Protecting Trees and Watersheds

Protecting trees and watersheds is a key COMACO objective.  Members of COMACO producer groups, like these women in the picture, engage in direct steps to increase tree numbers by planting trees that help improve the fertility of their farmland.  Tree species selected also provide a source of firewood from the branches that farmers prune annually and the flowers produced are important sources of nectar and pollen for bees to produce honey.  In this picture, the producer group is preparing their tree seedlings (Faidherbia albida) for planting in their gardens.  In 2009, COMACO farmers planted over 1.2 million Faidherbia albida and over 3 million Gliricidia sepium.  The latter species grows quickly in rows where food crops are grown in between.  This way of farming with tree species is called alley-cropping. Women are discovering that Glicidia sepium is an important source of firewood and they now have to spend less time traveling into the nearby forests to cut trees and disturb wildlife habitat.  Just before planting, women strip the leaves of this species, which are rich in nitrogen.  The leaves are used as part of the compost women make as fertilizer or are simply used as mulch, rich with nitrogen, to enrich their crops. They then break off the stripped branches, which quickly re-grow during the farming season.  These removed branches are dried and used for firewood, providing a family with enough firewood to last for over 4 months.

Elsewhere, groups follow practices that result in fewer fires and less need to clear forest for new farm land.  Such practices are part of the compliance requirement for farmers to receive a premium price for their commodities and a conservation dividend at the end of the farming season.   COMACO recognizes the ecological differences among the different eco-farming zones across the Luangwa Valley and adapts its compliance guidelines to each zone so that farming practices improve the overall conservation needs of the area.  On the western side of Luangwa Valley, COMACO combines lime with a carefully designed approach of crop rotation using cereals and legumes to maintain fertility with key fallow crops that are powerful nitrogen fixers.   With lime to reduce acidity and help improve the release of nutrients to crop roots, farmers are seeing a way for meeting their food needs without having to clear forests to burn into ash, a traditional way of liming their soils, but causing untold destruction to Luangwa’s watersheds.

In the words of one farmer who has seen his food crops triple under COMACO: “Today, I am really a free man.  I am no longer a prisoner to hunger and poverty, thanks to COMACO”.