Further Thoughts on the Perú Experience

Ron Brunk, Eldora

Practical farmers of Iowa are farmers helping farmers make better decisions.  Now transfer this vision to the small family farmers of Peru.  Pursuing PFI’s efforts to share in the development of a program to work with the small family farmers and the Agricultural University of Molina in Peru, I had the opportunity to be a farmer representative of PFI.  On the last day of February, after weeks of listening to Spanish tapes to brush up on my Spanish language skills, I joined Rick Exner in Des Moines.  Late in the evening we arrived in Peru.  We were to spend a week with farmers from two communities on the coast and one high in the Andes Mountains.  The purpose was for these farmers to share ideas and view practices on their farms as we traveled to each of the three communities much like PFI field days.

Family farmers in Peru and in Iowa differ in size and methods of cultivation, for these farms in Peru were just a few acres and the work is done by hand.  A hand plow is a special shaped spade that is used to till the soil.  But family farmers in Peru as in Iowa are close to the soil and feel an affinity with their livestock.  Their challenges are ones of marketing and getting a good price for their production.  They are looking for special ways to produce and market their produce.  The village of Colpar high (over 10,000 feet elevation) had well over 100 varieties of potatoes and 100 varieties of corn.

An Iowa farmer visiting in a Peruvian village was quite an event and it was said by several farmers that they had never before spoken with a farmer from the U.S.A.  This Iowa farmer had never seen guinea pig production or eaten alpaca or ridden a horse up the steep rocky slope at 10,000 feet in the Andes.  One learns what real hospitality is when one visits farmers in Peru.  Banners were displayed for our morning arrival in the village.  Each community, as we visited the location, carefully explained their particular practices of cultivation of potatoes, oca, maiz, grapes, passion fruit, sour sop, Granada, dairy cattle, guinea pigs and more.  A special festival meal of potatoes, alpaca, lamb, fava beans, and corn meal “cakes” was roasted on hot rocks under ground for our dinner.  In the late afternoon each of the local barrios of Quilcas preformed festival dances in the town plaza for our group, a performance that lasted more than two hours.

I hope my week with small independent farmers of Peru helps to develop an understanding between and a kinship with Iowa family farmers.  At a time when the U.S. has suddenly become viewed throughout the world as a country hell bent on imperialistic expansion at least a few Peruvians will understand that there are many
farmers in North Americans who support the efforts of independent farmers in Peru who want to make a living producing agricultural produce for their own nation.  Working small plots of land in the rural areas (as opposed to as working 12 hours a day for starvation wages in maquiladoras in the large cities) is better for the family and the community.