Mushuk Yuyay: Community-Led, Indigenous Efforts in the Andes Mountains

For thousands of years, the indigenous people of the Andes mountains of southern Ecuador (the Kañari) have been growing, tending, and harvesting quinoa, amaranth, and other native grains. They have been cultivating a great many varieties of potatoes and other tubers along with squashes, vegetables, and fruit. In the face of centuries of colonialism and imperialism, the Kañari have managed to hold on to their traditional ways of caring for the earth, and feeding each other. But that does not mean their path has been an easy one; they have faced immeasurable adversity and hardship.  

In the indigenous Kichwa (Quechua) language, Mushuk Yuyay means “New Thought,” and the initiative certainly lives up to its name. The Association of Producers of Seeds and Nutritious Andean Foods Mushuk Yuyay was established by Nicolás Pichazaca in 1994 to help local smallholder farmers with seed and organic inputs at a time when the farmers were struggling to survive. Since then, they have established a name brand for their products, Alli Mikuna (“Good Food”), and built a processing plant. Mushuk Yuyay sees their purpose as to holistically work with indigenous farmers to build a stable economy with food sovereignty, food security, and food justice. 

According to the initiative, the needs of their community around health, food, and money, coupled with the battle against climate change cannot be solved with one solution. As a result, they approach existing environmental, health, and economic challenges with a holistic array of programs. These include feeding and nutrition education through their Healthy Children and Healthy Future school program; ecosystem restoration through the Restorative Forest of Guyaraloma; paying farmers fair market prices in the field at harvest; community education programs with NGOs and public agencies; irrigation projects involving the area in which they operate; participatory research with universities; developing organic fertilizers and pest control with the farmers; seed selection and improvement for increased biodiversity; expanding cultivation through developing community savings and loan groups; and finally, marketing by developing their own brand, Alli Mikuna, and building a processing center. 

Crucially, Mushuk Yuyay is entirely community led and has been since its founding (a fact they believe makes them unique). With this emphasis on community, according to the initiative, they have been able to respond to the most pressing economic and environmental needs in the southern Ecuador region. The initiative is democratically managed to answer to the people it serves, and its purpose is to help smallholder farmers prosper and have access to healthy diets at reasonable prices. As the organization states, “Ours is a passionate effort to preserve what is authentic, and elevate what is essential, restoring justice in the food chain and rekindling the flame of the family table with the abundance of history and nature.” 

Learn more about Mushuk Yuyay.

Written by Sarah Souli
Photos provided by Mushuk Yuyay