COMACO works hard with close to 200,000 smallholder farmers to keep their soils naturally rich with minerals and organic compounds. Soils rich in natural nutrients helped by microbes in the soil produce plants that are able to withstand disease and sustain production better than plants in nutrient-poor soils.

We call this approach to farming, “farming with nature”, which includes such practices as zero tillage, crop residue retention, agroforestry, and crop rotation. As COMACO, we promote these and other nature-based ways for enhancing soil fertility through weekly radio programs broadcast in the local language, a widely disseminated, local language farming skills manual, and local trainers supporting year-round training needs of resident farmers.

By adopting the “farming with Nature” approach, small-scale farmers not only achieve improved yields, but they also lower their farming costs by minimizing or even eliminating the need for harmful chemicals that can find their way into the food chain. More importantly to the consumer, the shift to organic farming reduces risks of cancer and compromised immune systems that farm-based chemicals can sometimes cause. Equally important, as soils become restored with natural systems that perpetually replenish nutrients, farmers can stay put and farm the same plot year after year. In practice, this translates into the reduced need to clear forests for new farmland, and over time, Zambia’s watersheds and wildlife habitat become better protected.

For the farmer, the consumer and the environment, this is why COMACO produces only healthy food products. It sounds so simple and I wish it were! In reality, competing interests persuade farmers to grow certain crops with chemicals that slow down the transformation. Smallholder farmers are also cautious people and are reluctant to make changes and typically want to see a neighbor’s efforts first or to see the results from a small portion of their own before scaling.

The good news, though, is that we have a brand, It’s Wild!, that has a proven track record of giving good economic returns to farmers who commit to “farm with Nature”. We also have a growing number of consumers who trust us enough on delivering our health and conservation impact that they buy our products, not because they are the cheapest, but because they give us the full nutritional benefit straight from healthy soils that we help farmers maintain.

Forests cover 31% of the land area on our planet and up to eighty percent of the world’s land-based species, such as elephants and rhinos, live in forests.

This past year COMACO came to Loveness‘s village to buy rice, a common crop for the area. It was the first time she and her husband have ever experienced a cash market. Previously, traders bartered their crops for cheap merchandise. It was only game meat that was sold across the border to DRC where her husband could earn money. Though he had never been arrested, he knew the risks could send him to prison.

Loveness describes the decision she and her husband recently made to avoid this fate, “when COMACO paid for our rice and showed us how much it was worth when we practice the farming skills we were taught, I told my husband it was better to stop poaching and he agreed to surrender his firearm. We can understand conservation now because COMACO has given us markets.”

Since COMACO began operations, 1,780 farmers like Loveness‘s husband have surrendered their firearms voluntarily, but the conservation problem is much greater than just poaching wildlife. It is also the environmental harm that farming causes when the wrong way of farming depletes soil nutrients and forces farmers to clear more land, resulting in fewer forests and less habitat for wildlife. This is the conservation crisis Zambia faces today.

Over 1,780, farmers like Loveness‘s husband have surrendered their firearms voluntarily since COMACO began working in Zambia.

Reversing this problem on a scale that can have an impact requires a collective effort by hundreds of thousands of farmers motivated to heal their land with farming practices that allow farmers to keep farming the same plot productively and indefinitely. COMACO is proving this is possible when market incentives and cost-savings drive the transformation.

Conservation business

This year, for example, there are over 61% of farmers that are doing “conservation business” with COMACO will be planting over 36 million agroforestry trees to help repair their soils. Not only are these farmers making significant cash savings by not having to buy expensive chemical fertilizers, but they are also building up carbon in the soil by sucking CO2 out of the air. Soil carbon is a key ingredient to healthy soils and can add additional revenue from the sale of this carbon as carbon credits on the open carbon market. Not only is COMACO helping farmers to realize this added carbon value by adopting an agroforestry farming system, but it is also helping 5,000 of its groundnut farmers to become organically certified producers to gain additional income from better-paying export markets.

With this emphasis on the needs of farmers and the resources they live with, COMACO has taken the long, hard road in building a viable business to serve conservation first and profits second. By staying the course, COMACO is proving the two can serve each other to find a more lasting solution for conservation.

The story of the two cooperatives is not just a story, but a story of change and inspiration.

