FACTORTIERRA

A rural school highlights in science, looks for stopping deforestation.   By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo . Photographs Courttesy Luis Cevallos Jiménez .   This place is 3½ hours from Piura City going up to the east.   CANCHAQUÉ, Peru – Maybe, it’s the last primal dry forest patch in Buitré Mount. Teacher Luis Cevallos Jiménez thinks it’s about 74 acres. According to Soc’cha Alta elders, it was larger, still. Among chamelicos, guayacans, and hualtacos, it was detected anteaters, armadillos, deers , ocelots, peccaries, Barnett's  lanceheads, and blacktail cribos. Soc’cha Alta is a village of Canchaqué District , Huancabamba Province , extending on a slope going from 2756 to2887 feet altitude. It’s part of Bigoté Sub-Basin, a Piura River ’s tributary, and according to Mr Cevallos, it should be declared a protected area once it’s studied scientifically. The also principal of 15458 elementary school, where other two colleagues work and 33 children stu...

Almost all Piura region will have to be intervened for preventing problems caused by the abundance of water - or its lack.  By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo PIURA CITY, Peru - One of the most extended prejudges by the people visiting Piura is believing that the whole territory is flat when the reality points out that the Andean Range , from its first spurs, occupies its half. And the fact is relevant when we want to explain natural events  like the floods during  a

Written and photographed by Mariluz Mejía, distributed by agrored Norte.   Girls and teenagers of Provinces Ayabaca and Huancabamba, highlands of Piura Departmen t , participate in the ethnical-botanical investigation made by Agrored Norte & Mountain Institute , funded by Peru’s National Council of Science & Technology, Ministry of environment, and Ministry of Agrarian Development & Irrigation, about the potential of wild fruit species of páramos and cloud forests .   They are high-school students of Totora school, Pacaipampa District ( Ayabaca Province ) and Cajas-Shapaya’s Virgen del Carmen School, El Carmen de la Frontera District ( Huancabamba Province ).   Those girls and teenagers mean a potential in scientific knowledge generation to value the riches of Piura Andes biodiversity, that belongs to the families living around the páramos and cloud forest ecosystems   The contribution of the girls’ knowledge  about  the ...

Photographs provided by AgroRedNorte.   Students of Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes School, at Segunda y Cajas Farmer Community (El Carmen de la Frontera District) and Innova Páramos Association, basedon Totoras Village (Pacaipampa District) presented two  filter drinks made of lanché ( Myrcianthes myrsinoides )and ushpa ( Vaccinium foribundum ),looking to blast the market of functional & nutraceutical drinks.   The products are the result of a participative investigation proposing to conserve ecosystems paramos and cloud forests at the Andes of Piura Department by using medicinal and fruit native species to make filter beverages. It has been promoted by Muqui Networ k and advised scientifically by AgroRedNorte .   They’ve been made by the own locals, this is used as a strategy to conserve the Andean highland ecosystems that are part of their territory.  The investigation is already as longer as than over a decade, it’s promoted by agroRed...

This is the script prepared to be spoken before AgroRed Norte Summit in Piura City, Peru, on July 17 th , 2015.   By Nelson Peñaherrera Castillo   March 2013, the first and last time I was in an AgroRed Norte Summit. It was an important proffessional milestone to me. I thank the organization about that. A day later I presented before you, a History Latin America network’s crew picked me up early in Sullana City for working almost all that day. They wanted to record our testimonial because of a story we published on FACTORTIERRA  on 2008 .   In July 2013, landscapes of Malingas , a rural community in Tambograndé District , Peru, entered 40 million homes along Latin America and they hold on until now by reprises.   On that first hearing before AgroRed Norte Summit, I went to request you for supporting the need to create scientific spreaders’ nests from schools. I do not know if the idea was welcomed and set up –at least, I was not summoned to o...

An organization could be created just to set a lawsuit against opposers.   By Julio Vásquez Calle (Water, Democracy, and Development Regional Network)   PIURA CITY, Peru – In July 2008, Piura’s 5 th Prosecution Office began questionnaries to people accused of terrorism – farmer leaders, mayors, NGO members among them.   The notified were San Ignacio (Cajamarca)’s Mayor Carlos Martínez Solano, president of Northern Border Sustainable Development Front(FDSFN by its initials in Spanish), Ayabaca’s Mayor Humberto Marchena, Huancabamba’s Mayor Valentín Quevedo, el Carmen de la Frontera’s Mayor Ismael Huayama, and Ayabaca’s First Councellor Deiber Flores, as well as San Ignacio’s Municipal Manager Euler Jave Díaz.   Also included were Javier Janhcke Benavente (Fedepaz), Wilson Ramiro Ibañez (Muqui Network), Biologist Fidel Torres , Mario Tabra Guerrero among others.   Most of the accused are representatives of farmer people in Piura Andes and San Ignacio that are...