I reached in my pocket and passed him a K20 (about $1.04) through the window just as the light turned green and I drove away.   After a few minutes more driving toward home I confessed to myself: I could easily have given him a K100 and should have.  He needed the money more than I. It was selfish of me.

I started to imagine the life that little boy lived.  How many nights did he go to bed hungry?  Did he go to school?  Were his parents still alive or simply too poor to care for him?  I knew he was not alone.  I see many standing along the streets, sometimes early in the morning as if they have woken from some secret place to begin another day of begging.

COMACO works with close to 200,000 small-scale farmers to manufacture surplus food crops into healthy, nutritious products and distribute them to retail stores all over the country. It struck me that the reality, however, is that few of these products, which we produce from surplus after the farmers have fed their own families, reach others truly hungry and malnourished people.  The products on retail shelves tend to be expensive, and these stores are too far away from where poverty and hunger grind away in Zambia’s towns and cities. While revenue from those products helps fund our food and conservation initiatives with rural poor and provides nutritious local foods to middle and upper-class urban consumers, our system does not serve the urban poor very well.

The chance encounter with that boy got me thinking, and soon a discussion spread among our staff.  We might not be able to feed every street kid, but we could at least try to get our nutritious and tasty products to more of the urban poor at prices they can afford.

With a determined staff and deep convictions, COMACO is now launching a new business model that links our farmers directly to low-income consumers in this way, offering the same quality products but making them significantly cheaper and more available to these populations.  By modifying our packaging, initiating direct sales through tiny neighborhood shops, and using new mobile apps for quality control, we’ll be able to lower the price by as much as 20%. This will give It’s Wild! products a reach we’ve never had before. Our new “Green Market Shops” will wholesale directly to the small shops where low-income consumers in need can easily find our products at affordable prices.

It’s a Zambian farmer-to-consumer solution, and a viable business model with soul. It also further supports our success regenerating soils and restoring forests in ways that both nourish the hungry and keep the environment healthy.  In ways like this, COMACO keeps trying to get it right.  If there had not been that red light and young boy in Lusaka, we might have missed this chance to do it better.

For helping us get our new model off the ground, I wish to thank the Zambia Bureau of Standards for allowing our innovations to reduce product costs, Partners in Food Solution for helping us develop new nutrient-rich products, and especially the Green Innovation Centres for the Agriculture and Food Sector (GIC) for supporting our efforts to scale our Green Market Shops.

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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.

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.