J-Term Practica: Peru Wrap Around, 2016
February 25, 2016
Based on our J-term experience, our team considers irrigation to be the most serious climate change-related challenge for the farmers we surveyed in high-altitude communities in the Sacred Valley. The survey revealed that irregular weather patterns have made it impossible for farmers to depend solely on rain to water their crops. Many participants reported not having access to water year-round, and irrigation was often cited as the community’s greatest need. Furthermore, water scarcity weakens plants, lowering their resistance to plagues, which was another serious challenge we discovered. Our research proposal aims to discover how farmers in high-altitude Sacred Valley communities can gain access to water for their crops year-round. In order to answer this question, we will first need to determine what type of irrigation currently exists and why is it not sufficient.
The target communities for our research will be selected from those who already participated in the climate change survey. This will guarantee baseline data and a pre-established relationship with the Andean Alliance for Sustainable Development. We also feel that communities that have already contributed to past research deserve to be considered first for future projects. Ideal communities are those that already have some irrigation but where a high percentage of survey participants cited irrigation improvement as a high priority. This will allow us to determine the limitations of the current systems. The research will be done on the community level, due to the fact that water is a shared resource and a successful solution will require community cooperation.
Data collection will consist of irrigation system visits and semi-structured interviews. Each visit will include a system inspection and a short survey. Quantitative data collected on irrigation system visits will include plot size, water use, and the number of people surveyed with each type of system. The rest of the data will be qualitative descriptions of the irrigation systems and farmers’ responses to questions about their experience. Photos and videos of current systems will be taken. Visits should ideally occur throughout the year to record the state of the systems in both rainy and dry seasons. We are most interested in how the systems perform during droughts in the rainy season when farmers traditionally grow crops. However, ideal irrigation systems would work year-round to increase productivity. We will choose semi-structured interview participants based on signs of positive deviance, and discuss with them in depth how they have managed to successfully irrigate their crops.
Community participation will be a strong focus of our research. As we did for our J-term research, we will ask permission from the presidents of the communities and coordinate dates to visit. However, we feel it is important to include the community even further. We will consult the town assembly throughout the process on what type of information they would like to gain from our research. Since any potential Andean Alliance irrigation project would only occur in the long-term, the results of our research should be provided to the community as soon as possible as a more immediate benefit to their participation. The community may be able to help us with a list of residents with irrigation systems that would be helpful to our research. Community guides could accompany researchers during irrigation system visits as long as they do not seem to bias our conversations with residents.
Collaboration with other institutions will be crucial to our research. The partnership between the Andean Alliance and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies should be continued. The partnership with Middlebury College should be expanded, with an increased focus on students in programs that relate to the research. For this project, the Andean Alliance could collaborate with the environmental science, anthropology, geology, and geography departments. Middlebury could advertise more to undergraduate students and make entrance into the program more competitive. College and graduate students are good candidates for data collectors since the funding available from MIIS and Middlebury keeps research costs low. Furthermore, involving students in research projects follows the experiential learning aspect of the Andean Alliance’s mission. All researchers should do extensive background reading on rural agriculture and irrigation before the project begins. New partnerships for this project could include local water committees, schools, and Peruvian university engineering students. Although costs for the research will be low, some minimal fundraising will be required to pay for staff, interpreters, and other expenses. One potential source of funding is the sale of local artisan work in the United States, with the profits split between the artisans and the Andean Alliance.
We will use the results of this research to determine the most successful types of irrigation systems in the area and the challenges that have so far prevented their implementation on a wider scale. This will give the Andean Alliance the background information necessary to consider future irrigation projects. Therefore, our research has the potential to mitigate the negative effects of climate change for Andean farmers in the long term.
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