COMACO
THE IDEA
Turn poachers into farmers through access to markets: assist poor farmers in return for "conservation farming"- no poaching, no burning/clearing and good soil management
Dale Lewis
Dale Lewis started out as an elephant researcher in Zambia and segued naturally into conservation. When traditional conservation strategies didn’t work, he and his Zambian team took a radical new approach: starting a business to provide good markets for farmers willing to quit poaching.
Hungry, poor farmers cannot be good neighbors to wildlife when they must snare and poach to get by. By giving them a little bit of farming help and marketing their crops, you can make poaching obsolete.
Millions of rural farmers across much of Africa live far from markets and are forced to scratch out a bare subsistence living. Desperate for income, farmers often fall prey to markets that concentrate wealth in urban centers, suck up resources, and degrade their land. Dale and his team had seen the failures of both conventional rural development and traditional conservation. They came up with Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) to help isolated subsistence farmers and beleaguered wildlife at the same time. COMACO currently works with 10,000 farmers who give up poaching and burning by providing key inputs, a little training, and a market for their crops. COMACO then processes the crops into value-added products sold on supermarket shelves under the “it’s Wild” brand. They return the profits in the form of premium prices to “conservation farmers” who take good care of land and wildlife. By using a successful conservation and agriculture intervention, COMACO saves thousands of wild animals every year. With the enthusiastic support of the Zambian wildlife authority, COMACO is extending the program to new parks and wildlife zones and perhaps into the Congo.
©2009 Rainer Arnhold Fellows - All Rights Reserved
A website developed by Cidamon, web design and development company. and website maintenance provided by Sitebully