Wildlife Management in the Hands of Small-scale Farmers – The COMACO way

By Dale Lewis, COMACO CEO and Founder

I’m going to tell you something that you’ll have a hard time believing.  My work in Zambia began as a conservationist focused on elephants.  Later it shifted to soil microbes that you cannot even see.  What’s the connection?   The simple answer is healthy soils, made healthy by small-scale farmers who have learned how to keep microbes in the soil that deliver key nutrients to crops for sustaining yields that keep their families food and income secure without any need to poach elephants. We’ve converted over 2000 poachers this way – by making soils healthy!

If soils can change the lives of poachers, what else can soils change?  A lot!

So much that Zambia now has a brand of food products called It’s Wild!, made by Community Markets for Conservation, or simply COMACO, that harnesses the power of small-scale farmers to restore soil health across nearly a third of the country.  It’s helping farmers stay sedentary by farming the same plot indefinitely, allowing nearby forests to stay safe, giving home to wild animals and protecting entire watersheds. They have learned how to do this with simple farming practices taught by COMACO that do not cost money, but they result in vital nutrients to flow into our own diet.  These nutrients are mostly lost with conventional farming practices.  With COMACO they help protect the environment and make human health safe.

As more customers discover this story and taste the natural, nutritious goodness of the It’s Wild! brand, Zambia is discovering that its own future may just be in the hands of small-scale farmers. They hold the key, and if we fail to recognize this, wildlife will suffer. And so will Zambia’s future.

COMACO is helping to shape this future by supporting more farmers, now over 230,000, to restore their soils with markets that reward conservation and offer the health benefits from the vital nutrients that our bodies need and It’s Wild! provides. Thanks to COMACO, small-scale farmers are now helping to feed Zambia and are becoming better stewards of their land and wildlife.