Cuzco Arequipa Highlands Rural Development Project

Cuzco-Arequipa Highlands Rural Development Project

The project focused on providing credit and technical assistance to small farmers to enable them to modernize their agricultural activities and diversify their production to become more competitive on regional markets.

A credit line enabled 4,800 small farmers to improve their agricultural technologies and purchase needed inputs. The credit was managed by farmers’ organizations.

The project was hindered by several droughts and by terrorist violence in the highlands, which took a heavy toll in both physical infrastructure and human lives. The project helped improve the organizational capacity of farmers’ organizations. It also worked to improve productive infrastructure and product diversification, such as cheese-making, handcrafts, and non-agricultural activities.