The legacy of Cultivando

What has it been the main challenge of the most long-lived TV show of Piura?

 

By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo

 

LA MATANZA, Peru 20371  – The migration from the countryside to the city has slowed down but it has not stopped. Former Peru’s Agriculture Minister Milton von Hesse said to RPP Noticias radio network in 2013 this reduces the workforce at the rural zone. The immediate injured are the farmers who have to deal with estates as large as 2 hectares due to family heritages division or the impossibility to face mortgages.

 

One minister’s advisor said me by phone that although this scenario was concerning them, they were already projecting rules to protect the small agriculture, especially in arid-but-fertile zones like the promising Upper Piura Valley. On Radio Cutivalú, some agrarian leaders said the workforce that should be in those acres where there are still management problems, it has been hoarded by agrindustrial or agriexporting companies.

 

Less than a mile beyond La Matanza Town, one of them, Chilean capital, uses dozens of hectares in new seeds development, that not necessarily will be used in the Peruvian market. The most of its professional team and workforce come from around. Despite that, the local experiences of non-corporate agrarian development generate some hope… and a little envy.

 

Only between 2010 and 2012, RPP Noticias network itself, accused by some progressist sectors to have a neo-liberalist speech, has granted such as national awards to two organic production experiences in Junín, Central Peru, and near here, at the piedmont of Chulucanas District. It’s not the only effort that looks for re-validate the ssmall agriculture. Since June 2^nd, 1994, a bunch of proffessionals have been showing all those almost anonymous achievements on the TV.

 

Just push play

Hugo Herrera Vega was formed amid the 1969 Agrarian Reform, the initiative of that time’s military dictatorship that looked for finish the big large estates owned by few families, to suddenly deliver them to the ones who were their servitude for decades. Many specialists opine that the failure of that reform was not to transfer technology and grants that would allow to base the competitiveness, that 52 years later it is looked for good, not matter the cost.

 

Teacher Herrera was one of the proffessionals who joined the Training and Services Center for Audiovisual Pedagogy, CESPAC for its initials in Spanish, four decades ago. This was a Peru’s Agriculture Ministry Project funded by United Nations Development Programme, that revolved the education of farmers by using a new tool for that age, and much more for the rural zone – the TV and the video-cassette player.

 

CESPAC came to produce more than 300 video courses when Betamax, the today’s discontinued Betacam former format, allow to copy and to democratize almost all the audiovisual that the planet produced. Mr Herrera has walked on the route from that format to the DVD, passing through VHs and u-Matic, but holding the same storyline – what can we learn from the effort of male and female farmers, in some cases allied to some NGO’s?

 

He has been a producer of Cultivando (harvesting) that has been almost 25 years on the air, beginning on the TV Peru (formerly RTP)’s Piura affiliate, then it went to same city’s Global TV affiliate, then broadcasting on TV Norte (channel 35 air-TV). On Saturday January 5th, 2013, Cultivando aired its episode 900, a pretty record for the local TV.

 

The production has been possible thanks to an alliance of the National University of Piura, Centro Ideas – Piura, Cipca, and Chira-Piura Special Project, where has been post-produced. Piura’s Agrarian Regional Direction also has participated as a coordination.

 

An odyssey at the space

There are no independent audience surveys that allow to know its rating (how many TV-sets had the show tuned) and its share (how much market the show reached) but it calls my attention that many Agronomy proffessionals who I talked to have not watched it.

 

The show production said that the story is different at the country side: “We are the only experience nationwide that uses air-TV to spread the experiences of the own farmers, their difficulties, their achievements, and their opes.” I wonder if the former Minister von Hesse’s thesis has been right. so was the show in risk to hold on? I presume if the countryside has been unpopulating, there will be few public to reach and to show on the screen some years later.

 

Unless an unexpected event like the Covid-19 pandemic happens that changes the migratory flow that was holding for half a century in just half a year. Perhaps, it is necessary to refresh (and renew) the formats as it is happening on the media worldwide, especially facing the social media.

 

Piura Tierra Paraíso (Piura Paradise Land), a TV magazine about diverse topics of Piura got to place in the urban contemporary adult target judging its followers on Facebook, plus reprising its contents on YouTube. Its producer Darwing Adrianzén told me once a time that, despite that, to make one only episode demanded much effort because there is not a culture of large-scale advertising investment in Piura Department.

 

Piura City seemed to be the hard market of that show aired by the América Television local affiliate. Instead, Parada Norte (Northern Stop) broadcast by the same network’s Lambayequé Department affiliate had a high audience and advertising investment.

 

Beyond the farm

Cultivando has taken a comparative advantage above Piura… considering the distance – including the department’s capital city, the show was broadcast by syndication in other 7 communitarian TV stations inside the department. It could be tuned in Paimas (Ayabaca Province), Las Lomas (Piura Province), Více and Sechura (Sechura Province), San Juan de Bigoté, Buenos Aires, and La Matanza (Morropón Province). It is also available on its YouTube channel.

 

Betting for quality contents that make a difference in Piura makes worthy the effort. In case of Cultivando, maybe it must bet to re-value the countryside as a food source and our environment’s cleaning. The production coincides when it outlines as a goal: “To achieve the associativity that allows [the farmers] to be competitive with better performances and growing quality food for the people of Piura.”

 

Another comparative advantage of the show, that seems lapidary to me, is it could hold 25 continued seasons offering precious scientific and sociological contents. That makes it the most long-lived show of the TV in Piura.

 

To have a perspective, Beyond 2000, produced in Australia and specialized in science & technology, had the same on-air long life and it continues to be a cult series. When 2000 passed away, the show renamed as Beyond Tomorrow, and it re-launched in 2018 as Beyond 2020. Although there were variations on the format, the main topic was basically the same.

 

And why not Cultivando could aspire the same? Who knows. It possibly favors the inverse migration, or at least such as a balance that allows a homogeneus development of countryside and city, as much as it motivates the farmers to re-invest and not to leave their few money in luxury, or the proffessionals to tune it, at least, by general culture.

 

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