Peru | Wild Shepherdess with Kate Humble | BBC Documentary

in the most remote places on earth people depend on their animals for survival a few years ago I moved to a farm in the Welsh Hills I've become fascinated by the ancient bond between Shepherd and flock in Afghanistan I looked back in time and saw the origins of our relationship with livestock the admiration that I have for these people really knows no bounds now in Peru I get to grips with a very different animal the alpaca alpaca herding in Peru goes back thousands of years but today the people of the Andes are at a crossroads and must choose between tradition and progress what I'm going for is really what I go for when I pick a race horse in a race which is a pretty face or a nice bump [Music] I'm in the heartland of one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen the Incas are famous for their architecture and many of their buildings are still standing today but what few people know is just how skilled they were as farmers and as herders they had this amazing livestock management system which allowed them to build up one of the finest herds that the world has ever known and in turn produced some of the finest textiles now I'm heading from here right up into the high mountains to some of the remote modern-day Peruvian herding communities to find out what if any of that inca heritage still remains [Music] the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors ended the Inca civilization 500 years ago their modern-day descendants the Quechua are known for making colorful clothing but how do their achievements compare with those of their illustrious ancestors I'm heading to a village called China culture which produces some of the best textiles in this area it's half a day's drive away high up into the mountains [Music] this was where corn was found potatoes were found tobacco was found Tomatoes with that you can see it's just bursting with life [Music] the tribes of the Andes were as skilled with their animals as they were with their crops but that was more than five centuries ago I want to find out what things are like today we're at four thousand three hundred and fifty meters here so quite high the tops of the mountains are well and truly shrouded in cloud it's January and the beginning of the wet season in Peru I'm amazed we've been able to drive this far but the final stage of the journey will be on foot my translator Urbano has been to chalak Aceh before and knows the way it feels like there are houses that have all spread out gentle approachability is not a camper please we are going this one here it's immaculate we need I'm going to be living with Alejandrina her son Augustin and the rest of their extended family in their two roomed thatched house the family depend on one crop potatoes and on one animal alpacas they are extreme they look like they've been put together from sort of different parts of different animals our Packers like llamas are closely related to camels they were the foundation of the Inca Empire and they're still prized for their wool like fiber how many alpacas do your family have assess and put a million on a video baby [Music] beautiful how many days old is that yeah one day only are any more of the herd pregnant data what is a baby alpaca called is it a lamb we need puppet AG in your pocket alpaca Kucha a Kucha but not all is well with the baby alpaca it turns out it's actually sick it's having trouble breathing but Augustine says there's nothing he can do to help it [Music] as well as their alpacas the family look after some smaller animals guinea pigs sleep in holes by the fire and have free run of the house during the day the sort of like um a four-legged recycling unit potatoes and vegetables peelings go to the guinea pigs there's some bad news the baby alpaca I saw yesterday didn't make it Agustin is going to butcher it straight away we're so squeamish about this sort of thing in Western society and here's a little girl aged I don't know three or four helping her father nothing is wasted the hide will be sold and the meat eaten more than half of baby alpacas died here foxes and birds of prey are a threat but the cold wet weather is the biggest killer Augustin is going to share some alpacas in a special enclosure at the top of the ridge what I think we're doing is driving the alpacas up to a Corral as a stone enclosure on the top of that mountain it's quite slippery [Music] the alpacas are driven into the corral ready for shearing after our long climb it's time for some refreshment and day in style okay why do you do this GDP we're updating our opinion we are passing him the mail our Packers are taking full advantage of our cocoa break make this noise what does it mean that agenda Sochi okay there doesn't seem to be any kind of breeding system the alpacas are just left to get on with it Augustin has selected an animal for shearing when you feel this fiber ah I got told off for referring to it as wool it is fiber and actually does feel very different from the wall that you might get from a sheet alpaca fiber is up to seven times warmer than sheep's wool along with cashmere from goats it's one of the world's most prized natural threads I've never seen shearing alpaca fiber has been keeping the people of the Andes warm for thousands of years the Incas were obsessed with it and valued it more than gold and silver it's quite easy to see how the Incas sort of built their empire on this really it has a feel of absolute luxury there seems to be an enormous amount of fiber coming off what is actually quite a small animal the family are going to keep these fleeces to make clothes and handicrafts but most of their fiber will be sold to collectors middlemen who buy as much fiber as they can and sell it on to peruse processing factories and how many solace does the collector pay per pound an average sized fleece like this would earn Augustine and