At a time when every small-scale farmer was associated with government cooperatives for the sole purpose of benefiting from the well known Farmer Input Support Program (FISP), a new dimension of self- sustaining and for profit-making cooperative was born. This, of course, was a new initiative that could be embraced only by those willing to take risks.

The story of the two cooperatives can be traced back to the year 2006 when Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) saw the need to engage the community in Magodi chiefdom on the importance of conservation and wildlife protection.

Alfred Kanthangwa Kumwenda – Co-op Secretary for Eme and Kajilime

This inspirational story is best told by Alfred Kanthangwa Kumwenda, the secretary for the two cooperatives. Alfred says when COMACO introduced the idea of conservation-focused cooperatives to the community in Magodi in 2006, he and others immediately took up the challenge of trying something new from the usual.

“We formed producer groups of between fifteen and twenty members with the focus of practising conservation farming. The purpose of having many members was to ensure that work was made light” Alfred said. He added that most people in the community spent a lot of time hiring out labour to other farmers who were more successful in exchange for a bucket or two of maize. “We formed producer groups of between fifteen and twenty members with the focus of practicing conservation farming. The purpose of having many members was to ensure that work was made light”

After realizing that working in other people’s fields instead of their own, resulted in the loss of precious man-hours, COMACO moved in to empower cooperative members with 50kgs of maize, 2.5 liters of cooking oil, 5kgs of cowpeas and 2kgs of salt as a way of encouraging cooperative members to work in their own fields. This, of course, was a shot in the arm as most members were empowered with food thereby increasing production hours in their fields. “Since all the producer groups had members ranging from fifteen to twenty,” explained Alfred, “we came up with a strategy where all members agreed to work in each member’s field then move to the next. In this way, we managed to work in four or more fields per day. This system gave us less time of work and increased the bond among cooperative members.”

As always, where ever humans are, challenges emerge. Some cooperative members became used to the food handouts from COMACO and appeared to expect that this support would continue. Consequently, it took a lot of sensitization of such members until these perceptions could finally be brought to a halt. Yet most members appeared to expect that COMACO would provide them with fertilizer as was the case under the Farm Input Support Programme (FISP). Instead, said Alfred, COMACO came with messages of change –a change that would transform people from conventional farmers to conservational farmers. “We were taught about the need to stop bush burning and charcoal production, and instead to take up crop-rotation and the conservation of wildlife.

In 2012, COMACO gave the cooperative a sum of 5000 Kwacha, to conduct training for the transformed charcoal producers and poachers. Thirty-three people were trained, among them a female Jester Mbale whose late husband was a known poacher in the area. Other poachers had gone into the habit of borrowing her late husband’s gun to use in their poaching activities. “These people were trained in different skills such as carpentry, poultry, and vegetable gardening” Alfred narrated. The efforts and negotiations to persuade poachers to surrender their guns and charcoal producers to stop their trend continued, slowly but surely brought the lost vegetation and wildlife back.

Having put up all those efforts in making sure that bad habits towards the environment are eradicated, Magodi chiefdom saw the stoppage of charcoal production, an increase in wildlife populations, vegetation regrowth and forest cover.

This humble story initiated by COMACO caught the attention of other organizations such as the World Bank and a REDD+ and SALM carbon project was born Through this project, the two cooperatives and the established Community Forest Management Groups (CFMG), received a staggering amount of 600,000 Kwacha from carbon units earnings because of their valuable conservation works in the chiefdom. “We could not believe it but we soon realized that hard work pays off. Though we were surprised with the turn of events, we did not take long to accept the fact that working together for the common good attracts good things too.”

The money that was received from REDD+ and SALM (Sustainable Agriculture & Land use Management) pushed the vision of the two cooperatives towards becoming self-sustaining business entities. Two hammer mills were purchased and installed in Kulikuli area, a 1.5-ton community truck was purchased, Chambuzi School was painted and a teacher’s house was plastered and painted as well.

At Munyakwa School, two modern toilets were constructed from the same money. These developments in the community conservation area meant more care towards conservation efforts in Magodi chiefdom. “We realized that we further needed to lighten work for our members, so we decided to buy twelve heads of cattle and six rippers. Two heads of cattle plus a ripper were given to six VAGs (Village Area Groups) to maximize on minimum tillage and conservation practices”. A confident Alfred shared.

