Securing fair access to public services and resources for smallholders in Peru

Funded by DFID, this project aims to empower marginalised smallholder coffee communities and their representative organisations to demand and secure an equitable amount of public resources and services.

The project commenced in mid-2010 in partnership with Junta Nacional de Café (JNC), a national association of 41 smallholder coffee producer organisations in Peru. It aims to enable farmer leaders, men and women, representing almost 20,000 smallholder households, and regional branches of the JNC, their representative organisation, to advocate for a greater allocation of public investment and services in poor rural communities.

So far it has:

• Helped strengthen the capacity of the JNC to engage in national policy debates;
• Given JNC regional managers the capacity and knowhow to lobby regional government on issues affecting smallholder coffee communities;
• Provided training to smallholder leaders to enhance their capacity to lobby for their rights and participate in budgeting processes within provincial municipalities.

Background

Coffee is the principle agricultural export of Peru. Yet the smallholder coffee farmers who produce it, and the rural communities in which they live, have largely been sidelined in national economic and development policies.

In recent years, Peru has experienced substantial growth in GDP (7- 9% year on year since 2002). However, the benefits of this economic growth have been distributed unevenly: a third of people in rural areas live in extreme poverty compared to around 4% of the urban population.

Since 2003, the Peruvian government has been decentralising decision-making, allocating new powers to 23 regions and local provincial municipalities which are now able to make decisions about the allocation of national revenues, including recent windfalls from mining and gas exploration.

Most smallholder communities, lacking the necessary knowledge, skills and resources, have been unable to engage properly in these important democratic processes, and their needs have therefore been marginalised in regional government and local provincial municipal spending priorities.

Achievements

• JNC regional offices in Cajamarca and Junín, set up through this project, have gained the approval for guarantee funds with their respective regional governments to support replanting and rehabilitation of coffee trees in their regions.
• The regional office of the JNC in Junín, has qualified as a formal actor for the participatory planning process in the area. This means that they can participate in regional meetings determining the key themes for public investment and discussing possible regional investments.
• Training has been carried out with leaders on networking and lobbying skills and on the various different investment opportunities available to organisations at local and regional levels.

Next steps

This project has been a great success in empowering smallholder representatives to access funding and gain inclusion in policy decisions. Twin would like support the JNC in rolling out this engagement model out in other regions, to ensure inclusion and fair treatment of the most vulnerable in poor rural farming communities.