Potatoes are the main product of this region. Sixty-five percent of the region’s 400,000 inhabitants are farmers, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Information of Peru (INEIP). The farmers’ struggle mobilized thousands of producers in the region, who blocked highways and occupied the airport in the capital of the province.

In response, the government of President Alejandro Toledo declared a state of emergency, dispatching 800 armed police and soldiers. The police assaulted the strikers at the airport and removed them by force, leaving 15 wounded, several of them gravely.

The farmers frustrated the government’s efforts to intimidate them with this public display of force. Reynaldo Annco, a farmer and leader of the Regional Agrarian Defense Front of Apurimac (FDRA), pointed out that “they couldn’t push back the protests—all they could do was to call a truce to calm the situation so that a high level commission could be brought in, made up of the ministers of the departments of agriculture, transport and communication, and women, to begin a dialog to try to solve the dispute,” reported the daily La República.

Premier Carlos Ferrero blamed the farmers for the situation, claiming on the one hand that their lack of planning resulted in overproduction that drove down the price of potatoes, and on the other hand, that the farmers were obeying what he called the sinister interests of a Mafia of intermediaries who were behind the protests. Annco rejected Prime Minister Ferrero’s accusations, stating that “in this fight we potato farmers are the leading force,” according to La República.

The government had no choice but to send in the high level commission the farmers demanded, not second-string officials as it had originally intended. Those sent were: Manuel Manrique, minister of agriculture; José Ortiz, minister of transportation and communication; and Ana María Romero, minister of women’s affairs and social development, who met at the airport with farmer leaders of the Andahuaylas FDRA.

In addition to the price guarantees, the farmers won the government’s promise to pave the Andahuaylas highway and reopen José María Arguedas National University, something many local residents have demanded as a minimal requirement for access to education in the area.

With this victory the farmers won another step forward in the ongoing struggle to win a national food policy that doesn’t rely on imports for basic foods, and in which the farmers are paid sustainable prices for their products. For example, imported wheat products have displaced locally grown potatoes for a long time.

The food import policy affects 94 percent of farmers who produce for the national market and compete with heavily subsidized agricultural imports from other countries.  
 
 
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