Before long, another 30,200 Kwacha was pumped into the two cooperatives from the same  World Bank carbon project. This money was meant for the re-enforcement of conservation efforts, promotion of agroforestry and the maximization of minimum tillage. After the implementation of the above programs, the two cooperatives decided to invest the remainder of the money in the poultry business to enhance even more self- sustainability.

In addition to their poultry businesses, the two cooperatives also have one tuck shop apiece, including hammer mill and transportation businesses. Other than that, COMACO gives the two cooperatives a reasonably sound commission as they take part in crop buying in the community on behalf of the organization. Since they run two hammer mills and one solar hammer mill which they acquired from the government on loan, they sell maize bran to the members of the community that keep pigs thereby leaving no stone unturned in income generation opportunities.

Alfred is not shy to say that the two cooperatives have reasonably fat bank accounts because they have realized that they are business entities and not platforms for handouts. “We are in business and not here solely for handouts like most cooperatives that only become active during fertilizer distribution. We run our business throughout the year, we are a company based in the rural countryside and our bank account is reasonably fat” boasts Alfred. “We are not an ordinary story, we are a story of change and hope,” said Alfred.

There have been notable increases in sightings of wildlife, including elephants

To cement the fact that the community in Magodi chiefdom is doing something right, the area has seen increased traffic of game animals as almost zero poaching is to be attained. Last December, the area saw eighteen elephants roaming around and countless impala has been spotted all over the chiefdom. Alfred says many opportunities await the two companies, as he fondly refers to the cooperatives where he is the secretary.

Last year, COMACO infused 12,400 Kwacha into the two cooperatives earned from conservation dividend funds, thanks to the communities compliance in all areas of conservation practices. This year (2019), the two cooperatives have already earned 14, 000 Kwacha as carbon credit payment from the World Bank because of high compliance scores.

Many plans lie ahead of the two companies in the rural setup. Alfred said the cooperatives aim to create job opportunities for youths who have completed school. Some of these youths will be trained in life skills that will give them income and develop the area. In addition to poultry rearing, Alfred revealed that plans are also underway to construct a training centre, build a guest house and establish a breeding centre for pigs, goats, and cattle and intentions to make the chiefdom an exemplary conservation-hub in Zambia.

Alfred advises other cooperatives to stop over-dependence on handouts from the government but be business-oriented, remain united and focused as it is what has made Eme COMACO and Kajilime cooperatives to flourish to self-sustainability. “We are not an ordinary story, we are a story of change and hope,” said Alfred.

On one such day, the rattle of automatic gunfire laid waste to a family of 15 elephants across the Luangwa River from where I lived. Their screams were human-like as they anguished their final minutes. I listened helplessly, unable to defend the animals I had come to know. It was hard to understand how humans could inflict such destruction and suffering.

Some days later I was given a chance to meet the same gang of elephant poachers who had been arrested by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Service scouts. They were handcuffed and sitting on the ground when I arrived to interview them. I was not expecting the revelation.

Some years later I met a grain trader who told me how he had become rich. His secret was simple, start buying from farmers soon after the harvest because that is when they are the poorest and you can buy at very low prices to make good profits.

The scenario did not bode well for elephants or wildlife in general. Both legal and illegal markets took advantage of the prevailing ignorance and poverty that afflicted so many small-scale farmers. For many poor farmers, law enforcement was an infraction and threat to their livelihoods.

COMACO is an accumulation of these lessons that allowed us to ask the right question. Could we find the markets and business approach to make conservation profitable enough for farmers to stop the needless loss of wildlife and habitat and still run as a sustainable enterprise? We challenged conventional wisdom in 2003 with our first product, Chama Rice, sold under the brand It’s Wild! and grown by farmers who lived with elephants, often down the barrel of a gun. We quadrupled the price that farmers were previously earning from a local trader and we asked them to surrender their guns in return.

Since then, over 1763 firearms have been surrendered. Today we’re selling 17 products all coming from small-scale farmers, many of whom have abandoned their old ways of poaching and charcoal-making. Improved farming skills and better markets have replaced the need for poaching. Farming communities, unlike before, are organized into cooperatives and have joined COMACO as business partners to bring their food surplus to market and help market the It’s Wild! brand by incorporating their stories of how they’re making conservation work for them.

This year we’ll be buying over 11,000 tons of farm produce from over 30,000 farmers with It’s Wild! sales growing each year. Equally important, we’re operating in the black and have opened markets in South Africa, Botswana and soon the USA.

