Before I ever made the half-day hike from San Isidro up to the páramo, I heard about it almost every day. People told me about its beauty, lakes, and the hot springs. Deep valleys, rivers and 4500 m peaks. Its stories, the cold climes and dramatic views, the struggles to own it and to protect it. In Ecuador’s central Andes, the indigenous community of San Isidro collectively owns 1060 ha of this high-altitude moorland, typified by rugged peaks and straw-like grasses (paja).

This shared project has become a central focus of communal life

The area is known by its Kichwa name, Chaupi Urco Chilca Tingo. It is a place where collective action has intensified in scope and scale since the completion in 2010 of the community’s irrigation pipeline, which sources water there from two small rivers.

With a population of around 500 people, the majority of households in San Isidro rely on small scale agriculture (growing many varieties of maize, beans, root and leafy vegetables) in combination with wage labour. San Isidro is distinct in the local area for the number of residents who travel regularly to and from the Amazon region for shift work in the oil industry. This work has become increasingly precarious, and has further driven interest in communal projects that seek to meet community needs.

Collective action

Collective organising in San Isidro, as in many other indigenous communities across the Ecuadorian highlands, is structured with a directiva or community council elected every two years by all residents. Led by a president and vice-president, ultimate authority rests with the ‘assembly’ of community members whose agreement is required to support any major decision. Since the 1960s, this structured approach to collective decision-making has enabled San Isidro to engage in alliances with nearby communities, and to operate within a recognised branch of the national indigenous movement.

In the last decade alone, these networks have successfully fought campaigns against local plantations for more equitable access to water, countering land grabs that have sought to buy collectively held land without full communal agreement, and pressing for tighter control of the use of agrochemicals within industrial agriculture. Though active for many decades, after national indigenous uprisings in the 1990s and a strengthening indigenous movement since, collective action in San Isidro has gathered pace and achievements in recent years – registering as a community in 2009, and capitalising on constitutional rights attached to Buen Vivir (Harmonious Living) introduced in 2008.

In partnership with the nearby community of Yacubamba, who share the water from the pipeline, the 2009 directiva of San Isidro successfully applied for funding from the National Institute for Irrigation (INAR). The application was successful because it detailed clear plans for how future maintenance work would be undertaken and shared between the communities.

Don Jorge Llumiquinga, from San Isidro, brought his previous experience from other pipelines in the region to the application. Moreover, they applied at a time when government social spending had increased. The INAR grant covered building material costs for the irrigation pipeline. It also covered initial construction labour costs; although a small team of paid workers was supported by scores of volunteers for the six month project. And, under the collaborative agreements in place, ongoing maintenance work is shared equally among the 80-90 participating households.

The páramo: a water-storing ecosystem
 
The páramo ecosystem spread across the northern Andes is of great importance locally and globally – a vital source of water and part of functioning hydrological cycles, and also a carbon sink critical in regulating broader climate patterns.
 
In Ecuador, the páramo hills are known to form part of a ‘waterstoring ecosystem,’ an indirect source of water for the majority of urban and rural populations across the country, especially in the sierra regions. They are said to function almost like a giant ‘sponge’ absorbing rainfall, storing it, and releasing water gradually.
 
Páramo lands can produce one litre of water per day per square metre and, in Ecuador, 85% of water sources used for drinking water, for hydroelectric power systems, and for agricultural irrigation originate in the páramo. Increasing competitive interest in these resources has seen timber companies trying to purchase communal páramo lands to establish plantations of trees that consume a lot of water, such as pine or eucalyptus.

New possibilities

This shared infrastructure project has become a central focus of communal life, and has transformed possibilities for family farming in the semi-arid soils of San Isidro. Irrigation has made agriculture much more reliable and viable. Before the pipeline was built, access to water for farming was limited by historical water rights and agreements that favoured large landholdings.

One farmer, Sra Rosa, experienced this acutely: “We used to get water by the minute – it wasn’t just the hacienda estate taking most of the days each week, but by the time our quota was divided up between all of us in the community, we’d have only minutes at a time. The place was very dry. Now, we can grow much more, even alfalfa for our guinea pigs.”

San Isidro has suffered from increasingly erratic patterns of seasonal rainfall and even in ‘wet’ growing seasons crops were struggling. The pipeline provides a constant flow of 25 litres per second, which is distributed among member households. This has counteracted a steady ‘desertification’ of fields, and enables farmers to increase production. For example, Raúl Allauca now grows irrigated crops on his family’s steep plot. After the pipeline was completed his family built an extensive system of terraces. They have reduced their dependence on food purchased outside and increased their income from farming.