his wife - Monsieur about 8 pounds it doesn't sound very much for a lot of work no slip in their veneration good again the hospital now can you make enough money from your alpacas to support the whole family alpaca and I scrappy just come ask a common sell food recipe okay I still a man fiber from the family's herd of 60 animals earns them a hundred and sixty pounds at most every year there are many mouths to feed and times are hard [Music] in the middle Alejandrina makes a shocking discovery our hand Rena was fattening this guinea pig up ready for a special meal I know we think of guinea pigs pets but here every now and then they rest and cool so they're sort of much-loved as you can see and kept beautifully but very much as livestock rather than as about the women are going to process the alpaca fiber after picking out dirt and other impurities the next task is to spin the individual hairs into a thread and Rena did you teach all your daughters how to spin yeah get in there okay natural marriage and easy upsets cotton okay then Kunti Alejandrina wants to teach me the basics I'll be punished if I make a mistake I'm ki not throwing kisses man that and the sake Michael week three a honky ain't it and then this process transforms this kind of fluffy rope into a much thinner thread which can then be woven mine's a little bit lumpy I keep it raw fiber may not earn them very much but after the women have made it into textiles they can sell it for a great deal more our snack of boiled potatoes is interrupted when Augustine sees one of the alpacas having trouble giving birth it's a large baby and it looks like it's stuck the family only have a few adult alpacas so the mother is the priority I know what to do with an alpaca I don't [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] wow that's a lot of legs and so much bigger than Lambs and actually an hour Proctor isn't much bigger than a sheep we leave him to bond with his mother and head back to the house it may have been a traumatic birth but they both look okay [Music] the family are cooking a feast to welcome me into their home and there's a special treat on the menu I can take this I've never eaten guinea pig before hmm I can tell you well I'm sorry to all of you who've got a beloved pet guinea pig at home it's absolutely delicious it's kind of right like dark chicken meat one of those mother's fed up with cleaning out your children's guinea pigs Oh Davis yourself she knocking bloody a finger [Laughter] Peru is modernizing fast and even the most remote communities are beginning to change basic sanitation was put in a year ago and electricity will soon follow but this is a marginal existence up to 3 million Peruvians still live from hand to mouth up in the Andes we're going to check on the baby alpaca James that was born yesterday a Christine thinks he's got a good chance of making it but despite such new additions Augustin has very little land so he's unable to increase the size of his herd no question Buster Montana and fast enough going good among improvements in health care means more of the villages children are reaching adulthood each family's grazing land is being divided into smaller and smaller plots which are getting more and more degraded lack of space is not the only problem Augustin faces cuckoo one worry one not very common way Kuchar Yamasaki adult an incubus llamas and alpacas can mate and their offsprings fiber is coarser and less valuable than a purebred alpacas Augustine has so few animals they are inbred - and more vulnerable to bad weather disease and parasites trying to make ends meet with just a few poor quality animals is too much of a struggle for many young herders thousands are leaving their villages preferring to take their chances in towns and cities the women gather on the hillsides and set up their looms the Incas wove alpaca fiber into some of the finest cloth the world has ever seen and echoes of their skill in Alejandrina x' work I mean don't like absolute classic Inca designs definitely and bacon a machine up on this page you need to suck energy no poker products you you're betting a Telugu girl the family will keep a few of the scarves and shawls they make but they hope that most will eventually be sold on bringing in much-needed cash do you worry that young people being born in the village here will leave and go and work in towns but they will leave this traditional life good name well it's universe but when I have the good luck good man an young Larry keeping the next perfect political language Negro language Tournament average straining didn't work remember [Music] I'm really enjoying getting to know this family but I sense that I've come to challenge the pivotal time after which nothing will ever be the same [Music] not everyone in the village is struggling financially on the ridge above the family's house lives Augustine's cousin Thomas Puma yes Tomas a few years ago Tomas made the two-day journey to town to try to get a better price for his fiber ski circuit 800 consecutive mahogany is a creepy means nobody will make wireless curriculum and women but master Valley Tomas is fiber like Augustine's was from llama alpaca hybrids the competition was from pure alpacas worth much more per pound Thomas's eyes were opened he became a collector himself buying fleeces from other herders and selling them on for a profit business is good and he has now made enough money to start buying in better quality alpacas Thomas paid 300 pounds for this purebred male 5 times what a normal alpaca is worth it is like a completely different animal this feels almost like velvet and if I were an Inca princess I'd want to wear fiber from this one allama alpaca hybrids fiber is worth only six solice one pound fifty per pound if you sell the fiber from this animal how many solace per pound for this fiber paramedicine corner and came again I don't well Celeste Libre so double what the