Products

COMACO assists communities develop finished products for the various commodities producer groups sell to the CTC. By ensuring processed products meet high consumer standards and giving each product a trademark label that associates the product with programme objectives, COMACO is able to add significant value to the products and pass on this increased value to the producer's price. This has become the basis for COMACO to increase producer prices by 40 to 120% for the products the program is supporting, namely poultry, honey, rice, groundnuts and soybeans. The success of this approach has already begun to influence hundreds of farmers to shift from growing crops harmful to wildlife habitat to crops that are environmental friendly, such as paddy rice and small-scale soybean in rotation with a maize crop. Overall, COMACO is reducing the loss of thousands of trees each year by reducing the need to convert forests into farmland.

Each COMACO product is branded with the It's Wild! label so consumers know they are supporting efforts to reduce hunger, poverty while also encouraging better land use practices that will result in the conservation of wildlife in Zambia . In 2006, COMACO will launch a range of new products, including processed rice in different-size packages, rice seeds for planting, honey, peanut butter, groundnut cooking oil, roasted groundnuts, and roasted soybean snacks. For the first, wildlife producers will have direct incentive to cooperate with better crops and farming practices to help promote wildlife production in areas where wildlife and people co-exist.

Processing and packaging standards by COMACO are high and improved transport is enabling COMACO to market its products to high valued markets in the bigger cities of Zambia . As COMACO increases its scale of markets and leverages increased compliance to conservation by community produces of It's Wild! products, there will be increased opportunities to diversify income sources for participating in the natural resource sector, particularly wildlife. In three areas where community compliance to COMACO guidelines has resulted in increased wildlife production based on aerial survey data, COMACO has facilitated investments for these communities to establish their tourism bushcamps as a joint venture with COMACO's tradinng centres, where the community owns 65% of the enterprise.