Rural Women in Peru Key to Adaptation of Seeds to Climate Change – IPS ipsnews.net.
Peruvian women may save world agriculture! At 3,100 metres above sea level, in the highlands community of Tiomayo near the city of Cuzco, 1,150 km southeast of Lima, Isabel García Champa, 42, works hard on her small farm.
In workshops at the Flora Tristán Agroecological School, she has built on what she learned about preserving and saving seeds since she was a young girl. And she is all too aware of the impact that climate change can have.
“On my land I grow potatoes, maize, beans, apples, peas and wheat,” she told IPS. “Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. It’s not like it was before; everything is changing with the rise in temperatures, the heat. The rains don’t come when they’re supposed to, and often we can’t even grow anything.”
García, whose mother tongue is Quechua but who also speaks Spanish fluently, is a married mother of four and divides her long days between working on the nearly one-hectare farm and taking care of her family.
Her children also help out on the farm, although only the two youngest – a 16-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy – still live there.
She sees herself as an inquisitive, enterprising woman who wants to continue learning and to help encourage other women farmers.
In late 2011, she won the first contest for Women Caring for Seeds and Preserving Identity and Life.
The prize is granted by the Flora Tristán Centre and Peru’s Network of Rural Municipalities, and García is especially proud of the farm tools that she was awarded, worth around 300 dollars.
She said the women presented seeds of more than 30 native varieties of potato, maize, beans, wheat, barley, peas, oca (Oxalis tuborosa – a tuber), quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa – a grain-like crop native to the Andes) and tarwi or Andean lupine (Lupinus mutabilis – a protein- rich native legume).
She won the prize with the six kinds of maize she grows, some of which are exclusive to the Peruvian highlands: chullpi, janka, sacse, cheqche, estaquilado and blanco.
“I have gradually improved my knowledge,” she said. “I shell the corn and choose the healthiest kernels, the ones that are the same size and colour. The kernels have to be whole; broken ones aren’t any good.
“When everything is ready, I put the kernels in cloth sacks and store them in my house, in my bedroom. The kernels are safe there from dust or worms, and they last at least a year, for when I’m ready to plant again,” she said.
But information and technical resources are scarce and difficult to access for rural women, and the efforts of NGOs cannot fill the gaps left by the state, which does not take advantage of this valuable human capital.
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