FEBRUARY: PERUVIAN ALPACA

HIGH ELEVATION

Nestled in the shadows of the rugged, glaciated Andes Mountains are the high valleys and altiplano plateaus of Peru. Elevations from 10,000 to 20,000 ft above sea level make for a barren, intense environment. Temperatures in the high, dry valleys can drop to well below 32 degrees, but the intense sun makes the glacial runoff that forms the valleys’ lakes, rivers, and wetlands never freeze. 

Few can survive the extreme elevation, temperatures, sun exposure, and aridness (Figure 1). Those that can have adapted to the specific environment over thousands of years. The Quechua and Aymara people who inhabit the altiplano survive based on their relationship with their domesticated animals: llamas and Alpacas provide them with food, fiber, and fuel. 

Figure 1: A herd of alpaca on the righthand hill with the glacial Andes above. 

Alpacas were domesticated 6,000 years ago from the native cameloids. They have soft footpads and graze without pulling up the roots of grasses, making them perfect for the delicate flora of the altiplano. They also grow thick, fine fleece to protect them from the sun and cold exposure. As a result, over 90% of the world’s alpacas roam the high valleys of Peru and Bolivia they are native. Alpaca is the only major natural commodity fiber whose main source is a landrace (Figure 2). 

Figure 2: an alpaquero with his white and black studs.

By February, tens of thousands of dispersed families and communities in the highlands of Peru gather their small herds of alpacas. They shear their alpaca before the rainy months ahead. Most use traditional hand-shearing to trim their alpaca’s fleece. They keep some of the harvests for personal use, but most get picked up by traders at the set commodity price for that season. The altiplano is one of the most impoverished regions of Peru, alpaqueros typically get around $2,000 USD for their annual harvest. 

RISE

In pre-Hispanic Peru, Alpacas were a main source of livelihood for the communities in the Altiplano. But, alpacas are not highly adaptable, one small change in climate, nutrition, or health can decimate an entire herd. When European settlers imported sheep and goats to the fertile high valleys of the altiplano, foreign disease quickly eliminated most of the alpaca population.   

Alpaqueros continued to breed and raise the surviving alpaca for their fine fiber. By the early 1900s, global demand for alpaca sweaters as a luxury good rose. In the 1920s the Michell family started aggregating and exporting alpaca fiber in the form of tops (the cleaned, combed, pre-spun fiber) and yarns. They created a system of middlemen who traveled through the altiplano collecting fleece from the thousands of farms scattered throughout the valleys. Michell was the main aggregator and exporter of alpaca fiber until the 1980s when a group called Incalpaca created a similar aggregation and exportation model. 

The price per fleece depended and still depends on what prices Michell and Incalpaca get from foreign markets and fluctuates day-to-day. Most alpaqueros live in remote corners of the altiplano and the price of their year’s worth of work is dependent on what markets a world away from them are doing the day the traders come for their harvest. 

The fiber then goes to Incalpaca or Michell’s sorting facilities in Arequipa, Peru. There the fiber is classified into five main categories: royal, baby, superfine, MP, huarizo, and coarse (Figure 3). Royal with the smallest micron is the softest and finest, but also the rarest. All alpacas have a range of fiber qualities on their fleece (the back and chest are the finest and the legs are the coarsest), but not all have the finer categories. Since royal and baby alpaca fibers sell for a higher price, alpaqueros breed for fine fibers, if they can afford it. A stud that ensures finer fiber goes for around $5,000 USD, more than most alpaqueros make annually.  

Figure 3: colored alpaca fiber ready to be sorted and cleaned, a group of Incalpaca employees sorting white alpaca fleece.

Alpacas come in 22 shades of white, brown, grey, and black (Figure 3). Michell and Incalpaca buy white fleeces for a higher price the colors from alpaqueros, even though today’s interest in low-impact and sustainable products makes it so Incalpaca and Michell can sell naturally colored yarns and tops for more than white. Alpaqueros also breed for white shades. 

Michell and Incalpaca built a successful, vertically integrated system that funnels the fleece from the four million alpacas in Peru and hundreds of thousands of alpaqueros into homogenous qualities and connects them to foreign markets. A system that changed the genetic makeup of the alpaca herds and made hundreds of thousands of farmers dependent on them for their livelihoods.

