Farmer income and soil conservation in Peruvian Andes
1988
Alfaro, Julio Cesar
Firstly, agricultural terraces reduce production costs. When building terraces cultivated area tends to reduce around 35%. We consider that additional costs (expenses) of terraces spring mainly from manpower, with great varieties in number of workers wages from one region to another, not only for physical reasons, but socio-economic ones like different terrace patterns that the farmers re-created to save work, different official policies encouraging farmers, different previous building experiences from Inca times. Secondly, we present yield with and without terraces and other conservationists practices, we multiply them by market prices to figure incomes, proving how increase in yield varies according to crop, whether chemical fertilizers used and soil fertility, on the basis of income and expenditure we show surprising increases in incomes thanks to use of terraces (1,270 % wheat, 557 % potatoes, 276 % radishes, 63 % onions) explaining how these high increases due to combination of reduced production costs and higher yield, to socio-economic and cultural factors, namely, size of family and community collective labor customs, mythical attitude towards stones and trained agricultural promoters. Lastly, we show results obtained from the five year program of soil conservation of Peru, promotion to farmers on the basis incomes obtained thanks to conservation practices, number of farmers who taught others, degree of knowledge assimilated, work rhythm in conservationist practices without official presence, namely, measurement of multiplying effect, to promote conservationist practices and re-enact old Inca ceremonial practices.
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