Self-sustaining systems of production and cooperation are more important than ever

As well as cultivating fodder for an increased number of small meat animals in most households, irrigation has also supported a community food cooperative, and enabled more farmers to regularly sell produce at their nearest weekly regional market in Pujili.

The cooperative ‘Food Circle’ involves weekly meetings where farmers, usually women, trade their ‘surplus’ produce amongst each other. Though fewer than half the community’s households have been active in the ‘circle’ and the quantities traded are insufficient to supply a livable income, there are other benefits. It has encouraged the production of previously neglected crops (e.g. Andean tubers such as ocas and mashua), and thus, care for and use of the páramo have helped reinforce locally appropriate farming practices and food landscapes.

Protecting the páramo

Páramo conservation is now another focus of collective action in San Isidro, alongside ongoing campaigns for land rights, water justice and environmental protection.

In 2009, community organiser, Porfirio Allauca, worked with the directiva and a development NGO on a project to bring alpacas back to the páramo. He described this land as a source of life – not just for San Isidro, but for society as a whole, since the páramo is ‘where water is born’. This project coincided with growing interest in páramo conservation within the development sector and with other NGO-funded projects in and around San Isidro.

Ecuador, however, has seen the closure of a number of regional NGO offices, particularly in the highlands. This goes to show that long-term and self-sustaining systems of production and cooperation like those found in San Isidro are more important than ever.

The páramo is also a site of significant historical importance. During land reform in the 1960s and 1970s, designed to support indigenous and rural communities through land redistribution, large estate owners were able to ‘redistribute’ land that they used and valued least. This included the páramo. As Porfirio put it: “at that time they handed over those lands like they were redundant or worthless.” He described it as a kind of ‘justice’ that today the páramo is recognised as a ‘source of life’, bringing new resolve and vitality to the community.

The importance of the páramo in San Isidro is reflected in many aspects of life: in the work that its conservation requires, in the produce that its waters help to grow, and also in the social fabric of San Isidro. Alongside the household and community labour and ongoing indigenous struggle, commemorative celebrations are held in the páramo, remembering the landscape as symbolic of solidarity. To mark the inauguration of the pipeline, a plaque was laid near its source in the high páramo. Thanking recent ancestors for their efforts in acquiring this land, the plaque states the páramo’s role as both site and source of communal action. Its words express hope for the future of San Isidro, and of the páramo as a whole: “this páramo, wellspring of life that we will look after forever and ever.”

Tristan Partridge

Tristan Partridge is a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara with a focus on environmental justice, extraction and the food-energy-water nexus. He has worked with rural activist groups in India, South America and Scotland.
Email: tristan.partridge@ucsb.edu

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The “global food crisis” is often presented as a shortage of food in relation to a growing world population, but such a simplistic definition pays little attention to the origins, perpetuation and deepening of the crisis. A more detailed observation shows that this “crisis” is in fact a paradox: millions of people experience hunger and malnourished, yet the world’s agriculture systems have the capacity to produce enough food for more than 12 billion people.

We need to consider both (and differentiate between) a lack of food and a lack of power. This is especially relevant when looking at the role and possibilities of small-scale farmers, the largest group of food producers, in making their own choices about what crops to grow and where those crops go. In short, over their access to food.

The comuna and the circle

A recent initiative in Ecuador addresses these issues, and has given rise to weekly exchanges of food in the village square of San Isidro. Located in the province of Cotopaxi, San Isidro is a “comuna”, or a community of 500 persons (84 families) in Ecuador’s central Andes. The plan to support producers and consumers was born out of discussions that took place among friends, supporters and staff of a local education organisation which regularly hosts youth workshops, village-council meetings, seminars and language classes. The idea of a village-based food exchange system quickly attracted participants keen to create an alternative outlet for their home-grown products, and interested in having a greater degree of control over where they end up.

The idea was initially outlined in economic terms: “rather than having ten families all going to Pujilí [the nearest market town] each week and each spending $10… they could stay here and, all together, start a wheel, or circle, of products… In this way, we can have $100 going around in San Isidro, benefitting us all…”. The weekly meetings of the “Food Circle” started immediately, bringing families together and connecting them as producers and consumers. Deals are struck between them every week, and agreements are made in relation to what is available, and what can be exchanged, in the coming week. Access to food is thus negotiated directly.

