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COMACO Factsheet #1
WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WENT TO BED
HUNGRY?
"Food Security" is the measure of a family's ability to cope with
hunger. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says
that hunger is the consumption of less than 1600-2000 calories
per day. You can measure food security a number of ways – a
child only knows that it’s hungry, and that is the measure that
truly matters. Thousands of Zambians of all ages live below this
basic calorie level designated by the FAO, experiencing seasons of
periodic feast and subsequent famine. Up to 23% of Zambian
children nationwide are measurably underweight, causing severe
cognitive damage to growing minds and physical damage to
bodies that can never be repaired, even if diet improves later in
life. The struggle between hunger and other needs drives families
into poverty and into desperate and often destructive livelihoods,
including prostitution, poaching and broken families. With their
families unable to afford school, children are incapable of finding
paying work as adults and also lack up-to-date knowledge about
productive farming. Health and hygiene suffers as living
conditions continue to spiral downward. Malnourished children
are 12 times more likely to die from easily preventable and
treatable diseases. Among developing nations, Zambia ranks near
the bottom for food security.
How does this happen and how does this relate to COMACO?
In 2001, a random sample of 1059 households (representing
about 7.0% of the total number of households) in the Luangwa
Valley area, where COMACO has its focus, were interviewed. The
vast majority (98.5%) of households reported dependence on
growing only maize as the primary food crop. Only 3.4% of these
households used fertilizer, even though yields were three times
higher for farmers that used fertilizer than those that did not.
As a result, less than half (48.9%) of all households had enough
maize to feed their family by the 9th month after harvest. This
finding reflected the level of soil depletion and poor farming
practices used in the Luangwa Valley. The expense of chemical
fertilizer precludes the vast majority of families from utilizing this
strategy, which could greatly improve their yields. The survey also
identified the lack understanding of crop rotation for improving
soil conditions. Moreover, Famers incorrectly believed that
burning crop residues after harvest would reduce weeds. In
reality, the practice of crop burning crop residues not only made
weeds worse, but also exposed the soils to wind and rain erosion.
It was the perfect recipe for rapid soil depletion. Despite the
evidence for poor farming practices, the local perception is that
poor production and crop loss is instead due to external factors
such as animals and birds (74.9%), flooding (58.5%) other forces
outside of their control. Wildlife Conservation Society recognized
this pattern of unsustainable farming practices as the underlying
reason for why small-scale farmers had become reliant on snaring
wildlife to get by.
The link between hunger and poaching
With the increasing need for money in a growing cash economy,
many farmers turned to growing non-food cash crops, such as
cotton and tobacco. While satisfying income needs to a certain
extent, the shift to non-food crops increased the likelihood of
food shortages in regions of the Luangwa Valley ecosystem where
these two crops were grown. This need for food was exacerbated
by a number of factors and they all drove families to search for
solutions that often led to destructive uses of natural. One
common way families compensate for insufficient food
production was the illegal harvesting of wildlife. Poaching with
wire snares was typically performed not for consumption, but
rather to exchange meat for maize or grains that they could not
produce for themselves. In 2000, over 40% of families interviewed
reported using wire snaring as a mechanism to cope with food
insecurity [4]. A survey of practices in 2000 indicated that an
average food-insecure family set snares 3 to 4 times a year,
typically using 10-15 snares per setting, and killing, on average, 7
animals annually. While this sounds small, when multiplied by the
thousands of families setting snares, the result on wildlife is
devastating. With the use of firearms and being more selective in
what was killed, one data source reported that illegal hunters in
2000 killed an average of 5-7 animals per hunter annually, and of
the over 100 hunters interviewed, at least 12% had hunted
elephants, one of Zambia's greatest tourist attractions. A survey
of specific COMACO activity areas showed that in 2001, the
average village hunter made a profit of no more than $1-$2 US
dollars for the average impala killed as bushmeat.
How do we break the vicious poverty cycle that leads to resource
depletion?
The answer to this question lies in education, inputs, and markets
that break the inter-generation transfer of skills linked to such
practices as hunting, snaring, over-fishing and so forth and to
replace them with skills that care for the soils and trees. Rurally
isolated Zambian families lack access to any kind of schooling in
farming, self-sufficiency and the ecosystems around them. Skills
useful to prior generations are no longer supportive of farming
the current landscape. With proper skills, the farmland of the
Luangwa Valley CAN be more productive. With training in
conservation farming, crop rotation, the use of organic
fertilization and crop diversification, combined with markets that
drive the adoption of these skills, COMACO is finding solutions
and helping tens of thousands of Luangwa Valley's farmers
produce enough food to both feed their own families and earn
income from crop surpluses to support school fees and other
basic needs, all while living sustainably off the land. It sounds
simple but when applied across remote landscapes having few
roads and infrastructure, it is a challenge that most development
projects have failed to meet, despite the large investments made.
The COMACO approach is different because COMACO works as a
company that grows wealth for farmers around the right crops
and production practices that ensures both food and income
security.
------------------------------------------------------------------ [1] UNDP 2008
Comprehensive Framework for Action [2] UNDP 2008
Comprehensive Framework for Action
[3] Household selection was based on random numbers
associated with household listings provided by area headmen
from the different communities sampled.
[4] From a 2000 survey of 486 households selected randomly from
Game Management Areas in the Luangwa Valley.