At the University of Health and Allied Sciences, training future health professionals extends beyond the classrooms and lecture halls. Through the Nkabom Collaborative, the university is exploring innovative ways to connect food systems, agriculture and health.
The Fred Newton Binka School of Public Health is breaking new ground in crop production and has established its first student-led climate-smart vegetable farm, which has recently achieved its first successful cultivation and harvest. While the harvest is an important milestone, the school farm represents something even more significant: a practical learning platform where agriculture, nutrition, and public health intersect. This marks a new step for the school as it moves into an area that health institutions rarely engage in. The decision reflects a simple reality where malnutrition, food insecurity and diet-related non-communicable diseases are major public health concerns, and are connected to the way food is produced, distributed and consumed. As rainfall becomes less reliable and temperatures change, the crops that many Ghanaian families depend on are increasingly affected. A school whose mission is to improve the health of the population can no longer treat food production as a separate issue.
The farm spans roughly one acre, with land that has been cleared, levelled, and organised into separate plots for crop rotation. Raised beds have been installed to boost drainage and aeration in the soil, ensuring an ideal environment for robust plant growth. The irrigation system features pipes both below ground and above, all linked to a central unit capable of watering the entire farm in just minutes by turning a knob. This eliminates manual watering and promotes efficient water use.
The maiden crops grown on the farm (bell pepper, okra, and habanero pepper) are vegetables commonly used in Ghanaian meals and were selected due to their resilience under Ghana’s current climate conditions and are expected to remain productive as weather patterns continue to change. These vegetables are also rich in nutrients and form an important part of the local diet, making the farm both a food production enterprise and a nutrition-focused initiative.
The school farm demonstrated how health training institutions can play an active role in food systems transformation. It reinforces the importance of cross-sector collaboration between agriculture, nutrition, and public health. The farm also creates opportunities for student entrepreneurship, encouraging students to develop small agricultural businesses and to work across different fields of study in ways that go beyond classroom learning.
What the UHAS-FNBSPH Nkabom has created is more than a farm. By investing in agriculture, FNBSPH is redefining health education in Ghana. Acknowledging that protecting health also means strengthening food systems and supporting the conditions that allow communities to live well.