Following the water uphill? New geographies of agricultural exports amidst climate change in Peru’s Andean highlands

Abstract

While intensified non-traditional agricultural export fruit production is well-established on Peru's arid coast, growers are now casting their eyes upwards to the Andean slopes in search of new spaces for cultivation. Peru’s Ancash region has been the focus of concerns over the impact of climate change on the shrinking glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca and the Santa River watershed (Bury et al., 2013), yet other landscape changes--gone largely unnoticed by outsiders--are also underway. The Santa River valley, which is known locally as Callejón de Huaylas and is one of Peru’s most important inter-Andean valleys, has rapidly become covered by huge swathes of white plastic used in the construction of high tunnels for blueberry production. Primarily for export, this production is transforming resource use as well as valley aesthetics, with impacts for diverse sectors of society in Áncash. Furthermore, it suggests potential new spatial reconfigurations in Peruvian agro-exports, as Peru has become the world’s leading exporter of blueberries (since 2022). Growers are implementing capital intensive infrastructures in new spaces, expanding production according to changing climate and economic conditions, creating novel juxtapositions between agro-exports, smallholder fields, and protected natural areas, among other land uses.