Passion fruit growing in Peru
Practical Action
Yolanda Morales boasts about having gone to the school that was in the estate, remembering
that there were horses and tidy cultivated fields where she used to play with members of the
Perez Gallo family who were her contemporaries and spent their holidays there. She coined
the phrase that everyone that remembers the agrarian reform repeats: “they gave us all the
land but did not teach us how to develop it.” That is why there are so many neglected or
under-developed farms in Vilcahuaura today. That is also why her instinct and desire to
succeed are noteworthy.
That instinct prompted her to innovate. “Here we have always cultivated nothing more than
sugar cane and cotton, but one day it occurred to me that perhaps we could work with other
products, and then passion fruit appeared.” It was passion fruit that led her to Practical
Action.
Ready for consultation
Yolanda Morales has three children. A 35 year-old son, a 31 year-old daughter and another
27 year-old daughter. From an early age she instilled in them the desire to succeed that
prevented her from becoming “one more of the bunch” in Vilcahuaura. Her eldest son is a
prominent business administrator working in Lima and enjoying (or suffering from) the present
day modernity. It was his idea to grow passion fruit. “We set up this small plot”, said
Yolanda, pointing to a 100 metre plot that appears to be an extension of her large farm. “It
occurred to me to do something different here. One day my husband’s friend arrived with
some passion fruit juice which the children who worked here enjoyed very much, so it seemed
like a good idea.”
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