ABSTRACT
Rural households in the Peruvian highlands are among the poorest in the country: 60 per cent of this population lives in poverty, and 32 per cent in extreme poverty (UNDP, 2002). Rural households define their livelihood strategies according to the geographic and climatic conditions in which they live, as well as the social, economic and cultural needs and opportunities. They diversify their portfolio of activities to use their limited resources efficiently to deal with poverty, to ensure consumption during shocks or to improve their living conditions (Morduch, 1995; Valdivia et al., 1996; Ellis, 1998; Valdivia and Gilles, 2001). Diversification on the farm is not always possible. It depends on geographic location, environmental characteristics, and labour availability. The Altiplano is a plateau between two mountain ranges in the southern region of the Andes of Peru. Climate conditions are difficult, and the Altiplano landscape is not homogeneous. It presents several agro-ecological zones and geographical characteristics, and climatic conditions that vary according to distance from Lake Titicaca and altitude (Sperling et al., 2008).
