junin – Sarah Watts

Certified

sarah-wattsAugust 3, 2019August 9, 2019

One of the biggest challenges facing a small farmer with diverse varieties on their farm is getting certified. This ensures that the food that is produced is up to the markets standards of food safety, and also that the farmer can capitalize on the certification by selling to other markets.

I saw this in Junin; the farmers who gained the SGP certification were doing quite well in comparison to before, selling their goods at good prices. In order to gain the certification of SGP (Sistema de Garantia Participativa, System of Participative Guarantees), they were required to undergo a three year approval period, make changes to their farms, formalize themselves into groups, file paperwork, and let their farms be inspected by third parties. If the producers who apply pass (the procedure is strict enough to weed out people who are not truly committed), they can use the SGP seal, which communicates food safety and the environmental practices used to grow the products.

SGP is used in a number of countries in Latin America, including Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and, of course, Peru. The rules SGP is run by vary depending on the country, which makes sense given that each country has different legal standards. In Peru, SGP is underpinned by the Law of Organic Production (N°29196) and the Supreme Decree N°010-AG.

The SGP is run by a national council and regional councils and are comprised of elected members: in addition, the SGP is structured to work with agricultural institutions within the country. In Peru, this is ANPE-Peru, IDMA, INIA, and ASPEC, amongst others, including regional agricultural boards (DRAs).

What all of this means is that there is a framework that small farmers can use to bring their produce to market; SGP covers their operations from the field through primary processing. While the SGP regulations are not flexible in terms of the quality expected, it is flexible about how farmers get help and encourages innovation, providing an organizational structure that bakes in training for farmers.

I keep thinking about the cuy (guinea pig) farmer in Junin who said that when she takes her cuys to market, she sells out in two hours - though much of the time, it is as little as twenty minutes! She said that her customers like knowing that the cuys were raised well, that the taste of her animals is better than conventionally-grown cuys, and that when people eat her cuys, they don't have to worry about getting sick.

Food safety, as I've said on this blog, is a massive problem not just for Qali Warma but also for the rest of the country. I can't tell you how many conversations I had (often with chatty taxi drivers) who, upon learning what I was studying, started talking about how risky Peruvian food is. (They would then often inquire gently but directly as to the state of my guts.)

As I was standing in line at the airport to take my flight out of the country, I got to talking to a guy from the department of Ancash who was going to do his masters in Maritime Engineering in Denmark; he told me he was hoping to get a job in Denmark when he graduated for a few key reasons: one, the pay is significantly better in Denmark, two, Peru's corruption is legendary, and three, that the food is not guaranteed to be safe. I couldn't disagree with him; after all, I don't eat fresh greens in Peru because I don't trust food that hasn't been cooked, either because it could be contaminated en route to the market or because the water I washed it with in my kitchen isn't clean to Western standards.

The SGP certification isn't a silver bullet: the processes that are demanded by the certification make the food significantly more expensive, and it is not a system that will be able to crank out enough food to feed a whole nation, but in my opinion, it is an important element of Peru's food system and hopefully will only become more so in the future.

The main resource I used for this blog: https://www.ifoam.bio/sites/default/files/page/files/la_case_studies_color_print_fc_0.pdf

P.S. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Fiestas Patrias - National Holidays - of Peru's independence. They take place around July 28th, the official day of Peru's independence from Spain, and involve a lot of patriotic brouhaha over a long weekend. I celebrated the holiday by going to the Plaza de Armas area of Lima, poking into churches, eating, and going to an art museum.

The number of flags I could see when I moved into my apartment: 1.
The number of flags I could see when I left: 14 (that's very nearly every building).

When I was in Peace Corps, we learned a classic Criolla song which is all about the fabulousness of Peru. I couldn't get it out of my head:

The images on this video show the immense natural and cultural diversity of the country; you'll be sure to recognize some of these places, and perhaps see something unexpected.

Changes to 2019’s Menu

sarah-wattsJuly 11, 2019July 11, 2019

Last Friday, I was able to meet with the Chief of Performance of Qali Warma; this was my first opportunity to speak to someone in the program. Our conversation covered a lot of ground and helped me to feel out the position of Qali Warma. When I asked about the possibilities of including more diversity in the menus, I was told that Qali Warma has a couple of initiatives to include traditional potato varieties in Junin and tarwi in Ancash. This was news to me, so after a Google search I was able to discover the scale of the programs.

Foto: Tarwi en floraciÃ³n, Comunidad de Camicachi, Ilave/A. Canahua — Field of Tarwi.