It has been a journey made possible by people who believed in our mission and the fight in our stomach to make it succeed. They helped with their money in an untested model. It is their story I find so remarkable and critical to the trajectory we’re on today. They know who they are and I hope they will read this blog to understand and appreciate what they have helped to achieve for Africa, its farmers and its wildlife. COMACO has given them a chance to invest in conservation and realize their required returns on investment. For many, the impact of more wildlife and forests or families with more food and income was sufficient to meet their investment goals. For others, the investment has been paid back with interest and for others, the interest was returned to allow COMACO to sustain our annual conservation dividend payment when communities meet a set of conservation standards.

Through these investments, COMACO has been able to work on a scale where only conservation can succeed by supporting not a few hundred families but hundreds of thousands across an entire ecosystem like Luangwa Valley. The collaboration with our investors and grantors have created financing mechanisms and strategies that made this scale possible, created a revolving fund for crop buying that reduces our debt burden, established an organization that has made management and farmer operate as one, and have turned every label on a product we sell into a billboard to help tell our story to markets far and wide.

With backing from the Zambian government, COMACO is expanding its operations to support other landscapes and communities mired in poverty with markets that can deliver the needed solutions for conservation. It will take continued investments in more beehives, more training manuals and skills training, more community protected forests and wildlife habitat, more warehouses, better processing equipment, and so much more.

We hope to make It’s Wild! the African brand for conservation that one day will source from many hundreds of thousands of farmers ready to conserve for the markets ready to pay. This is why we will keep Africa’s elephants. We’ve seen it work in Luangwa Valley and it can work elsewhere too. I’d like to invite you to contact me directly if you would be interested in helping make this journey possible with your support. | www.linkedin.com/

It took time and research for COMACO to figure things out, but today we see a better story unfolding. Farmers have learned that composting and intercropping legumes or growing them in rotation with maize boosts crop yields. In addition,  planting crops in-between rows of nitrogen-fixing trees positively impacts the economics for small-scale farming communities. 

Using this approach, farmers can reduce the majority of the costs associated with expensive chemical inputs. Instead, they use a nitrogen-fixing tree called Gliricidia sepium that helps return soil health and is also a sustainable source of wood-fuel for cooking and heating needs. Today’s conscious consumer is looking for healthier food products, and with the right partners, we can provide market opportunities that reward rural farmers for making the shift sustainable agriculture methods.

One of the key roles we play in this value-chain is processing the pesticide-free crops from small-scale farmers into high-value food products sold under the It’s Wild! brand. We also provide access to commodity markets that pay top prices for crops grown without chemicals. COMACO also helps rural farming communities through their cooperatives to produce certified seeds which they sell at a reduced cost to its members. Community seed-banking also guarantees they can select high-yielding seeds that are GMO-free and bring essential market value to small-scale farmers

Meanwhile, what has happened to all those poachers?  Many have found a better life as COMACO farmers, gaining a sustainable and legal means of income generation plus food security.  Today, COMACO has over 186,000 registered farmers. Among these farmers, 1,653 were once poachers but have now surrendered their guns to learn sustainable farming methods. The added benefit is that they are assured a ready market by COMACO.

Zambia now has a way to turn crops into the answer to stopping elephant poaching!  It may sound far-fetched but speak to any rural farmer and they will tell you that the COMACO model makes conservation pays. No longer are unsustainable practices that destroy their natural resources needed.  It’s not sustainable. Ask the consumers, and more likely than not, they will say that It’s Wild! products are worth the purchase because they’re an organic food brand rooted in conservation and enhances food security for rural communities, number 2 of the SDG goals.

Interestingly, Andrew Maimisa is not a COMACO farmer but an ardent follower and listener of COMACO’s Farm Talk radio program. “I listen to COMACO programs on radio Breeze FM and I have heard testimonies from a lot of farmers that have had their lives transformed because of the work COMACO does to empower rural farmers. I also want to be part of this winning team; I am old and I have realized that I need to channel my remaining energy into farming and not go into the bush to hunt game illegally. After listening to many testimonies from transformed poachers shared on Farm Talk radio and learning that my Zambia earns a lot of forex from tourists who visit to see our wild animals, it convinced me to voluntarily give up my firearm” Maimisa said.

