Farmer Compliance to Conservation Targets

COMACO is a relatively new program that focuses on farmers who are often the source of environmental degradation due to lack of better land use practices or alternative markets that would help drive better land use practices. COMACO fills this need. WCS is keenly interested in testing the hypothesis that farmers will respond favorably to conservation when the economic incentive for adopting better conservation practices minus the cost of not adopting these practices exceeds the benefits of adopting practices not supportive of conservation minus the cost of adopting improved conservation practices. As COMACOs markets grow and add value to conservation, we expect to see a shift in farmer behavior more supportive of the needs of natural resource management while also seeing an improvement in livelihoods associated with COMAC?s trade benefits. Some of these changes in farmer behavior the program is monitoring include voluntary surrendering of snaring and poaching, adoption of conservation farming, shift in growing pesticide-based, soil depleting crops to more desirable crops, and reduced reliance on charcoal making to increased dependence on bee-keeping. Below is a summary of observations thus far.

1)Snaring

In October 2003 a survey was conducted in the COMACO core areas to assess current household snaring behaviors versus memory of their previous use in 2000. This provided a means of determining effect after nearly three years of snare removal by COMACO. Accuracy of responses was encouraged by the good will generated through COMACOs intensive community participation, and recognition that during this period, no punitive action was taken by ZAWA or any other agency against those who had surrendered snares. This created a more trusting environment for conducting a survey in which households were asked to divulge illegal activities. For data validation internally within the survey, questions were asked to indicate both personal practices, as well as respondents? perception of practices of others in the village. Respondents perceived that in 2000 approximately 4 households out of 10 of their neighboring households depended on snares to help meet food shortfalls (Figure to the left, mean = 4.2; S.D. = 2.86). Box-whisker plots in these panels again show the distribution of the data as well as the mean, with the same quantiles as in previous figures. Approximate accuracy of this perceived value was suggested by an even larger percentage of respondents saying that they personally used snares in this fashion (Figure 9a). The mean number of animals caught per person snaring in the year 2000 was 5.75 (data not shown; S.D. = 7.84). Based on these results, an extremely conservative estimate is that between 4000-6000 wild animals were lost to snares during that year. This figure does not take into consideration losses to people living outside the Game Management Areas, nor does it include losses to ?professional poachers? who used firearms.

In comparison, significant declines in perceived and admitted snare use were noted by 2003. A full 50% of respondents (Figure 8) indicated that they believed that no one was snaring in 2003, and less than 10% of respondents indicated that they themselves continued to snare. Interestingly, out of those still snaring, there was a significant decrease in mean number of snares placed per snaring effort (Figure 9b; mean value of 4.75, S.D. = 4.8 versus 2.46, S.D. = 1.82; p< 0.001). This suggested that if snaring were indeed primarily a coping mechanism for food insecurity, than increases in food security were helping to restrict this practice.

2)Adoption of conservation farming

Table below shows the total number of COMACO registered producer groups associated with the Lundazi CTC that were inspected for complying to the guidelines for conservation farming, which reduces the incidence of bushfires, increases crop yields and improves the fertility of soils. In 2006, out of 7375 farm plots inspected, 73.8% were found compliant with conservation farming guidelines. Moreover, this was when market incentives provide by COMACO were the primary incentive for farmers to adopt this farming practice.

3) Shift to conservation-friendly crops

COMACO has succeeded in sustaining improved producer prices for the crops it promotes and markets and as a result significant number of farmers are shifting from growing pesticide-based cotton with high costs of inputs to low labor, no-pesticide needed rice crops. The table below shows producer price increases for some of COMACO products and in 2006 COMACO producer price for rice was K1000/kg as compared to K850/kg for rice. The following table shows the number of farmers who have opted for rice seed, supplied by COMACO, to farmers seeking to shift from cotton to rice. BACK TO TOP