Peruvian Agriculture

Peruvian Agriculture certainly differs from what we have in the US. For many years, most of the land was owned by wealthy people, but in 1969, agrarian reform began implementation. The owners of the haciendas were given agrarian bonds for their land, and the acreage was redistributed to the campesinos and small farmers. These people then built a structure on the property (frequently left empty) to identify that they owned the land, and they would then farm the land. We noticed that most of the land was tilled and worked by hand. Hay and straw were raked by hand; corn was picked and the stalks cut and stacked by hand. Occasionally we would see a tractor, but it was usually a fairly small one. Children worked in the fields, too. Additionally, many of the campsinos farmed terraces on the sides of the mountains. The mountains are very steep, but the terraces allow them to farm enough to keep their families alive.