He further urged to COMACO to help him with beehives so that he can now concentrate on beekeeping and soybeans farming. And receiving the surrendered firearm from COMACO, the Department of National Parks and Wildlife area warden Erastus Kancheya, thanked COMACO for the good incentives that they continue to give to farmers who in turn and, motivate poachers to quit have become friends of wildlife. “As the DNPWL, we are humbled to have a partner like COMACO who are helping reduce the levels of poaching in Zambia. My appeal goes to those that still have firearms and traps to take them to COMACO or to surrender them at any of our provincial offices.”Kancheya said. He further warned those that are still in the habit of poaching that their time will come and that the long arm of the law will take its course.

A fuel-efficient cookstove that uses the small branches of a tree species called Gliricidia sepium is helping many thousands of smallholder farming families across Zambia’s Luangwa Valley have a better life and create more space for wildlife.

It is a story that started when we realized how farming practices were keeping farmers poor and often hungry by draining soils of their nutrients.  The results were lower yields, more land clearing, and a growing dependency on poaching for game meat to make ends meet.  From the delicate bushbuck to the magnificent elephant, no species was spared.  

When you live in Africa and admire the way forests and grasslands coexist and grow so productively, you wonder if the same coexistence could not be applied to farmland – that is to say, growing crops with trees.   Perhaps Nature has a solution that is staring in our face.   

What is needed is a tree that grows quickly, fixes nitrogen in the soil, draws up critical micronutrients from its roots, increases crop yields, and is easy for smallholders to plant as a replacement to fertilizer.  COMACO found the right tree:  Gliricidia sepium.  That was eight years ago.

Today over 60,000 small holders are using Gliricidia and achieving yields comparable to yields produced with chemical fertilizers.  With the help of COMACO, over 25 million seedlings are planted annually in farm plots across the Luangwa Valley ecosystem.   In reality, we’re recreating the African savannah but with food crops!

With low input costs made possible by Gliricidia and helped along by the good market prices that COMACO offers for crops when farmers use sustainable farming practices,  smallholder farmers, many of whom once poached, are now making a profit farming.   In turn, COMACO manufactures the crops it buys from these farmers into a range of healthy, chemical-free food products it sells under the brand, It’s Wild! and the proceeds help to sustain the process. But there is more to the story than increasing yields, helping farmers out of poverty, and turning poachers into farmers.  

The same tree is also an excellent source of fuel wood.  At the time when farmers begin to plant their crops, they cut these trees knee height to allow sun exposure to emerging crops.  The process is called coppicing and the trees grow back in several months.  The cut stems, referred to as off-cuts, become a potential source of firewood for cooking.  This reduces the need for women to walk long distances to cut wood from local forests.   It is also in these forests where local residents in search of firewood risk injury from wild animals.  It does happen, from snake bites to an accidental and sometimes fatal encounter with an elephant or lion.

What if there were a more efficient way of burning Gliricidia off-cuts for cooking so that women would never have to go in search of firewood from forests?   Think of the time women could save to care for their children, garden or raise more chickens. 

The story continues.  COMACO, together with its partner, CQuest, introduced a fuel-efficient stove with only three metal parts and built with locally molded bricks.   We were unsure whether families, particularly women, would accept these stoves and give up their traditional way of cooking over open fires using logs extracted from their local forests.  We quickly realized we had a solution and a way of linking sustainable agriculture to sustainable fuelwood production that reduces pressures on habitat and removes the need to poach wildlife.   

Thousands of farmers, mostly women, are now harvesting a full year’s supply of fuel wood from their farm plots in just 1-2 days as compared to over 30-32 days of gathering the same supply of firewood from nearby forests.   We estimate that Gliricidia as an alternative source of firewood is reducing annual tree loss by at least 5-7 trees per family.   This may not seem like much, but accumulatively over time, COMACO is literally saving forests and ultimately an entire watershed if we can continue to scale the adoption of Gliricidia-based farming.  

Today, over 80,000 of these stoves are in use.  They are perfectly designed for burning more efficiently the relatively small-stem off-cuts of Gliricidia and bringing relief to women who can now avoid the ill-effects of cooking over open fires and breathing the toxic smoke fumes.   Such benefits are accelerating the adoption of Gliricidia as a way of supporting family food needs and increased incomes. 

