Actual transitions of rural communities and viability of the agriculture in terraces in the peruan Andes

Abstract

In the Andean valleys of Peru, the terrace systems permit the durability of the crop systems under rain (secano) or watered, besides generating environmental externalities. The management of such systems depends on the rural communities, in a connection whose historic evolutions are visible to the landscape level. At present we have to consider in a special way the rural exodus, the disorganization of the community system, and the greater outside influence motivated by a development of the exchanges: such mutations have accentuated the change in the soil uses and the infrastructures abandonment. Consequently, we are in a key period where producers and actors of the rural development (especially the State and the financial institutions), they should redefine jointly the viability of the agriculture in terraces. For this, we have to consider parameters and externalities susceptible to assure their durability, including calculations of profit value at short or medium term. Consequently, it would be a right moment for the development of a participatory and multidisciplinary research program, with the purpose to analyze the viability of the systems of terraces and to promote the interventions on such systems and its environment.