Hunger and Poverty

"Food Security" is the measure of a family's ability to cope with hunger. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says that hunger is the consumption of less than 1600-2000 calories per day. You can measure food security a number of ways – a child only knows that it’s hungry. Thousands of Zambians of all ages live below this basic calorie level, experiencing seasons of periodic feast and famine. Up to 23% of Zambian children nationwide are measurably underweight, causing severe cognitive damage to growing minds and physical damage to bodies that can never be repaired, even if diet improves later. The struggle between hunger and other needs drives families into poverty and into desperate and often destructive livelihoods, including prostitution, poaching and broken families. With their families unable to afford school, children are unable to find paying work as adults and lack up-to-date knowledge about productive farming. Health and hygiene suffers as living conditions spiral downward. Malnourished children are 12 times more likely to die from easily preventable and treatable diseases. Among developing nations, Zambia ranks near the bottom for food security.

How does this happen and how does this relate to COMACO?

A random sample of 1059 households (representing about 7.% of the total number of households) in the Luangwa Valley area, where COMACO has it’s focus, were interviewed in 2001. The vast majority (98.5%) of households reported dependence on growing only maize as the primary food crop. Only 3.4% of these households used fertilizer, and food harvested by these farmers was more than three times the yield for farmers who did not use fertilizer. As a result, less than half (48.9%) of all households had enough maize to feed their family by the 9th month after harvest. This finding reflected the level of soil depletion and poor farming practices used in the Luangwa Valley. The expense of chemical fertilizer precludes the vast majority of families from utilizing this strategy. The survey also identified the lack understanding of, or inputs to sustain, crop rotation for improving soils. Famers believed, moreover, that burning crop residues after harvest would reduce weeds. The practice not only made weeds worse, but exposed the soils to wind and rain erosion. It was the perfect recipe for rapid soil depletion. Despite the evidence for poor farming practices, the local perception is that poor production and crop loss is due to external factors such as animals and birds (74.9%), flooding (58.5%) other factors outside of their control. Wildlife Conservation Society recognized all of this as the underlying reason why small-scale farmers had to rely on snaring wildlife to get by.

The link between hunger and poaching 

With the increasing need for money in a growing cash economy, many farmers resorted to growing non-food cash crops, such as cotton and tobacco.  While satisfying income needs to a certain extent, the shift to non-food crops increased the likelihood of food shortages in regions of the Luangwa Valley ecosystem where these two crops were grown. This need for food was exacerbated by a number of factors but they all drove families to search for solutions that often led to destructive uses of natural resources to help make up for food shortfalls. One common way families compensate for insufficient food production was the illegal harvesting of wildlife. Poaching with wire snares was typically performed not for consumption, but rather to exchange meat for maize or grains they could not produce themselves. In 2000, over 40% of families interviewed reported using wire snaring as a mechanism to cope with food insecurity[4]. A survey of practices in 2000 indicated that an average food-insecure family set snares 3 to 4 times a year, typically using 10-15 snares per setting, and on average killing 7 animals annually. While this sounds small, multiplied by thousands of families, and the result on wildlife is devastating. With the use of firearms and being more selective in what was killed, one data source reported that illegal hunters in 2000 killed an average of 5-7 animals per hunter annually, and of the over 100 hunters interviewed, at least 12% had hunted elephants, one of Zambia's greatest tourist attractions. A survey of specific COMACO activity areas showed that in 2001, the average village hunter made a profit of no more than $1-$2 US dollars for the average impala killed as bushmeat.

How do we break the vicious poverty cycle that leads to resource depletion?

The answer lies in education, inputs and markets that break the inter-generation transfer of skills linked to such practices as hunting, snaring, over-fishing and so forth and replace them with skills that care for the soils and trees. Rurally isolated Zambian families lack access to any kind of schooling in farming, self-sufficiency and the ecosystems around them. Skills useful to prior generations are no longer supportive. With proper skills, the farmland of the Luangwa Valley CAN be more productive. With training in conservation farming, crop rotation, the use of organic fertilization and crop diversification, combined with markets that drive the adoption of these skills, COMACO is finding solutions, helping tens of thousands of Luangwa Valley's farmers produce enough food to both feed their own families and earn income from crop surpluses to support school fees and other basic needs while living sustainably off the land. It sounds simple but when applied across remote landscapes having few roads and infrastructure, it is a challenge that most development projects have failed to meet, despite the large investments made.  The COMACO approach is different because COMACO works as a company that grows wealth for farmers around the right crops and production practices that ensures both food and income security.

------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] UNDP 2008 Comprehensive Framework for Action
[2] UNDP 2008 Comprehensive Framework for Action
[3] Household selection was based on random numbers associated with household listings provided by area headmen from the different communities sampled.
[4] From a 2000 survey of 486 households selected randomly from Game Management Areas in the Luangwa Valley.