FALL

In 2011, a non-profit called the Sustainable Apparel Coalition released the Higg index, a combination of industry leader’s impact assessment tools, including Patagonia, Outdoor Research, and Nike. The tool used studies and data to rank the impact of different fibers in the clothing industry and standardize sustainability in the industry. 

It assesses natural and synthetic fibers and fabrics and ranks alpaca with the second highest environmental impact. Its research cited alpaca manure causes methane and other emissions and can infiltrate waterways. Although it is a natural part of the Altiplano’s natural nutrient cycle, Higg’s methodology characterized these as negative environmental and climate impacts. Based on Higg’s assessment, the many major brands that used it to make sourcing decisions divested in alpaca.

In 2020, PETA secretly filmed while visiting the world’s largest alpaca farm. Mallkini is owned by Michell Group in Muñani, Peru. PETA documented the electric shearing of alpacas and claimed excess force and careless shearing leaving some animals with cuts. Brands immediately responded by banning the use of alpaca in their collections, although less than 1% of Peru’s alpaca came from Mallkini and there were no other large-scale alpaca farming operations in Peru. 

Alpaca sales plummeted, and so did the price that the small, indigenous alpaca farmers got for their fleece. In 2022, Norway banned the use of the Higg Index due to greenwashing concerns. It cited that Higg is too favorable towards synthetic material and connected to fast fashion. Brands globally responded to the greenwashing concerns and stopped using Higg for sourcing decisions and marketing. Alpaca sales, in turn, increased. 

REPEAT

In 2022, the highlands experienced unusually low temperatures. By early 2023, the altiplano was experiencing its worst drought in the last 60 years, in part due to the La Niña cycle. The usually green, abundant pastures were brown and devoid of forage for the alpacas. 

Historically, the altiplano has stayed resilient to drought due to the glaciers above it. The glacial partially melted every summer, regardless of annual rain, filling streams, lakes, and wetlands, then recharged during the winter snow. Higher annual temperatures caused by climate change mean Peru’s glacial coverage has decreased by 53% in the last 50 years- greatly changing the altiplano’s hydrology and making it more and more reliant on rainfall. 

Additionally, poor land management and grazing patterns caused many of the altiplano’s wetlands to convert to grasslands. Wetlands hold the most carbon in the world- they are only 3% of the Earth’s land mass, but store around 33% of the world’s overall carbon. Wetland conversion causes not only loss of water storage but also loss of soil carbon storage. This makes the wetland less resilient to climate change and less able to combat it (Figure 4). 

Figure 4: A rehabilitated wetlands in the altiplano. 

Loss of water and forage causes a decrease in not only alpaca survival rate but also a decrease in fleece quality and an increase in work and costs managing the herds per profit from fleece. Alpaqueros have started moving their herds to higher pastures earlier in the season, drilling wells and irrigating to grow supplemental forage, building shelters for alpacas to stay in during extreme weather, constructing canals to increase water to their land, and expensive medicines to treat and protect their herd (Figure 5). 

Figure 5: alpacas grazing next to a manmade canal. 

In some cases, it is cheaper to sell alpaca for meat than harvesting their fleece. In others, families stop splitting the work and the men went into tourism, mining, or other industries, while the women manage the alpaca. In others, alpaqueros leave farming altogether in search of work elsewhere. 

NOTES

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/the-high-altitude-hunt-for-a-way-to-save-alpacas

https://ojo-publico.com/4528/la-millonaria-ruta-la-alpaca-un-lujo-ajeno-para-los-productores

https://fibershed.org/2022/03/25/alpaca-stories-part-2-fibs-lies-and-falsehood/

https://fibershed.org/2022/03/25/alpaca-stories-part-3-when-peta-strikes-certifications-follow/

https://whyalpaca.com/unique/

https://www.incalpaca.com/about/

https://www.michell.com.pe/michell/en/about-us/about-us/

https://www.commonobjective.co/article/higg-materials-sustainability-index

https://knowledge-hub.circle-economy.com/article/19414?n=The-Higg-Index-was-banned-in-Norway-after-greenwashing-concerns-