WCS Fact Sheet for Zambia: Adapting agriculture to improved wildlife production in Luangwa Valley

Fact sheet #9, 25 May, 2006

Introduction

Farming is the principal source of income for communities living in Luangwa Valley. Its practice is a permanent and growing dimension to land management in this valley ecosystem, influenced largely by how farmers farm and what they farm. The outcome of these influences provides an important determinant to the conservation of wildlife and the development of wildlife-based enterprises in Luangwa Valley.

The COMACO program has developed a range of strategies, shaped largely by agricultural marketing incentives that link farmer-based activities to improved wildlife production through the use of improved farming technologies and crop diversification. The alternative to adapting agriculture to wildlife management is a separation of agricultural and wildlife-based interests and increased conflicts between them. Elsewhere (WCS Fact Sheet #6, #7) studies suggest COMACO-based interventions that support increased food security and household income in farm-based communities can lower the cost of managing and policing wildlife resources. This paper highlights and briefly examines some of the key agricultural technologies and innovations applied under the COMACO program for strengthening a multiple-use approach to land management that favors increased synergies between agriculture and wildlife.

Adapting farming technologies and appropriate crops in wildlife areas

Existing technologies designed to improve farming practices for increased yields can be considered helpful management tools for wildlife production if they result in either more wildlife or reduced loss of wildlife habitat. When such technologies working in concert are carefully planned with selected crop varieties, net improvements in land management and biodiversity conservation can be substantial relative to opposing practices or crop varieties. Ways that such technologies can operate across a range of crops are as follows:

1.? ?Recurrent use of compost in the same pot-holes as part of conservation farming practice: improved soil microflora and sustained nutrient regeneration for improved sustained crop yields, resulting in a reduced need to clear land or potential wildlife habitat for new farm land.

2.? ?Use of inter-row mulching of crop detritus: suppressed weed growth and reduced soil loss from first rains, thus increasing incentives not to burn fields as an activity that might spread fires into surrounding wildlife areas.

3.? ?Crop rotation with a legume: increased soil nitrogen fixation for next-year's food or cash crop, contributing to sustained yields, reduced need to clear farm land or potential wildlife habitat, and reduced use or need for pesticides. Also lowers household costs for buying fertilizer or pesticides, which otherwise might have been bought with funds raised from poaching or other environmentally harmful activity. COMACO currently promotes groundnuts and soybeans for crop rotation.

4.? ?Use of selected agroforestry species (e.g. Gliricidia sepium): Complement compost as a top-dressing, can be pollarded to hasten tree plantings for meeting farmer requirements. As above, this practice reduces the need to clear land and lowers household cost for fertilizer and possible need to poach for buying fertilizer.

5.? ?Adoption of techniques to lower crop loss from wild animals or birds: COMACO has adopted various practices, either introduced as technological innovations or identified by communities themselves as techniques worthy of study and further use:

? Solar-powered electric fencing. Communities that experience serious risks of crop loss from wild animals can be a significant disincentive to farm, contributing to a positive-feedback effect on snaring and other related threats to wildlife. Though costly for a rural community, approximately $2500, an electric fence brings an almost immediate and effective barrier to large crop-raiding mammal species to a large number of households living and farming in a relatively contiguous area. Training in fence management and community commitment to fence safety are pre-requisites to a successful electric fence enclosure. An electric fence also has the important effect of defining boundaries for farming and reduces the incidence of farmers from establishing isolated and exposed farming plots elsewhere, and thus contributing

to wildlife habitat fragmentation. Moreover, electric fencing enclosures encourages the adoption of more intensified use of crop and soil management practices to sustain agricultural output from the farming area defined by the fence's perimeter.

?? ? ?Lowering sorghum plant stalks when seeds are maturing. Communities reliant on sorghum as a food crop have learned that bending over sorghum stalks level to the ground when seeds are maturing will significantly lower the incidence of bird and wildlife animal damage to this crop. Reasons are not clear. For wild animals, it may be a function of reducing the smell as an attractant. It also makes wild animals more easily detected when they venture into a sorghum field.

Introduction and diversification of crops are also important features of agricultural management in a wildlife area. COMACO field-based experiences argue that there are good choices and poor choices, realizing that no agricultural at all would be more beneficial to wildlife. This is not a credible option in most cases, except for rare cases where there are over-whelming incentives for a farming community to shift to an area where wildlife is less of a potential land use conflict. A review of these choices is presented below:

Good choices:

?? ? ?Commercial quality, locally adapted paddy rice. COMACO has selected a local variety of rice, generally referred to as Chama rice, that has a pleasant taste, produces high yields, and is resistant to breaking when polishing. It is matures in about four months, requires relatively low inputs of labour, and has minimal impact on wildlife or habitat. Rice is grown in paddies that flood, often with slowly moving water, and flooded conditions such as this results in wildlife dispersion to drier ground. As crops are harvested, conditions favor wildlife use with minimal conflict with rice farming. It provides a combined value as a food crop and cash crop and does not seriously compete for farmers' time to grow a primary food crop, such as maize or sorghum. To date, COMACO has not had any incidence of pests or disease affecting Chama rice.

?? ? ?Household cassava plots. Well-tended cassava plots, made more possible when grown near a family's homestead where they can also be more easily protected from wildlife, provide a low-cost solution to food security during periods of food shortages. This added food security can reduce the need for a family to resort to wildlife snaring as a way of bartering game meat for a food stable.

Poor choices:

?? ? ?Pesticide dependent cotton. Clay soils in Luangwa Valley lend themselves to cotton production and potentially compete for wildlife on soils where other crops are not favored. Cotton is not limited to clay soils and when farmers seek income opportunities from this crop will have to decide how to allocate time between cotton and a food crop. Evidence suggests that in some cases, this choice can lead to increased food insecurity and continued use of snares. Pesticides are generally concentrated, synthetic pyrethrum-based insecticides, which are destructive to local bee populations. Honey production is low in honey producing areas. Honey is another source of food during periods of food shortfall and could be an additional buffer to reduction of wildlife snaring. COMACO has undertaken a pilot scheme to test farmer adoption of organic cotton production when offered adequate cash incentives sustained by market demand.

Conclusions and on-going research of agricultural adaptation in wildlife areas

Perspectives that wildlife management and agriculture are irreconcilable land use foes are not justified if participating stakeholders show flexibility to modify farming practices and support marketing incentives to sustain better practices. The COMACO program has reached a large-enough scale of participating farmers, exceeding 15,000, adopting the above practices to fully quantify and study their respective impacts on wildlife conservation relative to areas where such practices are absent. Results of this work are a major current focus of COMACO's adaptive management research approach.

Dale Lewis, Nemiah Tembo, Whytson Daka (wcszambia@uuplus.com; www.itswild.org)