Innovative technologies that mimic nature, a little ingenuity, and market incentives that help drive the process are transforming the lives of smallholder farmers and tipping the balance toward safer forests and less threatened wildlife.   The story is not finished, however.   The final story will be told when Gliricidia and its partner cookstove are an integral part of an evolving ecology of the Luangwa Valley ecosystem that will ensure such wild animals like the elephant have a secure place in Africa’s future. 

You can help us make this future happen.  We have set up a special fund-raising drive that supports farmer prosperity, wildlife conservation and climate change management. The program will include teaching farmers to plant nitrogen-fixing trees with their food crops and supplying efficient cookstoves which use surplus wood produced by these trees. This will create a virtuous cycle of higher food yield, higher incomes which then translate to reduced poaching and more climate resilient ecosystems that benefit the local community as well as the global ecosystem.

Thank you!

Dale Lewis, COMACO CEO

Farmers from five COMACO cooperatives in Katete had an idea – to plan a farmer exchange visit with farmers from Mwasemphangwe Chiefdom within Lundazi District to learn how to better protect the environment.

Farmers from Mwasemphangwe and Katete sharing ideas

The Katete-based farmers pooled their resources, and on Thursday the 20th of September, the farmer exchange visit finally took place when farmers from Katete visited farmers in Mwasemphangwe Chiefdom.

The aim of the farmer exchange visit was to allow the farmers from these two districts, which are 3.5 hours apart, an opportunity to exchange knowledge on how to reduce deforestation, charcoal production, and poaching. 

Route between Katete and Mwasemphangwe Chiefdom in Lundazi District

It was noticed that as you move along Great East Road near Katate, the sale of charcoal is rampant compared to the road toward Lundazi. Further, it is evident that the the vegetation along the Lundazi Road is much denser and healthier. This disparity is perhaps not a coincidence: COMACO has been working with over 3,000 famers in Mwasemphangwe for nearly 15 years, whereas, COMACO has only been working in Katete for 3 years.

Charcoal for sale along Great East Road in Katete

Based on the observations, farmers from Katete wanted to learn best practices from their farmer friends in Lundazi so they can implement these environmental protection strategies in and around Katete. The farmers from the two areas spent time in conversation, exchanging ideas and tactics to support their environment.

[/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][blockquote style=”left_border” font_size=”24px” color=”#9e9e9e” source=”Mr. Sam Munkombwe, COMACO Regional Coordinator”] “The farmer exchange visit will profoundly benefit the Katete farmers and their chiefs”[/blockquote]

The COMACO farmers were welcomed to the palace in Mwasemphangwe and were accompanied by several high-ranking individuals  from the area, including:

[vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1454241130162{margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”]

[/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner css=”.vc_custom_1454240731978{padding-left: 60px !important;}”][list_style color=”#4caf50″]

• Headman Chipuka from Mbangombe Village
• Representative for Chief Chilupako from Kathumba Village
• Representative for Chief Ngwangwa from Kawaza Village and
• Representative for Chief Mwasemphangwe – Mr. Banda Gabriel[/list_style][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1454241148818{padding-top: 10px !important;}”][vc_column width=”1″]

Farmers visiting the Palace in Mwasemphangwe Chiefdom

During the farmer exchange visit, the farmers from Mwasemphangwe showed the farmers from Katete their thriving Community Conservation Area. The visit went on well the farmers from Katate learned many things. Mostly, the farmers from the two areas talked about being persistent in order to end the trend of charcoal making. Additionally, they discussed ways to engage more with the traditional leaders, as the traditional leaders can come up with laws on how to punish those found cutting trees for charcoal.

Farmers visiting the Community Conservation Area in Mwasemphangwe Chiefdom

COMACO intends to help more cooperatives organize additional farmer exchange visits, based on the success of this first visit.  

[/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][blockquote style=”left_border” font_size=”24px” color=”#9e9e9e” source=”Mr. Sam Munkombwe, COMACO Regional Coordinator”] “Katete used to face a lot of deforestation and land degradation. But through the coming of COMACO and working together with stakeholders like the Ministry of Agriculture, the Forestry Department, and the Ministry of Chiefs and Traditional Affairs, the individual farmers and their communities have learned about the importance of conservation, and how necessary their role is to achieve a green environment that will provide sustainable development to their chiefdoms.”[/blockquote]