What is a Protected Farming Community?

We often talk about Protected Farming Communities. But what does that term actually mean?

At its core, it’s a model built to enable coexistence — between rural communities and the wildlife they live alongside.

In parts of Mozambique, families living near national parks and reserves face a daily threat: elephants and other wildlife entering their farms, destroying months of work in a single night. This isn’t rare. It’s routine. And for many families, it’s devastating — leading to hunger, loss of income, and even violence toward wildlife.

The Protected Farming Communities model exists to change that.

The process begins with identifying high-risk farming areas experiencing repeated conflict. MWA teams then work directly with these communities to design and install solar-powered electric fences that physically protect crop fields. But the fence is only part of the solution.

Each Protected Farming Community includes:

• A locally-managed fencing system

• Training for communities in Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) prevention and response

• Continuous technical support to ensure sustainability

  
  

We’ve implemented this model in six communities so far — including Chang and Memo, where these images were taken. Both sites now have thriving fields, healthy harvests, and drastically reduced human-wildlife conflict. This is what community conservation looks like in practice — giving local people the tools, training, and authority to protect their livelihoods without harming wildlife.

The result:

Farmers are planting again. Harvests are returning. Conflict is going down. And elephants are staying outside the fence — alive, free, and unharmed.

A Protected Farming Community is not just a technical intervention. It is a commitment to coexistence — a future where people and wildlife can share space, without one paying the price for the other.