Counting the costs, delivering the benefits, restoring the land

Like most people, small-scale farmers respond to markets that offer the best price and typically follow the practices that markets promote. When COMACO began its relationship with farmers, we found wide-scale dependence on markets and practices that used chemical inputs, conventional tillage that disturbed soil structure, and a monoculture farming system that often promoted non-food crops. Short-term gains were realized but costs to both the farmer and the land began to add up over time. Soils could not sustain higher yields without expensive inputs, families suffered increased risks of food and income insecurity as their soils became depleted, and in some cases, households were forced to clear unsettled land in search of healthier soils. The trend was a declining forest cover and an emerging “silent” economy based on charcoal and wildlife poaching to meet household needs.

Short-term commercial interests may have been satisfied for some, but for the small-scale farmer, change was needed to head-off the environmental costs that were making life hard. COMACO stepped in to fill this need. If small-scale farmers could learn the biology of soils as the basis for understanding and applying more sustainable agriculture, then farmers could be the solution to the growing problem of land degradation that was unfolding in Zambia. We took on this challenge by developing market incentives for farmers who made the change and the It’s Wild! brand was born to help drive farmers commitment to farm with nature, not against it. Over 230,000 small-scale farmers are seeing the benefits of this approach today. It combines crop residue protection from fire and livestock grazing, minimum tillage, maize rotation with legumes, and inter-cropping with special trees that help pump up water and minerals to keep crops healthy. Underneath the soil surface, a real transformation is taking place as living microbes are reestablishing the nutrient cycles so critical for feeding crops. We know this as we analyze and compare soil nutrients and nutrient content in crops for fields farmed in this way versus fields farmed with chemicals. Above the ground, farmers are transforming as well, organizing themselves into cooperatives to help farmers learn together to encourage the adoption of these new practices for higher yields and income.

There is a bigger picture, however, that is beginning to take shape, one that is especially important for Zambia. Cooperatives and their leaders are taking more responsibility for their entire landscape as improved knowledge of soils and a growing culture of self-management are extended more broadly to address deforestation and biodiversity loss. By working collectively as a cooperative, farmers can more easily share knowledge of what soils and the land can and cannot sustain for their future well-being. This has built a foundation for local leaders to self-impose rules and regulations for the protection of not just their soils but for the natural assets within their chiefdom. They are called Community Conservation Plans and a body of local leaders presided by the local chief monitor their compliance and enforce with penalties when violations are judged and charged.

We observe with growing excitement how farmers and nature can work together, strengthening their potential bonds of interdependence to allow the diverse and rich wealth of organisms the land can support to better support farmer livelihoods as well.