Tarwi is a traditional Andean food most commonly found in Peru and Bolivia; those familiar with flowers will recognize that tarwi is part of the lupine family. Here, the beans are eaten as an accompaniment to a meal, in ceviche (marinated in lemon juice and hot pepper), or served in a dish such as tarwi with potatoes and rice.

Qali Warma is bringing tarwi in the form of bread to six provinces of the department of Ancash, reaching 76,500 students. The tarwi is ground into flour or boiled and mashed before getting mixed into the dough.

Tarwi flowers, tarwi beans, a dish of tarwi with potato and rice, and tarwi ceviche.

papas-andinas — An array of different types of traditional potato varieties.

The second initiative is taking place in department of Junin; SENASA (the Peruvian agency that monitors agriculture and provides technical support) and the regional agriculture board of Ica have provided trainings and technical support to farmers. Farmers have formed cooperatives so that they can produce potatoes not just of sufficient quality but also sufficient quantity for the demand.

This collaboration and hard work has resulted in 336 schools in four provinces with a total of 17,352 students receiving traditional varieties of potatoes in their school meals. The estimated amount bought for 2019 is 31 tons.

CIP — Many potato varieties have marbling of color in their flesh.

Qali Warma faces a number of troubling challenges, and as with any large bureaucracy, moves slowly. However, these initiatives and their pilot programs show that there are some in the institution who wish to make positive changes; the success of these initiatives can be scaled out to more regions in Peru. While neither of these initiatives will completely change how Qali Warma functions, they do show how the model can be flexible enough to include some kinds of non-perishable foods without endangering food safety, or bogging down the administration to a prohibitive degree.

Nuts and Bolts

sarah-wattsJune 19, 2019June 26, 2019

After reading a landslide of formal documents of Qali Warma, I'm able to accurately summarize how the program works:

All of the big decisions are made at the national level; the Buying Committees (CCs) buy from a list of approved foods; those providers who are given contracts are in charge of delivering food to schools, where there are committees (CAE) who are in charge of receiving, preparing, and giving the food to the children. Qali Warma supervises the process, penalizes providers who do not conform to their standards, and works with agencies such as SENASA, who monitor the quality of foods and the functioning of the value chain.

All the food provided by Qali Warma is shelf-stable (with the exception of bread and eggs). Approved foods include rice, noodles, crackers, different kinds of flour and flaked grains, milk, dried beans and lentils, cheese, olives, and canned 'products of animal origin.' This last category is a collection of strange food items (even to Peruvians - I checked with my office mates), and includes not just canned fish but also canned: chicken, beef tripe, and fish-balls in sauce. Another food in this category sounds horrible to me but is a common food here: sangrecita, chicken blood. I'm told that when it's cooked well, it tastes pretty great.

Sangrecita is the dark mass; the stuff on the side is yuca.

Still, I'd say sangrecita day is a good one to be a vegetarian.

There are set menus that schools follow which have restrictions on the categories of food that can be used each day; they usually have a milk drink with different grains in it or perhaps fruit juice, along with bread, rice, or noodles and a product of animal origin or legumes. Sometimes it's a drink and a cracker or a slice of cake with Andean grains in it.

Most schools follow this scheme, but there are some pilot programs that have changed how Qali Warma works, in order to add fresh produce into the school meals.

One completed and self-perpetuating pilot has taken place in Junin, a department to the east of the department of Lima. There, the FAO and the Junin Qali Warma authorities helped schools begin school gardens, enhanced the capabilities of local farmers, built a processing plant for produce, and helped organize CAEs in participating schools. This was undertaken with a broad base of support from a number of different institutions, and is still in operation after the FAO stepped back.

Farmers working on a model farm near Jauja, Junin. (Note that they're using oxen here, probably because the tractor is busy.) (Own picture)

Here's how it works: each month, the CAEs receive money from each parent for each kid they have in school. This is somewhere around 4-5 soles per child per month, between one and two USD. They use this money to buy fresh foods to complement what they are getting from Qali Warma, and can buy from the regular local market or from the agroecological market that the FAO helped to found through farmer trainings and the processing plant. In many cases, the choice of the CAE is between buying a lot of food of uncertain safety in the normal market or buying less food of better safety in the agroecological market. After trainings, most CAEs prefer buying in the safer markets.

This pilot has produced some great effects, particularly in the level of satisfaction in the service. It does have some flaws, though, as concerns the traceability of foods: if a child gets sick as a result of the school meal, it's crucial to know where that food came from. In addition, the money for the fresh food comes from parents (and in some cases, the municipalities): Qali Warma's funding isn't contributing to this at all. Add onto that that this wouldn't work in every part of Peru, and this pilot remains the sort of thing that provides highly valuable experiences, but something that would have to be tinkered with and changed before its rollout on a national level.