Farmers in the Amazon region of Peru lack access to reliable, actionable information, like real-time weather reports and measurements of soil quality and land use suitability—which impacts their ability to adapt to regional stresses like climate change, severe weather, legacy land degradation, and socioeconomic pressures. With the development of a custom-built, portable soil analysis kit (Pacha Kit) and the installation of permanent weather and soil monitoring stations, OU researchers are contributing to sustainable agricultural development in the San Martin region of Peru, and helping farmers improve the efficiency and profitability of their land. These efforts are funded by a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in support of the Peruvian Extension and Research Utilization project (PERU-Hub) which is managed in Peru by the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina (UNALM).
Over the course of the last 18 months, the research team, which includes OU postdoctoral scholars, Carmen Roman Perez, Martha Jimenez-Castaneda, and Zach Brecheisen together with Brad Illston, a meteorologist and senior research scientist at the Oklahoma Mesonet and Oklahoma Climatological Survey; David Ebert, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of OU’s Data Institute for Societal Challenges, Tim Filley, professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Sustainability, and the School of Geosciences, and director of the OU’s Institute for Resilient Environmental and Energy Systems, and Victor Maqque, affiliate professor of history, and managing director of the Latin America Sustainability Initiative, made several trips to the field sites in Peru to convene workshops focused on soil health principles, weather and soil monitoring, remote sensing, soil analysis, and hands-on field exercise in several communities across San Martin.
A central part of the project involves training and deployment of equipment, the Pacha Kit, to expand access of farmers to soil analyses. The Pacha Kit is a custom-built soil analysis system that brings a portable laboratory to the agricultural fields of Peru through PERU-Hub. Derived from the Quechua term "Pacha,” which can be roughly translated into English as “Earth”, the kits will be used by extensionists from Peru who have been trained at the University of Oklahoma. During the first soil health workshop in San Martin held from January 23-26, 2023, the extension specialists, faculty from UNALM, and staff from the Instituto de Cultivos Tropicales (ICT) explored the array of analytical tools embedded in Pacha Kits that measure important physical, chemical, and biological soil properties directly related to soil health. Accompanying written and video-based training materials were created by the OU teams and delivered to partners in Peru in both Spanish and Quechua languages.
In May 2023, the team traveled back to Tarapoto, Peru to convene a second workshop focused on a series of field demonstrations with a larger team of extensionists, students, and faculty from UNALM, Universidad Nacional Autónoma del Alto Amazonas; technicians from the ICT, and the Instituto Nacional de Innovación Agraria (INIA). During field excursions to San Jose de Sisa, a community known for its cacao plantations, Cuñumbuqui, a community focused on livestock activities, and Caynarachi, a community working with heart-palm plantations, the University of Oklahoma team engaged with local farmers who shared insights into their soil management practices and the challenges they are facing. The team, in turn, highlighted the Pacha Kits, demonstrating the real-time information they can provide to farmers about soil health.
Peru-based extension specialists are now using Pacha Kits for soil analysis across diverse sites throughout the San Martin region, providing valuable information to local farmers to improve the efficiency and profitability of their land. Moving forward, the OU team is committed to delivering ongoing technical support to these extensionists and the communities they serve.
Now in its third year, the OU research team turned its attention to installing a network of weather and soil monitoring stations in the San Martin region of Peru. The weather stations are recording measurements of air temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, pressure, solar radiation, and rainfall, while the soil stations are adding measurements of soil temperature, moisture, and electrical conductivity to the network. In this work, the meteorological team, led by Brad Illston, and the geospatial and land use modeling team, led by Jennifer Koch, associate professor in the Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing at University of Kassel, will combine the data from this monitoring network with advanced remote sensing data to develop land use suitability models for specific high-value crops being introduced by the PERU-Hub project. The network will provide additional, critical information to farmers, researchers, forecasters, and climate scientists to better understand how atmospheric and hydrological processes are impacted by both changing land use and climate change. The team traveled to Peru in May 2024, to begin installation of the monitoring network.
Learn more about PERU-Hub and LASI’s international projects.
Written by: Tim Filley, Martha Jimenez-Castenda, Carmen Roman Perez, Brad Illston, and Mikayla Foreman