usual alpacas in this area get today parent Thomas has a simple breeding system castrating lower-quality males so only his very best get to mate it will take him a few years to improve his herd but his eye is fixed firmly on the future I kind of hate myself for saying this I hate it it goes against everything I believe in I love the fact that you know people can still be self-sufficient still be connected to the land so I wonder whether really what I'm witnessing is the end of the kind of small family farm and perhaps the beginning of people like Thomas taking over land and taking over livestock and becoming bigger landowners who are able to have more animals [Music] Alejandrina wants to sell some fiber she sent a message to her nephew Thomas to come and visit six Alejandrina has made 23 pounds but if the fiber was better quality she could have earned twice as much it's clear that Augustine and de Mesilla face many challenges what do they think the future holds for their family Jennifer alpaca a blogger cannot an applicant see an angle like Iman Veneto corruption on tip they are a number of slavery and its global media they have two options stay and improve their alpaca herd or look for work in a town no no no I am proven Kalpa gotta drive see me no pressure never know hostas with such a low income it's going to be a struggle to get things started but Augustin has one thing in his favour a strong skilled family with their support he might just be able to make a go of it it's time for me to leave Augustin is determined to make more money from his fiber but I want to know what he's up against so I'm going to check out the competition it doesn't take long before dirt tracks give way to tarmac roads in one minute you can be in a community that feels completely cut off from the outside world where there's no electricity people are really living on potatoes and guinea pig and within an hour be in quite a sophisticated town tarmac roads electricity internet Peru has one of the world's fastest growing economies industry is booming and hundreds of thousands of people are leaving villages like chalak Aceh every year to work in towns and cities most end up in low paid menial jobs living in shanty towns if agostina and Amisha were to leave their mountain home this is the kind of life they could expect we're heading back up into the Andes but this is a very different landscape there are no villages or potato fields instead we seem to be driving through one great big ranch we're at nearly 5,000 meters here and I'm going to meet a man who is right at the top of his game in this area of Peru who probably has one of the finest herds of our packers [Music] how are you Fabienne good the animals in chalak Aceh were a hotchpotch of different colors sizes and breeds but ago you CRA's are like a herd of clones these are all sri alpacas a rare breed that produces the finest fiber it's like silk isn't it it's so fine and beautiful isn't it I love my family and chalica but the quality of their fiber just simply doesn't come close while Thomas spends a few hundred pounds on new blood Lugo is prepared to invest thousands these are all females the male's are kept in a different area of the ranch this morning jugo wants to separate his best animals this one here how difficult can it be to spot a thoroughbred from a second-rater oh you go I like that one they might grow lovely will that's turned into luxury items but there's a filthy side to our placards and that's whether it is bad mood or they sort of disagree with what you're doing to them sorry take a look at me I'm covered and basically that's kind of from the depths of their bowels believe me it stinks this isn't just a kind of little gob like some job on a Saturday night this is a full-blown I hate y'all girls come on she needs some manners talk to her that one we've separated off all of you go stop females now we need to count the rest of the herd [Music] 166 you made it 164 I made one six three [Laughter] let's go with his that makes you richer [Laughter] the top females are much easier to keep track of 13 that will be mated with the best males at the end of the month outside of the corral bouquets our Packers are given free range he owns more than 3000 animals spread out over 3,000 hectares so there's no overcrowding or over grazing on this ranch we drive higher up into the mountains to egos farmhouse his wife and young children live in a town a few hours away but ago spends much of his time up here he may be a successful breeder but he lives without running water electricity or any home comforts jugo doesn't come from a herding background his father was a trader who bought alpaca fleeces from Highland villages as a boy who go traveled with him and began to dream of one day having a herd of his own he realized early on that quality of fiber is everything and he now goes to extreme lengths to get it ooh go puts plastic capes on his top alpacas to protect their fiber from the elements this one doesn't seem very happy with its new look making a fuss about something you know everything's a drama and I'm gonna scream the place down until someone either leaves me alone or or does what I want when they get really angry they don't just sit down it's like having a tantrum it's not bad the pretty nice coat on you quiet Lugo's animals maybe some of the best in southern Peru but amazingly even they cannot match the quality of fiber that has been found in Inca burial sites [Music] there's some bad weather blowing in so I head for my sleeping bag and an early night Cuoco thought it would snow last night so he moved the baby alpacas and their mums into a specially built nursery but shelters not the only thing he gives them bueno para para mantener temperatura it is not a 40g candy [Music] iodine stops her navel getting infected and she'll also be vaccinated against disease and parasites newborns are very vulnerable to the cold