Farm Talk Radio Educates Farmers in Zambia

In Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, it’s harvest time. Farmers all over the Eastern Province are bagging their produce, like peanuts and soybeans, and taking them to collection points. Our long-standing partner, Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) buys the produce and turns it into all-natural premium food products to sell in Zambian supermarkets.

In this region, extreme poverty rates are high and long drought periods have produced small harvests, causing farmers and their families go hungry. COMACO is fighting this cycle by teaching conservation farming techniques, enabling farmers to grow more crops in dry climates. To date, nearly 3,000 our Prime radios have been distributed by COMACO. This enables COMACO-registered farmers, most of whom are women, to listen to the popular Farm Talk radio program and learn how to plant their seeds using earth-friendly techniques that preserve the soil and yield more food.

Farm Talk and our Prime radio have helped to transform farmers’ lives. Many smallholder farms are located in isolated areas, often miles from the nearest school and market. Now families are connected to vital information that improves their livelihoods, as well as other farmers. People can call into the radio station, Breeze FM, to share successes and ask questions and for the first time farmers are learning from other farmers.

One female leader of a cooperative group, Hilda, said she and the others prefer listening to the big, blue Prime radio because it gives them a chance to come together and discuss what they have learned from the program. They can’t do that with a tiny transistor. Now the cooperative has created a less labor-intensive way to make compost and have begun to share it with other cooperatives. Radio is how they began to learn and now they are innovating new farming practices.

At harvest time, the Prime radio is incredibly important because it allows farmers to learn when to take their crops to collection points for COMACO to buy them. COMACO buys their produce directly, giving them more income to spend on education and healthcare. Farm Talk is the main way farmers learn when and where COMACO will buy their crops. Without it, the nearest market is sometimes a day away on foot and most do not have bicycles or cars to transfer their produce.  

Our Prime radio is not only changing the way farmers treat their environment, it is also helping them access better business opportunities and earn more income. It has become the main tool COMACO’s uses to educate and spread important information, like market dates.

Please consider donating and helping us continue this fabulous project so more women farmers can have the same opportunities to improve their lives.