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Peru People, Property, and Farming Systems
Human adaptation to the high altitudes, coastal desert,
and
tropical jungles requires specialized knowledge and skill
in
addition to the physiological adjustments noted to cope
with
altitudinal stress. Over the course of thousands of years,
people
invented elaborate irrigation systems to take advantage of
the
potential productivity in the coastal valleys. Visitors to
even
the smallest coastal valleys can still find elaborate
evidence of
these ancient public works. Many of these networks are
still in
use or form the basis of rebuilt systems that provide
water to
the lucrative commercial agriculture now practiced. Both
in
prehistoric times and now, the key to social and political
affairs in these and all other coastal valleys is access
to
water, effective irrigation technology, and the ability to
keep a
large labor force at the task of construction and
maintenance.
The coastal valleys from colonial times to the present
have
been dominated by extensive systems of plantation
agriculture,
with powerful elite families in control of the land and
water
rights. The principal crops harvested under these regimes
are
sugarcane and cotton, with a mixture of other crops, such
as
grapes and citrus, also being planted. Before the Agrarian
Reform
Law of 1969, about 80 percent of the arable coastal land
was
owned by 1.7 percent of the property owners. Despite the
dominance of the great coastal estates, there were, and
still
are, thousands of smaller farms surrounding them,
producing a
wide variety of food crops for the urban markets and for
subsistence. Since land reform, ownership of the great
plantations has been transferred to the employees and
workers,
who operate them as a type of cooperative. The coastal
farmland
is extremely valuable because of the generous climate,
flat
lands, and usually reliable irrigation waters, without
which
nothing would succeed. These advantageous conditions are
supplemented by the use of excellent guano and fish-meal
fertilizers. As a result, the productive coastal land,
amounting
to only 3.8 percent of the national total, including
pasture and
forest, yields a reported 50 percent of the gross
agricultural
product.
In the intermontane Andean valleys, there is a wide
variety
of farming opportunities. The best lands are those that
benefit
year round from the constant flow of melting glacial
waters. Most
farming depends on the advent of the rains, and farmers
must plan
their affairs accordingly. In many areas, farmers have
built
reservoir and canal systems, but, for the most part, they
must
time their planting to coincide with the capricious onset
of the
rainy season. Where irrigation works are operative, as on
the
coast, farmers are joined in water-management districts
and
irrigation boards, which govern water flow, canal
maintenance,
and enforcement of complex water rights, rules, and
customs.
Over 70 percent of the smallest farms are less than
five
hectares in size, with the great majority of them found in
the
Andean highlands. A typical peasant household with such a
small
property cannot harvest anything but the most minimum
subsistence
from it and inevitably must supplement household earnings
from
other sources, with most or all family members working.
The
adequacy of each small farm and its dispersed
chacras
(plots of land used for gardening) of course varies with
water
supply, altitude, soil fertility, and other local factors.
The
best irrigated farmland in the kichwa valleys tends
to be
highly subdivided in the competition for a rural
subsistence
base. The largest land holdings are the property of
corporate
communities, such as the numerous Peasant Communities
(Comunidades Campesinas) and Peasant Groups (Grupos
Campesinos).
In 1990 these official forms of common entitlement, as
opposed to
individual private ownership, accounted for over 60
percent of
pasture lands, much of which lies in the punas of the
southern
Andes.
The ecological mandates of the Andean environment thus
structure the day-to-day farming activities of all
highlanders
and the character of their domestic economies. Research
conducted
by anthropologist Stephen B. Brush showed how peasant
farmers
traditionally have utilized the different ecological
niches at
their disposal. At the highest altitudes of production,
animals
are grazed and specialized tubers grown; at the
intermediate
altitudes grains like wheat, barley, rye, and corn, as
well as
pulses, such as broad beans, peas, and lentils, are sown
along
with a wide variety of vegetables, including onions,
squashes,
carrots, hot rocoto peppers, and tomatoes. At still
lower
levels, tropical fruits and crops prosper.