so who goes giving this one some extra protection parental attention the see Wally Tokyo Salman baby inchaallah cata as many as six out of ten babies don't make it who goes care and attention means half as many died here even though conditions are harsher his herd is growing and their fleeces are becoming famous throughout southern Peru it's clear from meeting Hugo that he has his sights set high but what's also clear is the great gap between what Hugo is doing and what Tomas and Augustine are able to do buco and Augustine may be worlds apart but their fiber ends up in the same place Peru's processing factories and that's where I'm going now strategically located between the herders in the mountains and the coastal ports arequipa is the world capital of the alpaca industry the streets are lined with shops selling alpaca clothing and the industrial parks are busy seven days a week turning our Packer fiber into products for global export the Mitchell corporation is the largest alpaca processor in the world every year up to five million tons of fiber is driven down to this warehouse from collection centers in the Andes each of these bags are what we call in Spanish kintel but it means a hundred pounds right forty-six point two kilos CEO Derek Mitchell is taking me on a whistle-stop tour to show me how this raw material is transformed into top-quality yarns and textiles impurities tangled fibers and coarse hairs are removed at every stage that would be good that would be good covering an area of about 15 football pitches it's a huge operation this is the beginning of the spinning Factory the machines are mimicking what people have been doing by hand for thousands of years by stretching yarns are woven into textiles and textiles are then sewn into garments that's called the chew yo that's a Peruvian to you right it's kind of amazing that up in China culture you've got somebody sharing their alpaca with a kitchen knife exactly and it could end up looking like this that's right yeah yeah Peru makes the majority of the world's alpaca products and a large proportion goes to China being such a big consumer it's no surprise that China wants to start producing its own alpaca fiber we've been hearing a lot that already there are some alpacas in China and that's something that does worry us as a business if they were to grow in animals big time we could start winding down somehow in Peru as well as China Australia New Zealand and the USA have their own top-quality herds Peru's position as the number-one alpaca producer is by no means certain we're back where we started the sorting room these ladies grade all the fiber that passes through the warehouse using skills handed down from generation to generation this is really the kind of key process absolutely if it wasn't for these ladies all your packet would be mixed into one single lot and shipped out as an average fight right the women's sort the fiber according to its thickness which is measured in millionths of a metre or microns the finest fiber will be made into clothing the coarsest into carpets the whole basis of it is here see if this ladies would not know how to sort there's just no machine that could even come close to it is the highest okay I've got a little test for you this is some of the fiber Augustine shared up in Chawla culture is it worth anything to a processor like Derrick it's born I put the book on Rossum we win there'll be parts which are between 20 and 22 microns let's see so that's pretty good quality 22 microns is four times finer than a human hair it's not top of the range but it's certainly good enough for a scarf or a shawl I sort of expected you to rubbish this fiber so what you're telling me is that the traditional herders still produce product that you can use and has a value oh yes absolutely and would you be able to say roughly the percentage of fiber that you process that comes from the communities compared to the kind of you know the breeders I mean but easily it would be it would be 95 percent to 5 percent probably so you need communities like we need their favor absolutely so we would like them to have a better fiber that's the only thing to encourage herders to improve their animals Derek has started buying directly from them cutting out middlemen and paying a premium for fine fiber trying to do that to try and get as much penetration between the farmer and the industry to make sure that we give the right messages that they receive the right messages and well hopefully with that keep the farming of animals going because if they don't we're out all things every single person who works such as is gone absolutely it's such a relief to be told that Augustine's fiber has a value but I now realize that the stakes are even higher than I'd imagined and the whole of Peru's alpaca industry is on a knife edge but there is hope before I leave Peru Derek wants me to visit Malky knee ranch the Mitchell company's alpaca Research Center manager moyses esperen has one objective to improve Peru's alpaca herd as quickly as possible breeding is therefore top of the agenda the females that Moses said are ready for breeding of importance of their own private little boudoirs and the alpacas that are running around me now are all males and they've got numbers on that will correspond to their females and so number 10 here is looking for his number 10 female I've found intense girlfriend and I'm going to try and get him to go there okay the noise an alpaca male makes during mating is known as oddly apparently it encourages the female to ovulate helping to ensure conception moisés wants to produce babies with the finest fiber but this system will also help him to weed out males that don't meet the mark those Emrys it's a supervolcano sandal wound sistema anti conceptive no key reservations or chains are selling premium [Music] there are almost 4,000 our packers here but each animal is carefully