Huaral Valley farmers marry ICT to traditional agriculture

Details: Michael Schwartz; Category: Wireless Networks; 14 February 2007; 10548 views

Farming in the Huaral, a coastal valley in Peru, has always been a marginal operation, not least because the Huaral has a desert climate where it never rains. Any plan to improve the conditions of local farmers has to keep them informed of changing conditions. The Sistema de Información Agraria (SIA, Agrarian Information System), is a new decentralised structure create to collect and organise data using ICT technologies... The Huaral is a coastal valley in Peru with a desert climate where it never rains. It is also the name of an initiative that CEPES, a Peruvian member of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), is carrying out in the region. Above all, it is proof that the creative use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can improve the lives of farmers in an entire region, if not beyond. APC's latest newsletter includes an interview with Maicu Alvarado of CEPES. The interview sums up the latest news from a rural development project which has now been underway for six years.

Farmers in Huaral need information to make decisions that will affect the success of their crops and marketing. This was how the Sistema de Información Agraria (SIA, Agrarian Information System) was born: a decentralised structure to collect and organise data using the latest technologies. To begin with, a wireless network with Internet access was set up, along with telecentres which were soon full of young small-holders.

In search of interactivity

A new phase of Huaral has now begun: "We are going to use mechanisms that allow for more interactivity among farmers who are not necessarily going to the telecentres for information," explains Maicu Alvarado. "Some portable terminals will be added, also with wireless connections, to be given to the sector administrators, or sectoristas. They are in constant contact with the farmers. They will ask questions about planting, crops, prices, production and will also provide information.

"If the farmer being interviewed also needs information about his crops or any particular activity the sectorista will be able to say: As a cotton farmer you should know that there is a seminar on cotton at the Ministry of Agriculture or these are the market prices right now."

So who are the sectoristas? They are traditional figures in the arable desert zones of Peru, who distribute water by sectors. They belong to the Board of Irrigation Users of Huaral, an area covering 20,000 hectares. Senor Alvarado continues, "Since it doesn't rain on the coast, these organisations are very strong because they administer irrigation water, which is the only water resource".

Yacu, software that irrigates

The latest technology utilises and reinforces methods of work and organisation as traditional as they are fundamental. It is a true example of the social appropriation of ICT, where the communities are the ones taking the initiative.

This view also applies to the software. In his briefing Maicu Alvarado talks about software called Yacu ('water' in Quechua), developed with the Board of Irrigation Users of Huaral and using free and open source software tools. "It is software that allows us to monitor crops in the valley and improve administration of irrigation water distribution...It has a database that organises the information produced by the farmers themselves.

"It has enjoyed a high degree of appropriation among them. They believe that Yacu is what they needed, are thrilled with this development and have shown it to similar organisations in fifteen valleys in Peru which are interested in having something like it," he added.

From information to association

According to Senor Alvarado, the ultimate goal of the project is "greater participation by the farmers in markets, in marketing processes...that they may produce more and sell better, in order to earn more." More than just strategic management, those involved hope the collectivisation of information will result in the strengthening of associations, in order to work on an economy of scale.

"In Peru, 80% of agriculture is small-scale agriculture. We had very bad experiences with associations in the period after the agrarian reform, when agricultural cooperatives failed. There is a great deal of fear about this type of work," Maicu Alvarado notes, leaving this issue as a challenge still pending.

It is often hard to see the relationship between ICT and development. What CEPES has been doing in a sustainable way for many years in Huaral could not be a clearer example.

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