COMACO Factsheet #1 WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WENT
Transcription
COMACO Factsheet #1 WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WENT
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.