Food: The greatest benefit would be that poor and hungry people throughout  the world would have something to eat.  With vegetables they will be getting food rich in needed vitamins and minerals often missing in their diets.

Children: In developing countries the children are the ones who suffer the most and the ones who would benefit the most from a gardening project.  A one page article “The Impact of Chronic Hunger and Malnutrition on Children”  was prepared by Dr. Kendal Hirschi for Seed Programs Inc.  Dr. Hirschi is with the Departments of Pediatrics and Human Molecular Genetics; Baylor College of Medicine; Children’s Nutrition Research Center; Houston, Texas.  In referring to the need for fruits and vegetables in the children's diets he states, "The goal is not just to save children’s lives, but to allow all children the opportunity to thrive". If we are looking for a benefit, then look to the children who are helped to grow vegetables. 

Financial Benefit: There is a need to ship food in disaster situations when the need is immediate.  However, in a long term perspective, compare the cost of gathering, preparing, packaging, shipping and distributing food vs. sending lightweight seed that has the potential to produce tons of nutritious food. Shipping seed instead of shipping food is probably one of the most effective cost/benefit ratios to use donations of money and provide food to poor people. One example of the cost/benefit ratio of shipping seed versus food is tomato. A packet of tomato seed contains about 100 seeds. There would be 100 packets in a one box assortment that weighs about 12 ounces and contains about 10,000 tomato seeds. If only 10% of the seeds produce plants due to poor management or soil conditions, that would be 1,000 plants. If each plant produced 6 medium sized fruit the plant would produce 2# of tomatoes, or 2,000# from the 12 ounces of tomato packets. The seed cost would be about $0.005 per pound of tomato.