Poor Market Development

As mentioned in previous sections, farmers in the valley coped with poor food crop yields by exchanging game meat for grain grown by more successful farmers. This form of barter, while not a monetary transaction, demonstrated that the value of game meat was a critical basis of meeting livelihood needs and suggested more conventional, better-paying markets might have offered food impoverished families incentives to become more productive farmers and less reliant on snares.

Rice is a good illustration of this point. While rice grows well in the valley floor areas as a rain-fed paddy variety and represents a potentially important cash crop with minimal impact on wildlife habitat, only 26% of the sampled households grew rice prior to COMACO and it also had a relatively low revenue return as compared to fishing or cotton. It was estimated that the value of unpolished rice purchased from local producers in the valley prior to COMACO was 2-3 times below the real commercial value and local traders at the time were exploiting cheap labor to gain increased market share for themselves. Honey is another example. Only 3% of the sampled households actively farmed honey for cash-paying markets prior to COMACO when the commercial value of honey was less than 50% the real value of raw, unprocessed honey. Again, prior to COMACO, poultry scored the highest ranked activitiy for earning income among valley housholds but ranked 34 in terms of actual income value. Not only were markets unavailable, but chronic problems of poultry diseases made poultry rearing an unreliable source of both income and food.

In summary, poor road access into the valley areas combined with lack of education in appropriate production technologies and inputs, such as poultry vaccines or improved seed varieties, and the lack of trading partners that could stimulate production of wildlife-friendly commodities contributed to the overall demise of income and market opportunities throughout much of Luangwa Valley.