects to improve nutrition in the population. Your paper reminds me again on the (modified) saying 'To learn from Ghana means to learn how challenges can get resolved anywhere'.

Dear Professor Krawinkel,
Many Thanks for your kind compliments. I will appreciate your efforts in circulating the paper in your networks for comments and sharing of other similar experiences.

Very interesting article! I followed up to read more on the finding "Infants in households with home gardens were less likely to exclusively breastfeed (OR=0.65; p=0.04) but also less at risk of underweight (OR=0.53; p=0.01)". Is it fair to say your finding is saying one would basically reduce the likelihood of women practicing EBF if their HHs are encouraged to do home gardening? I won't be so surprised if the home garden is related to breastfeeding in general especially after the EBF period. My surprise is the link with EBF. Why won't they exclusively breastfeed if they are engaged in home gardening? The other question is are they less likely to exclusive breastfeed for 6months? they'll do EBF for say 4months and introduce food--from the home garden for instance? The interpretation of the observation can also be very tricky, its like saying--they don't do EBF but they are fine because they won't become undernourished. l tried to look for the full paper but got an abstract ( it looks like an abstract for a conference presentation, right?). Can you share the full paper/presentation with me? Can you also clarify further the findings. I'll really appreciate it as it'll help with our programming.

Dear Joseph, Thanks for your interest in the publication. Actually, this was preliminary analysis of baseline data for our project in Asesewa. So there is no full paper except the poster (available on request).

Note also that this finding on home gardening is NOT intervention data. It is purely reported baseline finding so we may not read much into it. What is important, perhaps is that something that is related to household garden ownership of garden is adverse to breastfeeding. One clue may be that the caregiver is involved with trading instead of the typical household farming, and therefore she keeps a home garden.

However, as I said before, this is observational and just correlational. We are yet to do the analysis of the intervention which includes home gardens with nutrient-rich crops. The study team will be happy to share those findings soon as they have been completed.