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The utilisation of natural resources required a mindset change among the people for conservation agriculture to be sustained.
This is according to Chief Madzimawe of the Ngoni people in Chipata district.
Chief Madzimawe said in an interview at his palace on Friday that there was need for a mindset change in the way natural resources were utilised across his Chiefdom for agroforestry to be sustained.
He said with the coming of institutions such as the Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) in the area, communities were now benefiting from the conservation programmes they are implementing.
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“We started among ourselves to do a retrospection and we have come to an understanding that we need to change and that change can only be realised only if there was a mindset change among our people …the way we look at things,” Chief Madzimawe said.
He said his interest in conservation farming had risen to a number of factors among them the environmental degradation.
“We are gambling when it comes to farming using rain-fed agriculture you don’t know when you plant you will have the desired yields based on how the rainfall pattern is going to behave,” Chief Madzimawe said.
He indicated that from 1992, they had experienced some droughts which made life for the people difficult.
“We depend on science and also we have realised that we are partly to blame as human beings because we are at the center of this environmental degradation,” Chief Madzimawe said.
He said they were actively into conservation farming due to a number of benefits that come with it.
Chief Madzimawe said a number of people in his Chiefdom were currently practicing conservation farming as well as organic farming, which was ‘collateral’ enough that they were involved in agroforestry agriculture.
He said the farmers were also involved in beekeeping, which ultimately contributes to the production of honey.
This he said had enabled farmers to have extra income from beekeeping.
“When you look at the demand for honey especially for Zambian honey which we hear the quality is very good in Africa actually one of the best but we can’t produce to meet the outside demand, we encourage our people that we need to look at preserving our forestry our trees and the end results will be us venturing into beekeeping which will generate an income,” Chief Madzimawe said.
He said protection of the trees was very important to the environment and climate change mitigation.
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