Some communities have direct access to all of these
production environments, whereas others may be confined to
one
zone only. Traditionally, the strategy of families, the
basic
social units of production and consumption, is to arrange
access
to products from the different zones through the social
mechanisms available to them. Particular chacras
serve as
virtual chess pieces as families buy and sell property, or
enter
into sharecropping arrangements in order to obtain access
to
specific cropping areas. Marital arrangements may also be
made
with specific properties in mind. Thus, the system of
small farms
(
minifundios--see Glossary)
will invariably involve a confusing but systematic pattern of holdings.
In Huaylas, Ancash Department, for example, farmers
owning small but highly productive irrigated chacras at
about 2,700 meters cultivate corn, vegetables, and alfalfa.
Slightly higher irrigated property is devoted to grains, and higher
still, chacras are devoted to potatoes, oca and other
tubers, and
quinoa. Above the cultivated land and on the nonirrigated
hillsides, cattle and sheep are grazed on communally held
open
ranges and puna. In the deep protected gorges and canyons
on the
fringes of the district, small chacras at altitudes
of
1,500 meters produce a variety of tropical crops.
Consequently,
within a relatively small area a single family may own or
have
usufruct rights to a checkerboard of small chacras,
whose
total area does not exceed four or five hectares, but
whose range
of production provides a diverse nutritional subsistence
base.
For this reason, attempts to unify smallholdings to
make them
more efficient can likely yield the opposite effect in
terms of
the household economy. This is, in fact, what happened in
many
areas after the Agrarian Reform Law of 1969 was
implemented,
prohibiting sharecropping and restricting the geographical
range
of ownership in order to achieve hoped for
economies of scale (see Glossary).
After the initial attempts to enforce the
new,
well-meaning laws, the minifundio system began to
reemerge
as peasants discovered ways to circumvent its
restrictions, which
inadvertently limited their ownership and use of
chacras
to a narrow range of ecological zones
(see Structures of Production
, ch. 3).
In other areas, such as those described by Enrique
Mayer in
the Huánuco region, the relatively compressed ecology
found in
Huaylas gives way to one spread out over the eastern
flanks of
the Andes, stretching down eventually to the Selva. In
contrast
to the confining peasant farms of Huaylas, farmers in the
Huánuco
region develop barter and trade relations across the
production
zones, permitting them to exchange their farm produce,
such as
potatoes, for other crops grown at different levels.
Although most Andean farmers are independent producers,
there
are various types of large holdings, of which three are
particularly important: the manorial estate, the
minifundio and family farm, and the corporate
community
holding. Historically, the most significant holdings
relative to
socioeconomic power were the great manorial properties
known as
haciendas, which averaged over 1,200 hectares in size but
often
exceeded 20,000 hectares prior to being eliminated during
the
1969-75 land reform. At the time the land reform began,
1.3
percent of the highland farm owners held over 75 percent
of the
farm and grazing lands, while 96 percent of the farmers
held
ownership of but 8.5 percent of the farm area. The
corporate
community holdings are in the form of land held in common
title
by a Peasant Community. After the land reform, groups of
communities were organized as corporate bodies by the
government
to enable them, in theory, to combine lands and resources
to gain
the advantages of an economy of scale. These organizations
and
the Peasant Communities, reportedly numbering 5,500 in
1991,
assumed titles to the haciendas expropriated during the
reform
period.
By contrast, the population living in the Selva is
engaged in
a totally different set of agroecological patterns of
activity.
The native peoples of the tropics, living in riverine
settings
for the greater part, depend on fishing, hunting, and
selective
gathering from the forest. They also engage in highly
effective
horticulture, usually in a system known as
slash-and-burn (see Glossary).
Long thought to be a destructive and inefficient
method of farming, studies have revealed it to be quite
the contrary. In this system, the tribal farmer usually
exploits a particular plot for only a three-to-five-year period and
then abandons it to open another fresh area. This practice
allows the vegetation and thin soil to recuperate before the farmer
returns to use it again in ten to twenty years. Another facet of
the system is that all fields are used in a pattern of
multicropping.
In this approach, as many as fifteen different crops are
intermingled in such a way that each plant complements the
others
in terms of nutrients used or returned to the soil. The
arrangement also provides a disadvantageous environment
for plant
diseases and insect pests. Another common horticultural
system
employed along the river banks in the dry season takes
advantage
of extensive silt deposits left by the seasonal floods. On
such
open plots, farmers tend to monocrop or, at least, to
reduce the
number of varieties sown.
Data as of September 1992
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