COMACO extension interventions: linking conservation to food security and household income

a)Conservation farming, food production, and fertilizer cost savings

Throughout the three districts in which it operates, COMACO has undertaken a large-scale effort to train over 30,000 food insecure families with the necessary skills to practice conservation farming. This is a zero-tillage technique that uses small depressions (also known as ?potholes?) for each planting station in which each individual plant is grown and to which farmers apply home-produced compost fertilizer just before planting.? Part of the conservation farming practice is to suppress weed growth and increase moisture retention with a liberal covering of last season?s crop residues spread between the rows of planting stations.? In addition to returning nutrients to the soil, productive use of crop residues discourages the practice of burning such residues, a practice which may contribute to soil degradation as well as increased occurrence of bush fires that impact surrounding wildlife habitat and watershed resources.

Table 3 shows total maize support provided by WFP for each year of the WFP Food-for-Better Farming Initiative and total number of recipients who also received training.? 2005 was a severe drought year and much of the maize (approx. 60%) was given as relief.?? Continued compliance with conservation farming by replacing maize incentives from World Food Program with COMACO-based market incentives is a major challenge for the COMACO approach. The sharp reduction of WFP maize supplementation as an inducement for initial training in 2006 offers an important opportunity for testing farmers? support for joining and maintaining membership in this model.? For the Lundazi and Chama areas where WFP maize support has been completely removed for the 2006 planting season and where COMACO markets are most developed, conservation farming compliance has remained consistent with previous years, (Table 4).

To evaluate the actual benefit of conservation farming, 689 farm plots were sampled across 8 chiefdoms in Luangwa Valley.? Selected plots included those that used conservation farming with and without compost and those that used traditional farming practices.? Selection of plots was at an early stage of crop growth to avoid possible biases in plot selection.? Mean plot size was 2734 m² or approximately 1.1 limas[1].?? Figure 5 shows mean maize produced per lima. Box whisker plots are organized as above to show the distribution of data (with horizontal lines within the box representing the 25^th, 50^th and 75^th quantiles, the horizontal lines through the box representing the mean, and whiskers extending to the 10^th and 90^th quantiles).? Based on mean values, increase in maize yields attributed to CF with and without composting in comparison to traditional farming practices was 151.6 kg/lima and 103.2 kg/lima, respectively (both statistically significant at P<0.001).? However, it can be seen that variations between farmers are great, necessitating more research to investigate possible confounding factor such as differences in compost types, patterns of applications, suitability for different soil types, etc.

Figure 5.

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Labour is the primary cost to the individual practicing conservation farming in terms of digging holes, making compost and supplying each hole with the correct quantity of compost.? Results suggest a large variation in the food security benefits of conservation relative to traditional farming practices, which would suggest farmers may vary their level of compliance with the best conservation farming practices.? Longer term benefits may become more pronounced as continued inter-row mulching will reduce the costs of weeding while increasing soil fertility with continued application of compost.

Preliminary results from a 2006 food security survey suggest COMACO?s efforts to increase household adoption of conservation farming may be having a positive impact on food security in the valley communities.? Measured maize production for randomly selected fields of known histories of conservation farming with compost fertilizer provided the data, together with household size and maize consumption rates (WFP figures), for determining which households had sufficient food to last into the ninth month after their previous crop harvest.? At this point, fresh farm produce is available to sustain family food needs.?? 84.6% of households who practiced conservation farming and compost fertilizer achieved food security to the nine-month target, as opposed to only 70.1% for farmers who did not practice conservation farming.? In years prior to COMACO, farmers demonstrated lower levels of food security, ranging from a high of 77.3% in 2000 to 48.9% in 2001.

Figure 6.? Percentage households food secure to ninth month after previous year?s harvest

b) Livelihood skills and income diversification

Table 5 illustrates the scale and diversity of skills COMACO has introduced in Lundazi, Chama and Mambwe Districts since 2002, showing its commitment to invest in human capital and the expected returns on COMACO?s own profit loss statements to sustain increased profit sharing with household producers.? In Mambwe, for example, rice production for added value commercial products was nil and only a small number of households grew an inferior quality of rice for household consumption.? COMACO facilitated the movement of 8 tons of rice seeds from a high quality seed source to Mambwe and taught farmers how to manage rain water to increase yields for both a food and cash crop harvest.? In one year, production increased to over 290 tons for 536 households with a total of 126 tons sold to the Mambwe trading centre, representing an injection of K126 million (or about $32,000) into the local economy.

Preliminary results on 2006 household incomes come from a random sample of 477 household heads (147 women and 330 men) interviewed in the valley areas where COMACO operates.?? In comparison with Figure 3 (page 4), which describes the percentage of household heads practicing different income livelihoods, Figure 7 suggests cotton has become the primary source of income for most households.? In the 2006 survey, cotton surpassed other sources of income and accounted for 58.9% of the total earnings and 62% of all people interviewed grew cotton as opposed to only 37%.? Total number of households growing rice increased by 11% relative to numbers in 2001 and rice contributed to 32.7% of total income earned in 2006.? Average annual income for household heads has increased by 100% for men from $60 to $120.7 and by 301% for women from $21 to $84.7, though more than half of this increase has come from cotton.?

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