PLAN MERISS INKA (Perú)

Is a project of the Ministry of Agriculture of Peru, and is financed by the KfW and the Peruvian government. The project is aimed at improving irrigation in the southern mountain region of Peru. Plan Meriss Inka received many years of technical assistance of the GTZ. In 1996, Willem van Immerzeel arrived as part of the GTZ-team, for a period of two years. He proposed (pdf) to use the methodology Pachamama Raymi, to improve field irrigation techniques and -organization.

Introducing a novel methodology in a project with a firmly established way of doing things requires a frequent a patient follow-up, commenting and comparing the old with the new. Plan Meriss Inka used supervised micro-credit (See: Comments (pdf) of the first introduction of Pachamama Raymi in one of Meriss’s irrigation projects)

Slide show Plan Meriss

Several years later, in 2002, it was found that the “methodology using contests, applied to spread knowledge horizontally among farmers, is a resounding success” (Aide memoir: “Progress and Results of the Plan Meriss Inka – Apurimac project. GTZ April, 2002” ).