COMACO – Sustainable Food Security, Wildlife Conservation, & Ecosystem Preservation in Zambia Africa

Sustainable Food Security, Wildlife Conservation, & Ecosystem Preservation in Zambia Africa
COMACO is a non-profit business that reduces human hunger and poverty while saving wild animals and ecosystems.

Quick Links for New Visitors

Watch a 4 minute video from National Geographic about COMACO

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Wildlife: The Greater Kudu

Especially vulnerable because they drink from waterholes where people set snares, the Greater Kudu is recovering in areas where COMACO operates.

IT'S WILD! Products: Organic, Healthy...

COMACO's produce, taken straight from the farmers, is processed following strict quality guidelines and is formulated to be healthy and tasty.

Rural Income: Not Aid, But Trade

COMACO believes this new conservation paradigm can be used to manage and protect entire ecosystems while providing income security for rural people.

Agriculture: Farmers & Producer Groups

COMACO's organization provides farmers and producer groups with technical guidance and allows for compliance verification.

The Future: Sustainability

COMACO and rural communities partner to build self-reliance at the family level in exchange for commitment to conservation.

Conservation: Poachers Turned Good!

Poaching skills are often passed down from father to son, but almost every hunter explains that if he had better skills to pass on to his sons, he would.

Reducing Human Poverty and Hunger while Saving Wildlife and Ecosystems

Far off in a remote area of Zambia, called the Luangwa Valley, a new model for conservation is saving not only wildlife and habitat but reducing poverty and hunger among the many thousands of poor farmers who share this valley with elephants and other wildlife.

Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO)

COMACO is a novel, emerging company in Zambia that is pioneering an innovative way for making markets and conservation work together. It produces IT'S WILD!, a special brand of organic, value-added processed products that come from the farmers who live with wildlife. Urban consumers buy these products and in doing so, pay for the cost of rewarding small-scale farmers for supporting conservation. The idea that a company can work to improve the lives of poor farmers by supporting conservation may seem too good to be true. Far from it, it is happening and on a scale that is beginning to impress even the most skeptical!

National Geographic Video About COMACO

What would you do to survive?

You're a farmer in rural Zambia and it was a bad season for crops. Your food harvest was too little to carry your family through to the next harvest. The time you devoted to growing cotton kept you from growing more food and the money you earned from the cotton company is still not enough to meet your needs.

Dale’s Corner… Thoughts from the Director

I like maps. They show boundaries, describe limits to resource use and classify land types according to their protected status. They give you a sense of security that someone out there is protecting the land. I wish that were true. Today’s world is filled with uncertainty. If maps could talk and tell us what is really taking place, we might be able to react and build a safer tomorrow. Too often, the reaction comes late. Maps can’t talk, nor the trees, nor the land… and are we listening anyway?

Read the rest of the story

"Dale's Corner" Archive

Improving Quality of Life in Zambia

Mary Phiri has three children namely Noah, Sarah and Robert. Mary joined COMACO in 2006 and her household grow maize, rice, cassava and sweet potatoes. The household takes part in gardening and poultry. Mary is a member of Wanda rice producer group in Mnkhanya chiefdom.

Read personal stories of hope

Saving Animals & Ecosystems

Man and animals living side by side! Healthy populations of animals and people need healthy eco-systems. COMACO is fighting the twin threats of poaching and deforestation that is rapidly denuding Africa of her animal and plant species.

IT'S WILD! Organic Food Products

Good for Zambia! Good for YOU! It’s Wild! organic products are all natural, low impact, fair trade products that are healthy as well as great tasting! Profits go directly to Zambia, supporting rural farming communities and providing a future with hope for a better tomorrow.

The COMACO Business Model

A proven rural development model linking agriculture and local markets to natural resource management, the COMACO business model rewards farmers with increased commodity prices for adopting improved land management and farming practices that can sustain higher food crop yields while reducing potential conflicts with natural resources.

A WCS Program

COMACO is a program of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to develop synergies between agriculture, markets and conservation around protect areas in Zambia. The WCS saves wildlife and wild lands through careful science, international conservation, education, and the management of wildlife parks.

How You Can Help