Sustainable agriculture guarantees income and protects the environment
Project partner: COMACO
New farming methods for long-term yields
In Zambia, around 90% of farmers are small-scale farmers. Their yields are low and not enough to feed the rural and steadily growing urban population. Therefore the farmers use many chemicals to improve their yields. And they are converting forests into additional farmland. Both of these measures only solve the food problem in the short term. In the long term, it destroys the soil and worsens the situation.
This is where COMACO comes in. It trains small-scale farmers in Zambia in new, improved cultivation methods. This enables the farmers not only to secure their yields on their existing fields, but also to increase them sustainably. This protects soils and forests – both now and in the long term for future generations.
In addition to the training in sustainable agriculture COMACO supports the farmers in organizing themselves into producer cooperatives. It buys surplus food from the cooperatives, processes it and then sells it on the market under the “It's Wild” label.
Learning with radio and video
Many farmers can only read and write to a limited extent. COMACO therefore uses various strategies to train small farmers:
Books in the local language,
radio programs and
educational videos.
Trees help to maintain the soil
Agroforestry plays a crucial role in soil management. The farmers plant the tree species Gliricidia sepium in a systematic way, because the trees fertilize the soil. This allows the farmers to avoid expensive chemical fertilizers and at the same time increase their yields by two to three times. Soil minerals are returned to the soil by the trees and the soil does not dry out as quickly.
Surplus is processed
As a social enterprise, COMACO takes care of the logistics and purchase of surplus food from the cooperatives. It processes them further and sells the resulting products on the market under the It's Wild! brand.
COMACO also supports the farmers' cooperatives with the necessary training of the farmers and the entire organization, e.g. planting agroforestry trees, coordinating crop rotations, purchasing and producing selected seeds. These tasks require digital skills and the use of digital tools.
Visible success
Currently, over 335,000 households are already organized in over 110 farmers' cooperatives. The transition to sustainable agriculture is showing visible success:
Higher yields for farmers and therefore greater food security
while at the same time protecting the environment through
better soils and
less deforestation.
COMACO currently reaches over 335,000 farming households in Zambia. Thanks to sustainable agriculture, they have already been able to visibly increase their yields and secure their income. This also makes them less vulnerable to climate extremes and price shocks.
Happel Foundation | COMACO
The Happel Foundation supports COMACO in Zambia to in securing harvests and protecting the environment through sustainable agriculture in Zambia.
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The Happel Foundation Switzerland is a charitable Swiss foundation based in Lucerne.