Established as a pilot in 2003 that followed with support from the BioCarbon Fund, COMACO is now an independent social enterprise reaching over 179,000 farmers in the Luangwa Valley (over half of whom are women) spread across 76 chiefdoms and covering over 10.5 million hectares of communal land. Additionally, 86 percent of farmers are food secure and their income levels have more than tripled. Farmer cooperatives support farmer needs and help enforce community conservation plans, contributing to lowered rates of tree loss and wildlife poaching in many areas across the Luangwa Valley.
The BioCarbon Fund’s current integrated forest landscape project in Zambia, as well as the World Bank’s Zambia Agribusiness and Trade Project, draw on COMACO’s lessons learned on connecting smallholder farmers to commercial markets while protecting forest cover and soil fertility.
“This pilot program is really proof that these linkages between agriculture and reducing emission from deforestation and degradation (known as REDD+) can be turned into a reality,” says Neeta Hooda, Senior Natural Resources Management Specialist at the World Bank. She affirms the COMACO model is ripe for replication, but “local businesses need to be able to scale up to meet market demands… and they need more financial support and technical capacity from the public and private sector to do so.”
Established as a pilot in 2003 that followed with support from the BioCarbon Fund, COMACO is now an independent social enterprise reaching over 179,000 farmers in the Luangwa Valley (over half of whom are women) spread across 76 chiefdoms and covering over 10.5 million hectares of communal land. Additionally, 86 percent of farmers are food secure and their income levels have more than tripled. Farmer cooperatives support farmer needs and help enforce community conservation plans, contributing to lowered rates of tree loss and wildlife poaching in many areas across the Luangwa Valley.
The BioCarbon Fund’s current integrated forest landscape project in Zambia, as well as the World Bank’s Zambia Agribusiness and Trade Project, draw on COMACO’s lessons learned on connecting smallholder farmers to commercial markets while protecting forest cover and soil fertility.
“This pilot program is really proof that these linkages between agriculture and reducing emission from deforestation and degradation (known as REDD+) can be turned into a reality,” says Neeta Hooda, Senior Natural Resources Management Specialist at the World Bank. She affirms the COMACO model is ripe for replication, but “local businesses need to be able to scale up to meet market demands… and they need more financial support and technical capacity from the public and private sector to do so.”
Established as a pilot in 2003 that followed with support from the BioCarbon Fund, COMACO is now an independent social enterprise reaching over 179,000 farmers in the Luangwa Valley (over half of whom are women) spread across 76 chiefdoms and covering over 10.5 million hectares of communal land. Additionally, 86 percent of farmers are food secure and their income levels have more than tripled. Farmer cooperatives support farmer needs and help enforce community conservation plans, contributing to lowered rates of tree loss and wildlife poaching in many areas across the Luangwa Valley.
The BioCarbon Fund’s current integrated forest landscape project in Zambia, as well as the World Bank’s Zambia Agribusiness and Trade Project, draw on COMACO’s lessons learned on connecting smallholder farmers to commercial markets while protecting forest cover and soil fertility.
“This pilot program is really proof that these linkages between agriculture and reducing emission from deforestation and degradation (known as REDD+) can be turned into a reality,” says Neeta Hooda, Senior Natural Resources Management Specialist at the World Bank. She affirms the COMACO model is ripe for replication, but “local businesses need to be able to scale up to meet market demands… and they need more financial support and technical capacity from the public and private sector to do so.”
Established as a pilot in 2003 that followed with support from the BioCarbon Fund, COMACO is now an independent social enterprise reaching over 179,000 farmers in the Luangwa Valley (over half of whom are women) spread across 76 chiefdoms and covering over 10.5 million hectares of communal land. Additionally, 86 percent of farmers are food secure and their income levels have more than tripled. Farmer cooperatives support farmer needs and help enforce community conservation plans, contributing to lowered rates of tree loss and wildlife poaching in many areas across the Luangwa Valley.
The BioCarbon Fund’s current integrated forest landscape project in Zambia, as well as the World Bank’s Zambia Agribusiness and Trade Project, draw on COMACO’s lessons learned on connecting smallholder farmers to commercial markets while protecting forest cover and soil fertility.
“This pilot program is really proof that these linkages between agriculture and reducing emission from deforestation and degradation (known as REDD+) can be turned into a reality,” says Neeta Hooda, Senior Natural Resources Management Specialist at the World Bank. She affirms the COMACO model is ripe for replication, but “local businesses need to be able to scale up to meet market demands… and they need more financial support and technical capacity from the public and private sector to do so.”
