Markets form in the here and now most often. Things can rapidly change a market–Mother Nature, a hot competitor, technology and most certainly, demand. The impact is real and harsh for the lower echelon of the system.

Peru has long been king when it comes to alpaca fiber, just a few years ago exporting 6500 tons, earning $50 million or more. For generations, the indigenous Peruvian herders and their families, “alpaqueros,” have raised a very large portion of the alpacas in isolated regions of the Andes. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization, there are an estimated 65000 alpaquero families. They see very little of the millions of dollars earned by those at the end of the production chain in Peru.

The alpaqueros never deal with the large processing mills, but only with the small scale traders who are part of the long standing system in Peru.  For many years the traders have bought the alpaqueros’ alpaca fiber on the basis of weight, not quality. Thus, there is no incentive to improve the fineness or other valued characteristics through improved breeding programs.

Markets change though. The International textile market has increasingly sought finer, high quality alpaca fiber. Australia and New Zealand began to supply a larger and larger share of the demand, having instituted practices that produced good quality. Peru’s market share deceased.

To help Peru regain a competitive stance in the world market for alpaca fiber, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), initiated a program to bring together the government, fiber processing mills and the alpaca producers to develop solutions and workable programs to bring up the quality of the alpaca fiber production in Peru to meet market demand. One objective also was to provide the alpaqueros premium prices for higher quality fiber. Progress to date is slow and very shaky as each segment of the market guards it’s own turf.

The hardest hit are the indigenous alpaqueros. For years, they produced according to the market demand, ie  the middle man’s buying criteria. Even if good breeding programs become universal in Peru, it will take many years to bring the alpaca fiber quality up to the standard required in the existing and future market place.

For more on this situation, read the FAO’s report.

Tags: Bonnie Samuel Designs, fiber, indigenous people, Peru

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2009 at 6:36 pm and is filed under Animals that produce fiber, Fiber in Cultures, Fiber uses, Natural Fiber, textiles . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.