Sustainable livelihoods for rural Andean farmers

It seems like just yeterday we wrote this report! Time flies when you're working with farmers in some of Peru's most incredible communities. The dry season is wrapping up now, but greenhouse production has only seen a minor dip since its start back in May. One of the true benefits of the greenhouse, and your support of the project, is year round production and income for the high altitude communities of rural Cusco.

Traditional crops tend to have limited and seasonal harvests, but this project allows farmers to maintain tradition while drastically improving dietary health and income. The AASD was very successful in this report period specifically with regards to replenishing and improving soil health within the greenhouse as a way to boost production and control the ever frustrating pests and plagues common to the region. Strawberries especially have seen a hard production time because the dry season here also coincides with brutal cold in the higher altitudes. Fortuntately, the greenhouse provides just enough warmth to guarantee stable production.

And it is exactly this reason that we still need your help! With your donations, we can provide more workshops, more technical assistence, more soil inputs, and more greenhouses. Help us improve livelihoods and combat food insecurity!

Hello all,

We are pleased to announce that this has been yet another successful quarter with the AASD's high-altitude projects. We remain commited to supporting producers as they produce for their own familiar diets and for commercialization.

Following a trend from last year, we are actively working our more advanced farmers to expand their greenhouses and enter new markets. We have maintained relationships with many farmers for a number of years now, and we have seen first hand the progress that they have made in their production. Many of these farmers have requested an expansion of their existing greenhouse or help in constructing and preparing another. The AASD could not be more pleased to see these results because they are visual proof that the project is working and having the impact that we hoped. More than ever, long-term participating farmers are becoming autonomous and require less support from the AASD. We can now refocus resources and efforts on helping them enter more profitable markets and produce more profitable crops.

This is not to say that we have stopped working with new farmers and communites; in the time since our last report here, we have identified additional farmers with which can expand our project and reach, and more farmers have requested support entering the lucrative strawberry market. A new community to the AASD called Kallarayan specifically has successfully adapted the strawberry producing model from our project in Qenqo, and now stands apart from others in terms of their excellent organizational skills and market potential. Be on the look out for more updates regarding the farmers from Kallarayan as they improve production and incomes.

This experience with Kallarayan is further proof that with support of donors like you in our network, we can create transformative change in the high-altitude Andean communites. We are deeply grateful for your support and hope to further our relationship with you all to grow our projects here in Cusco.

Thank you so much and keep the donations coming!

In community,

The AASD