Community Leadership

Prior to COMACO, the farmers of the Luangwa Valley had a limited opportunity to cooperate for collective planning efforts as a community, to avoid careless and wasteful use of limited, finite natural resources. Past efforts to bring about improved community planning have relied on leadership structures that generally failed to address household-level needs, and thus failed to gain sufficient household “buy-in” needed to persuade farmers to reduce practices harmful to their environment. COMACO seeks to reinforce these existing structures by building a collective producer group organization that recognizes the relationship between access to trade benefits and compliance with conservation-based production practices.

Producer group (PG) formation during the early stages of COMACO began as an active process of farmer recruitment using World Food Program (WFP) maize to leverage farmers’ time to learn new farming skills. Farmers joining COMACO and signing the pledge to practice conservation farming and livelihood methods were rewarded with a supply of maize for family food us.  Today, recruitment of new members is almost entirely driven by their desire to joing those having access to improved commodity prices, low-cost input support, and livelihood skills training. Much of this recruitment takes place at local community trading depots with continued support and oversight by PG cooperatives (PGC) and COMACO field extension staff. 

1. Local organization:
   
   Group members are organized into producer groups, which have their own elected group leader. COMACO currently has 2033 producer groups. Twice during the year, producer group leaders are provided farmer cards for each of their members. These cards provide an important role for groups to monitor their own farming practices, crops, yields and sales.   Area managers collect the cards at the appropriate time and results become the basis for follow-up compliance inspections by extension staff to select the best lead farmers as commodity buying agents.
   
   Producer groups are organized into Producer Group Cooperatives for each chiefdom with respective elected leaders. These cooperatives are registered through the District Agricultural Officer and the Registrar of Civil Societies. This level of farmer-based organization affords COMACO the opportunity of working with peer-identified leaders. These leaders provide valued assistance in mobilizing cooperation among group members to abide by conservation norms (e.g. no poaching, snaring, or making commercial charcoal) and improved farming practices. They also assist COMACO in a) building farmer loyalty in growing food crops suitable for their soils and supportive of COMACO products and b) providing security and administration of their community trading depots, which serve as market and training centres. 
    

2. Mentors and leaders
   
   A key part of farming technology transfer (and with other types of producer groups) with the high farmer to area extension manager ratio is the lead farmer. Currently, COMACO has identified and trained a total of 639 lead farmers, based on their past compliance to required farming practices and their willingness and interest in helping their fellow-farmers to improve skills. This represents a ratio of about 50 farmers to 1 (lead farmer + area manager) or about 3 to 5 producer groups/lead farmer. Benefits and incentives to serving as an effective lead farmer include the following:
   
   

   • Lead farmers receive a commission for every new farmer they recruit and train, based on verification of approved farming practices by the area manager.
   • Lead farmers who remain supportive throughout the farming season and produce the best results in terms of compliance and yields are chosen as part of a smaller group of lead farmers to serve as commodity purchasing agents, who receive commissions for every kg of commodities sold to COMACO.

   
   This level of organization provides a flow of technical guidance and verification of use on improved farming practices, that include a mix of farming techniques, including:

   • home-based fertilizer-making with compost and bio-char
   • mulching
   • crop thinning
   • weeding techniques
   • crop rotation
   • minimal or zero-tillage techniques
   • pot-holing
   • plowing techniques to remove hard-pan and increase root penetration
   • inter-cropping with agro-forestry
   • water management

3. Peer-to-Peer Education
   
   Producer Group Cooperatives and their leaders also play an important role in helping organize Field Day learning events, which are usually convened near the community trading depot. These are generally attended by group leaders and lead farmers, though anyone can attend and allow information exchange between participants while facilitation the introduction of new ideas and skills, not necessarily limited to farming (family nutrition, bee-keeping techniques, dry season farming with treadle pump, chicken husbandry, etc.). Attendance is typically above 100. Topics range from improved techniques for improving bee-occupancy of bee hives to family nutrition. COMACO facilitates these field days with support for lunch and is another way of building loyalty and support for the social and environmental objectives the company works for. Cooperative leaders advertizes their dates and encourages good attendance. During the year, COMACO convenes between 4-8 field days per year for a given chiefdom.
   
   In addition to field day events, COMACO developed over the past six months a new learning tool, called the Better Life Book. This book provide written guidelines on technical methods and practices for a range of topics and consists of a strong plastic folder with loose sheet of heavy paper with educational material printed on them. Each page is referred to as a Learning Page. The book currently has 23 pages with enough copies to give to each of COMACO’s registered producer groups. Producer groups meet monthly to share lessons and experiences and during these meetings the Better Life Book becomes a focal point of information for explaining better practices to improve family welfare and good health while living in harmony with their environment.
   
   This current system of extension support is intended to help maintain farmer conservation compliance. In addition to lead farmers complementing and reinforcing the work of area managers, selected lead farmers maintain his or her farm plots as demo plots, where lead farmers bring farmers for instruction and where different practices are used to compare results with control or “traditional” methods. These demo plots are visited and supported by the area managers.