Irrigation in Peru

Water resources and irrigation infrastructure in Peru vary throughout the country. The coastal region, an arid but fertile land, has about two-thirds of Peru’s irrigation infrastructure due to private and public investment aimed at increasing agricultural exports. The Highlands and Amazon regions, with abundant water resources but rudimentary irrigation systems, are home to the majority of Peru's poor, many of whom rely on subsistence or small-scale farming.

The Peruvian Government is undertaking several programs aimed at addressing key challenges in the irrigation sector like increasing water stress, competing interests, deteriorating water quality, poor efficiency of irrigation, drainage systems (including low technology systems and underutilization of existing infrastructure), weak institutional and legal frameworks, low cost recovery (i.e., operation and maintenance costs above actual collections), and vulnerability to climate variability and change, including extreme weather conditions and glacier retreat.

History of the irrigation sector

Agricultural land under irrigation/past and present trends

Agriculture in Peru dates back more than 5,000 years when the Chavin culture built simple irrigation systems and canal networks north of Lima. By the 15th and 16th centuries, the Inca Empire boasted an advanced irrigation systems, supplying water to 700,000 hectares of diverse crops in the fertile coastal zone. For the next 300 years, Spanish colonialists shifted the country's focus to mining, which caused a reduction in agricultural production to 300,000 hectares in the coast.

The 20th Century represented a period of agricultural stagnation especially during the 1970s and 1980s. In the past 30 years, the Peruvian Government has invested about US$5 billion to improve hydraulic infrastructure, including dams, and irrigation and drainage systems, producing an increase of the land under irrigation mostly in the coastal region.

Today, approximately 1.7 million hectares of Peru's cultivated hectares have some irrigation infrastructure available. However, only 1.2 million hectares are actually irrigated each year due to poor performance of irrigation systems.

Institutional development

The 20th century began with an important institutional development in Peru's irrigation sector with the creation of the Mining and Water Engineering Body (1904) and the Hydrological Service (1911). However, it was not until the 1920s that the first large-scale State irrigation projects were launched.
Public investment in irrigation in 1905 accounted for 8.7% of the total, reaching 18.62% in 1912, a trend that continued in the 1920s and 1930s.

From 1945 to 1948, the Government approved a National Plan for Improving Irrigation. Between 1945 and 1956, public investment reached unprecedented levels with up to 50% of total investment. Examples of the projects implemented at this time and during the 1960s are the water transfers from the Quinoz River to the intermittent Piura River in the Piura Region and from the Chotano River to Chancay-Lambayeque River in the Lambayeque Region, both located in the northern part of the coastal plain. Between 1950 and 1980, 90% of irrigation investment was directed to the coastal region and only 10% to the highlands.

The 1969 agrarian reform expropriated all estates above a certain size, usually 100 hectares. Most Peruvian peasants were independent smallholders and thus continued to farm their land individually after the reforms. The agrarian reform and political instability contributed to the poor performance of agriculture, since they profoundly changed the relationships of production in the countryside, disrupted the organization of productive systems on the best agricultural lands, and forced out part of the entrepreneurial capacity. The agrarian reform and the General Water Law (1969) made the existing informal water users organizations official and part of an organizational model promoted by the state. In 1989, the decree 037-89-AG (Decreto Supremo) decentralized operational, maintenance, and management of irrigation systems to water user boards (Juntas de Usuarios-WUBs). The decree aimed to incorporate private investment and spur independence and financial sustainability within water user organizations by establishing water tariffs to cover operational and maintenance costs (O&M). However, low tariffs and collection capacity produced insufficient financial support for WUBs to maintain and develop irrigation systems. The Peruvian Government continued to be the major actor in irrigation development which focused on the coastal region. Some 76% of investment in the coastal region between 1978 and 1982 was concentrated in three major irrigation projects at Majes (Arequipa Region), Chira-Piura (Piura Region) and Tinajones (Lambayeque Region). This trend was maintained in the 1990s.

In 1996 the government created the Subsectoral Irrigation Program (Programa Subsectorial de Irrigacion – PSI), aiming to develop some WUBs' capacities, reduce the role of the public sector in irrigation, improve sustainability through increased cost recovery, and increase investment in technical improvement of irrigation systems. The project, considered a big success, expanded to all WUBs in the Costa and is in the process of being expanded to the Sierra.

Relevance of irrigation for agriculture and rural development

According to ''The Economist'', Peru is South America's fastest-growing economy. That performance owes much to record prices for mineral exports. However, newer export products, such as mangoes and artichokes, are also flourishing. Irrigated agriculture has become increasingly important in Peru's development and growth, especially after a period of stagnation and limited development in the 1970s and 1980s. The agriculture sector employs 30% of Peru's population and accounts for 13% of GDP and more than 10% of total exports (US$1.6 billion in 2005). Two-thirds of agricultural GDP is produced on the Pacific coastal strip, a region totally dependent on irrigation due to low rainfall. High-value crops and irrigation technology have had a major impact on the coast's rural development. In 2001, rural poverty in the region was 5.2%. Poverty has fallen only slowly in the Andean region, where poverty reaches 70 percent of the population. Many Andean Indigenous remain trapped in subsistence farming on small plots and rudimentary irrigation systems. The region produces only one-third of the country's agricultural GDP.

Irrigation plays a fundamental role in increasing agricultural production and diversification, rural employment, and food security. President Alan Garcia has set an ambitious target of cutting poverty to 30 percent by the end of his term, in 2011. For the first time in three decades the state has money to invest and —with the help of the World Bank-the government has drawn up a new anti-poverty strategy which includes ramping up social spending and agricultural development while trying to target more closely on the poorest areas, most of them in the southern Andes.

Rural and Urban Poverty by Natural Regions in Peru (%)

''Source'': INEI 2001

Irrigation development

Irrigation infrastructure

Peru's agricultural land is only 4.3% of its territory, with 5.5 million ha in use, of which 3.75 million ha is under rainfed agriculture and 1.75 million ha with irrigation infrastructure. The following chart reflects irrigation infrastructure allocation in Peru.

Area with Irrigation Infrastructure and irrigated areas (In thousands of hectares)

''Source'': Portal Agrario (1994)

About 80% of all water withdrawal in Peru is used for irrigation, yet much of this water (65%) is lost due to reliance on inefficient irrigation systems. Overall efficiency of water use in irrigation systems is estimated at about 35%, which is considered poor performance and is due mainly to leaky distribution systems and the wide use of unimproved gravity and flooding irrigation methods with an overall estimated efficiency of 50%.

Water is rarely metered and fees are mostly based on hectarage

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