monitored and daily reports are fed into a database Moises is following in the footsteps of the Incas who's highly organized large-scale herding system was fundamental to their success but there's one thing Moises has access to which the Incas did not the latest breeding techniques artificial insemination enables the genes of the very best animals to be passed on with clinical efficiency it's been used commercially in sheep and other livestock for many years but it's still being tried out with alpacas the first step is to see whether the potential mothers are ready to breed waiting patiently outside is a male alpaca now he's castrated so he can't get any of these females pregnant but what he can do is get them all aroused up and excited if the female accepts the males advances she's injected with a hormone to make sure she of you-let's if she refuses him she'll go back into the herd professor will IVA Vanko is a world-renowned animal reproduction expert he spent much of his career working with sheep and he's now trying to perfect the technique without hackers we just used him for the very short space enough to do the stimulation and then has to go to another female and so on so he never ejaculated sexually the mothers are ready now for the fathers once again there's very little romance involved but the Packers will take up to 20 minutes completely so we use the blanket the male will be fooled into thinking he's inside a female and will ejaculate into a glass tube one of martinis finest males is introduced to some receptive females the switch is made at the crucial moment weight and weight the now familiar sound of hogging reverberates around the room [Music] after so much effort I have to say the result is a bit of an anti-climax is that it you wait a long time for not very much the semen is diluted to make it go further in this way a top male can father many more babies in a year than by natural mating the first female is blindfolded in a rather rudimentary way to stop her panicking and spitting during the insemination there is something very discomforting I suppose about seeing an alpaca with a plastic bag on its head it's one of those things you know you sort of way up discomfort to an animal certainly not cruelty but discomfort but if this is going to make the difference to the species and to the future of the alpaca fiber industry then perhaps it's a short bit of discomfort that will have much longer-term benefits Willy is trying out two ways of insemination this is the simplest where the semen is squirted into her cervix using well something rather like a turkey baster the next method is more complicated so this animal has been given a local anaesthetic the semen is injected directly into her uterus the team will compare the effectiveness of each procedure it really is early days the last time they tried this they only had a 25 percent success rate moisés is convinced that once perfected this will eventually help to save alpaca herding in Peru's poorest villages here the semen concentrate oh uh yeah las comunidades okay so I look at simplifying las otras a species though Augustine couldn't afford a breeding male he could afford the semen from one but the very best alpacas can fetch tens of thousands of pounds on the global market and I find it hard to believe that all of this is being done only for the good of Peru now kini is a business it's funded by a business it has to make money do you really think this can be a reality place a mutual está interesado vez por que si seven officials prepare low product or the alpacas tambien Hindus receive an official no estamos hacer con Domas like o el producto the Mitchell corporation is not financing Malkina out of the goodness of its heart it needs algis teen and the tens of thousands of small herders like him to thrive not fail but what about Augustine's biggest problem the lack of good pasture moyses has been working on that too this field has been planted with a mix of special grass and alfalfa a fast-growing plant this field can support 15 times as many alpacas as normal pasture though it costs 30 pounds a year to plant it would transform the fortunes of Augustine and other small herders alfalfa is particularly good for pregnant and nursing mothers we seem to have walked into a mini baby boom [Music] our torment estamos buscando no anomalies alpacas que produce con fira mas FINA Kalani por cake Ramos que podemos lograr anomalies massino's Ennis alpacas porque en los restos archaeological epoca los incas encontramos gran cantidad de fée Rafina a gnostic Eidos un poco tenemos que enter a recupera technology ancestral though I still find it incredible that no one in Peru has been able to match the inca herders I get the feeling it's only a matter of time before moyses surpasses even their achievements mal kini is an impressive set up but can it improve things quickly enough to help families like Augustine's you know it's clear that Peru has the knowledge has the expertise and has the animals to continue to be the major player in the alpaca industry throughout the world but I think Peru needs Augustin and de Mesilla to be productive it doesn't need its cities to swell anymore it needs the high Andes to be able to participate in a real and tangible way in a industry that they are rightly and should be proud of as Peru fights to preserve the future of its alpaca industry I hope it manages to keep hold of some of its traditions preserving the best of its old ways while embracing much-needed new ones too next time I traveled to the Australian outback and experienced shepherding on an epic scale and I see the science of herding being taken to a whole new level I just made a sheep [Music]

Channel: BBC Documentary

Views: 1,016,154

Rating: 4.8494086 out of 5

Keywords: bbc documentary, documentary bbc, bbc

Id: qB7uP28Ep6Q

Length: 51min 55sec (3115 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020