Farmers in San Isidro grow a variety of traditional and staple crops on small plots, all of which are rain-fed or watered with the comuna’s own irrigation system. These include a number of beans and kidney beans, together with staples such as habas (broad beans) and maize. These are sold and exchanged in the local and regional markets, and nowadays through the Food Circle itself, together with potatoes, onions, beetroot, lettuce, carrots, and fruits such as mora (or blackberries). While a wide variety of potatoes are grown and traded, there are fewer people growing other Andean tubers such as ocas (Oxalis tuberosa) or mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum). So, the Food Circle encourages participants to cultivate these crops, increasing their availability and visibility in the area. Some families are also cultivating kinwa (quinoa) and amaranth and share the grains with their neighbours.

The range and quantity of products available for exchange every week varies according to changing weather conditions, crop cycles and labour patterns. Detailed planning and co-operation is needed among participants in order to meet their food requirements in the best way. Currently, a production schedule with an emphasis on neglected or under-cultivated crops, and on the region’s traditional crops, is being formulated. It aims to be flexible enough to absorb quantity variations yet broad enough to ensure that the requirements of consumers are met. This is helped by an overlap between the farmers and consumers within the Circle.

Collective safeguards

Policies, sovereignty and agro-ecology

San Isidro’s Food Circle is one of many efforts to modify food systems in Ecuador. These initiatives are occurring in a political environment that, at least notionally, supports the idea of food sovereignty. Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution specifies that “a strategic obligation of the State” is “to guarantee its people self sufficiency in food that is healthy and culturally appropriate, in a permanent form”. The same document further specifies the state’s responsibilities, which include the promotion of redistributive policies to permit farmers access to land, water and other productive resources; the preservation and rehabilitation of the country’s agro-biodiversity; the generation of just and equitable systems for distributing and commercialising food, and also to “impede monopolistic practices and any type of speculation with food products”.

The country’s legislation does not officially recognise an agro-ecological approach to production. Yet, while agro-ecology and food sovereignty can be seen as “separate concerns”, the majority of those involved in advocacy groups around each issue, and the majority of producers and rural citizens, see these issues as two sides of the same coin. Questions about what crops are grown and in what quantities are directly related to those about how those crops are grown. If there is a gap between these issues in governmental policies, the two issues are becoming increasingly intertwined in rural areas, where “theories” are continually being developed, tried out and reformed in the field. Visitors to San Isidro can see a large poster hanging in the communal meeting hall, proudly stating that “San Isidro is an Agroecological Community”.

The Food Circle is the first commercialisation programme to be tried in San Isidro. There have been previous projects in the region, such as those set up with the guidance of organisations like MICC (Movimiento Indigena y Campesino de Cotopaxi), which encouraged the cultivation of certain crops (such as quinoa) or addressed the unequal concentration of productive resources in the province (such as water, which largely remains in the hands of large agribusiness units). But the Food Circle is unique in the way it supports small-scale agriculture and focus on the availability of, and access to, food.

But while the Food Circle focuses on retaining or regaining control over food production and consumption, all the villagers experience economic realities which are in marked contrast to these efforts. Many of the men in the village travel away to work in the oil fields in the Amazon region – while their families cultivate plots of land in the village to which they return after a few months. These migrating villagers recognise an increasing level in the “precariousness” of their jobs, having only temporary contracts, with many not being renewed – for no apparent reason.

The Food Circle is not large enough, nor strong enough, to provide families with a sufficient income. But it does secure their access to affordable food, and ensures that the land in the village continues to be cultivated.

The Food Circle offers a more dependable market for the small amount of produce being grown (in comparison with the regional markets, attended by both producers and merchants), resulting not only in a source of income, but also providing an opportunity to directly negotiate the purchase-price of staple crops. These advantages can be seen as part of the “collective safeguards” which effectively protect the rural areas against uncertainty.

Aiming higher

Increasing the diversity of crops on a farm can have many positive consequences: it can improve the fertility of the soil and increase a farm’s resilience against adverse weather conditions (avoiding the shortcomings of “conventional” cropping systems). These benefits are experienced directly by the participants of the Food Circle. Even though reducing the consumption of some non-local foodstuffs is not an explicit objective of the Food Circle, crops that once were in danger of being forgotten or abandoned are once again being grown, exchanged and enjoyed, and participants are benefitting from a more diverse diet.

The Food Circle complements existing efforts to collectively manage the region’s natural resources, and further promotes the principles of small-scale and agro-ecological agriculture. By encouraging local production systems, securing local incomes and maximising the level of community and producer control over food prices and destinations, participants safeguard their access to food. The Food Circle is thus an interesting model for a national food sovereignty programme.

Text: Tristan Partridge

Tristan Partridge works at the University of Edinburgh, U.K., and also as a researcher with FLACSO Quito, Ecuador.

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