The populations living in the Chimanimani Conservation Area present high poverty levels, depending essentially on agriculture as a means of subsistence. The scarcity of investment resources in adequateagricultural supplies and lack of technical assistance services that allow them to adopt more appropriate techniques, forces these families to use traditional systems, based on itinerant agriculture. This system is essencialy based in constant changes of production areas (nomadism). Even though the production and productivity levels tend to be relatively high in the first two years, they decrease significantly thanks to the soil’s fertility reduction, resulting from controlled fires and erosion, forcing the families to search for new areas. The areas are mostly obtained thanks to deforestation through total cutting, followed by fires which become, many times, uncontrollable. This practice constitutes a constant danger for the biological diversity in the Chimanimani Conservation Area. With a two-year duration, this project has the following objectives:

1. Help 1000 families to increase production and productivity of subsistence cultures that ensure food security and improvement of nutrition.
2. Help the affected families to increase their household income through the commercialization of surpluses.
3. Facilitate the adoption of ecological agricultural techniques, in order to avoid environmental degradation and contribute to the pursuit of the objectives in the Chimanimani Conservation Area.