Heights of fashion

The Altiplano - high plains - region of southern Peru is home to some of the country's poorest farming families. Primarily growing for subsistence on poor land that is frequently subject to frost and drought, farmers have few opportunities for making a cash income. But the high altitude rangeland is also home to the alpaca (Lamas pacus) and this hardy animal is giving local fibre producers access to the fashion houses of North America and Europe.

Credit: CIP

At 4000 metres, crops are difficult to grow. Even around Lake Titicaca, where the soil is relatively fertile and flat, floods can damage the growing crops. Salinity is also a major problem and, generally, soils are poor. But these poor soils produce frost tolerant grasses and other forage plants on which large herds of alpaca and other livestock can survive. The livestock production challenge has been to improve the quality of fibre while protecting the natural resource base. The social and economic challenge has been to encourage producers to recognize what needs to be done in order to gain access to a worthwhile market.

Those challenges were taken up several years ago but early efforts to raise fibre quality by improving the pasture and introducing better, more productive, animals largely failed. This was because, without a premium for higher quality fibre, producers saw no reason to make the necessary investment. Interestingly, alpaca produce the same amount of hair whether or not they are well nourished. Admittedly the well-fed animal produces hair of much better quality but, without a quality premium for the product when sold, producers naturally reasoned that since two poorly fed animals gave twice as much hair as one well-fed animal, there was little point in reducing herd size.

Researchers working in the area recognized that the key to improvement lay in adding value to the alpaca fibre by knitting it into the sort of garments that fetch a good price on the international market. It would also be necessary to develop links to that market and guarantee the quality and supply of garments while strengthening the producers' bargaining power. Although alpaca fibre is wonderfully light and warm it is not very durable. A better product can be achieved if it is mixed with sheep's wool. With this in mind, the International Potato Center, CIP, and other partners helped to form a local NGO, CIRNMA, to develop the know-how and create the necessary linkages and infrastructure. The alpaca fibre is now produced mainly by women working in their own homes in around 40 local communities. CIRNMA has a central processing plant where the fibre-wool mix is knitted into sweaters and to which buyers from both domestic and international markets come to order lines for their catalogues and shops.

People now keep mixed herds of animals, thereby making better use of the rangeland and, since quality is paramount, the risk of overgrazing the fragile environment is reduced. Mountain people are often isolated from opportunities that are open to their lowland compatriots, largely because markets are distant and difficult to access. The alpaca producers of Peru's Altiplano have proved that it is not impossible to place garments made in their high mountain villages into the high rise fashion houses and apartment blocks of New York, Paris or Milan.

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