COMACO – Community Markets for Conservation

Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) works across Zambia's Luangwa Valley and surrounding chiefdoms, training subsistence farmers and former poachers in conservation farming and linking them to guaranteed markets for their crops. Farmers who commit to sustainable practices and surrender snares or firearms gain access to COMACO's trading depots, which process their harvests into food products sold under the It's Wild! brand. The network now includes several hundred thousand farmers organized into more than 100 cooperatives, and has persuaded over 2,000 former poachers to surrender their weapons and take up farming.