Zambia’s First Green Company Partners with Rural Farmers

Before it became a business, COMACO was an idea that grew out of an understanding of the way rural people lived in Luangwa Valley.  Briefly described, this rural life in recent years has become a history of poverty and chronic hunger, matched by the charitable role of different institutions who gave help to ease these hardships.  One fact has emerged from this history.  Despite the help provided by these institutions, people generally remained poor and dependent on external aid.  Might there been a better approach?   Rather than regarding rural people as aid dependent, could these people not be partners to a company that could sustain their livelihood needs?  This was the question Wildlife Conservation Society staff presented to community leaders in 2002.  After much discussion and debate, a consensus was reached to launch a company that would redefine the relationship between rural people, their land, and how a commercial enterprise would sustain people’s needs.  The relationship asked communities to be responsible for managing their natural resources, and in return, required the company to purchase local commodities at prices needed to uplift people out of poverty and to keep people committed to conservation.  Without realizing it at the time, Zambia was sowing the seeds for its first “Green” company.

Some might argue that COMACO started running before it knew how to walk.  As a business, it started with rice as its first commodity.  It was a farm commodity that provided both food and income and did not cause undue conflict with wildlife.  COMACO’s first attempt in 2003 was to leverage capital and to offer a favorable price to producers, as promised, and to sell the commodity on the open market at the best rate possible to cover the various transaction costs.  Thirty tons sat in a warehouse that year and COMACO soon realized that traders and millers were only concerned with their bottom line and COMACO took a significant loss.  COMACO had to take a different tact.  Unless the commodity could be processed into a value-added, good quality product that would give a significant appreciation to the value of growing rice for conservation while covering company costs, the model would not work.  

Lundazi District Council and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) met to discuss this challenge to make this vision for COMACO a reality.  A major breakthrough came when the local Council authorities offered to help with an old abandoned building for developing the needed infrastructure to process commodities grown by poor farmers in the District.  In a matter of weeks WCS renovated the building, giving it a renewed life with offices, meeting rooms, storage space and processing rooms and then bought its initial processing and packaging machines to establish COMACO’s first Community Trading Centre, or CTC.  

COMACO registered its business as a non-profit company and called it the Conservation Farmer Wildlife Producer Trading Centre.  In 2004 farmers sold 60 tons of rice and the company produced its first packaged rice product called It’s Wild! Chama Rice.   Since that year, production has grown from 60 to over 300 tons in 2007 with a forecast of almost 1000 tons of commodities ranging from soybean, groundnuts, rice and honey produced by over 30,000 farmers.  Ensuring all these farmers receive the trade benefits as promised, COMACO has established three CTCs with 36 trading depots in rural communities throughout much of Luangwa Valley east of the Luangwa River.  These depots help farmers bulk their commodities and trade more effectively with their regional CTC.  

Today, COMACO is running and so too are its producers, and neither are falling down.  A trading partnership envisioned to serve both the poor and conservation has awakened Zambia to COMACO’s benefits.  This year, COMACO expects to inject up to $1 million among its producers who reside around Luangwa’s national parks and national forests to purchase commodities produced in ways that also help protect soils and trees.  From its own inventories, COMACO will ensure farmers have sufficient seeds of better varieties for next year’s crop.  With their improved income, families are now finding it easier to pay for school fees and school supplies to give their children a good education, mothers are more able to buy medicines needed to treat diarrhea and malaria, and parents can purchase farm implements to become more food secure.  As partners to their company, producers remain accountable to their promise of complying with conservation guidelines and COMACO maintains its verification to these compliances as Zambia’s first ‘Green’ company delivers on its promise.

COMACO is not without risks of failing, as many new companies in Zambia do end in bankruptcy.  Wildlife Conservation Society with its various partners and sources of finance are managing its progress to avoid this fate and working through a business plan that will achieve financial sustainability for COMACO by 2010 or 2011.  Future editions of this newsletter will help plot this course and bring to light the progress and possible set backs as COMACO continues its strides in proving a business model for conservation can also uplift the well-being of rural people across an ecosystem vital for Zambia’s wildlife treasures.