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.

Mabel, 55, lives at the edge of town with her grandson in a small cinderblock house painted the same aquamarine green as the adjacent COMACO cooperative depot. Each morning she wakes just before sunrise and walks three kilometers to the far edge of the village, checking in with farmers as she passes. With the soy harvest in full swing, farmers ask her COMACO’s purchasing price and details on crop buying. As part of her leadership role, Mabel is in charge of organizing bulking events, where several hundred farmers deliver their harvest to the cooperative depot for sale to COMACO. The crops are tagged with both the farmer’s and cooperative’s name for quality insurance and loaded onto an industrial truck for delivery to the regional processing plant. In the lead up to crop purchasing, some farmers store their harvest at the depot for safe keeping weeks before purchase, and Mabel must keep careful track of who is owed what.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”8287″ img_size=”full”][vc_column_text]Mabel is a single mother who supports not only her five children, but also four of her orphaned nieces. She pays the school fees for the youngest ones and the expensive college tuition for the two eldest who are studying to become teachers. Having access to this kind of money was unimaginable twenty years ago, she says. The new type of agriculture and continued community support that COMACO brought to her village has made it possible for her to make ends meet.

As a woman, especially, the change is marked.

“Before, women were not even allowed to sell their crops. Men would have to travel very far to find a market, and it wasn’t safe for women to go alone. But when men sold the crops, money would go missing. Maybe they went drinking or bought things for themselves. In the end, there was less for the family.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][blockquote style=”left_border” font_size=”24px” color=”#9e9e9e”] “Before COMACO we had so many problems. We didn’t have food security, we didn’t have money. Now we are trained in organic farming, we’re given seeds to grow, and today life is better.” [/blockquote][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1532684921480{margin-bottom: 20px !important;}”]Mabel, 55, lives at the edge of town with her grandson in a small cinderblock house painted the same aquamarine green as the adjacent COMACO cooperative depot. Each morning she wakes just before sunrise and walks three kilometers to the far edge of the village, checking in with farmers as she passes. With the soy harvest in full swing, farmers ask her COMACO’s purchasing price and details on crop buying. As part of her leadership role, Mabel is in charge of organizing bulking events, where several hundred farmers deliver their harvest to the cooperative depot for sale to COMACO. The crops are tagged with both the farmer’s and cooperative’s name for quality insurance and loaded onto an industrial truck for delivery to the regional processing plant. In the lead up to crop purchasing, some farmers store their harvest at the depot for safe keeping weeks before purchase, and Mabel must keep careful track of who is owed what.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]“There is a lot of responsibility in this role. I am in charge of communicating with my farmers and also with COMACO,” she says.

Along the dirt road that runs throughout the town of Impezene, women sit in front of their homes surrounded by heaps of sundried peanuts hand sorting the healthy-looking shells into wicker baskets and plastic tubs. Numerous goats, donated to community cooperatives as part of COMACO’s livestock program, munch on the piles of discarded stalks.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”8356″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_single_image image=”8291″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Mabel is a single mother who supports not only her five children, but also four of her orphaned nieces. She pays the school fees for the youngest ones and the expensive college tuition for the two eldest who are studying to become teachers. Having access to this kind of money was unimaginable twenty years ago, she says. The new type of agriculture and continued community support that COMACO brought to her village has made it possible for her to make ends meet.

As a woman, especially, the change is marked.

“Before, women were not even allowed to sell their crops. Men would have to travel very far to find a market, and it wasn’t safe for women to go alone. But when men sold the crops, money would go missing. Maybe they went drinking or bought things for themselves. In the end, there was less for the family.”

Now, thanks to the organizing efforts of Mabel and other cooperative leaders, COMACO sends a truck directly to her village to purchase crops. Women are able to make the sale to COMACO of their hard-earned crop surplus, and more money is going to benefit the whole family.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1454241148818{padding-top: 10px !important;}”][vc_column width=”2/3″][vc_column_text]When COMACO first began its operations, women were expected to stay home; farming was a man’s work. But COMACO trainers quickly realized that if they hosted trainings for both genders, things improved for the whole family. Outreach officers began supplying vegetable seeds to women and explaining the principles of organic gardening. COMACO started offering classes in nutrition, family planning, and business skills, and launched several village savings and loans groups for women. Once women started growing successful vegetable gardens, they were able to feed their families more nutritious food as well as earn additional income by selling the surplus on the roadside. Today men and women share time spent in the field. 52% of all COMACO farmers, and half of all cooperative leaders are women.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_empty_space height=”80″][blockquote]“We have gender equality in farming now,” says Mabel. “Things are more equal.”[/blockquote][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”8293″ img_size=”full”][/vc_column][/vc_row]