Technical assistance finds useful solutions for COMACO’s growing impact
Wildlife Conservation Society has built up a growing list of technical partners to help focus on key COMACO needs. One such need WCS identified was an independent business audit of the COMACO business. On issues of business management, WCS has relied heavily on technical assistance from Haas Business School of University of Berkeley, which offered a team of four MBA students to work with COMACO staff in undertaking such an audit. As the team concluded their work, one of the team member, Adrain Greystoke, remarked, “The model is more than interesting; it is working. There is an impact and COMACO is without doubt reaching places other models and organizations can’t reach presently.” A key priority to the team’s work was to assess COMACO’s capacity to reach sustainability in the shortest time possible, while still serving the market needs of a growing population of rural producers.
“Undoubtedly, COMACO’s greatest strengths are its motivated and dedicated staff as well as the quality of its organic, natural and nutrition-rich products and the contributions it is making to increased rural incomes, food security and natural resource conservation,” the team revealed. However, the team also pointed out that a much scaled-up marketing and advertising effort will be a key factor for meeting sales volumes required by COMACO to achieve sustainability. The team further suggested that COMACO would have to explore new market options, such as wholesale outlets and bulk sales of unprocessed commodities for export if COMACO expects to reach these volumes. If the business plan is left unchanged, current projections suggest a slow but positive trend toward sustainability in about 10 years, but if improvements to pricing structures, market channels and product marketing are undertaken now, the duration to sustainability can be much less, possibly 3 to 5 years. Results have left the COMACO team energized and committed to meeting the challenge.
COMACO embraces many of the environmental challenges for entire landscapes, and indeed, much of the Luangwa Valley ecosystem. While business solutions are an important part of the process, technological solutions are equally important. One of the challenges COMACO seeks to address is the growing destruction of trees from the growing demand of firewood and charcoal. Presently, Zambia does have a widely accepted fuel-efficient cooker for these energy sources and a significant number of trees could be saved if families adopted more fuel-efficient cookers. Adopting new technology requires a commitment of money to purchase the technology and again, the Haas Business School offered a team of four MBA students to study the problem and develop a business strategy that could be make such stoves widely accepted in Zambia. The quickly realized that COMACO has already established the necessary organization and infrastructure with its trading depots, extension staff and lead farmers to make the stoves widely accepted. A low-cost cooker made in China has a 40% fuel efficiency, meaning it would save 40% of the fuel source, and for charcoal users, this translates into a total of 7.6 trees saved per year per family. At a base price of K35,000, a family would pay for the stove from the fuel savings in less than 4 months. Work is continuing to refine the business model for a successful introduction of these cookers in COMACO areas.
Once again, COMACO is more than just a business, but it does require a successful business to build trust and cooperation with rural communities to adopt new and support new technologies that will support improved food security and rural incomes. By choosing the right technologies that also reduce the need to degrade or destroy natural resources, COMACO achieves increased natural resource conservation. One area of technology COMACO sought help is improved veterinary practices to reduce the incidence of Newcastle disease, a disease that is highly infectious and kills a large portion of the poultry population in Lunagwa Valley each year. When the disease strikes, many families are left without a source of animal protein and the solution for many is to depend on the illegal killing of wildlife for meat.
COMACO’s long-standing relationship with Cornell University, particularly its Veterinary School, offered a ready solution. In June, Miss Emily Stubing , in her last year of veterinary school at Cornell arrived in Zambia to work with COMACO’s extension staff in Mfuwe. Working with her is COMACO extension officer, Miss Petronella Simwinga. Together, they hope to review data thus far collected on the use of a heat tolerant vaccine against Newcastle disease over the past year and to extend the vaccination efforts in 2008 to cover over 100,000 birds. Results suggest thus far the vaccine is working but COMACO needs technical guidance to ensure the vaccine is effective as farmers will be required to pay K250 ($.05) for the vaccination of each bird. If the approach proves successful, Luangwa Valley residents will have a secure supply of poultry meat and a surplus for local markets. As more and more farmers earn better incomes from COMACO markets, such inputs as Newcastle vaccines become more affordable for the common villager.
