The Tungurahua and Sangay Volcanoes    (Ecuador)

Our visits to farms around the Taal and Mayon volcanoes in the Philippines brought us valuable information about how farms exposed to the “same” threat – tephra fall after a volcanic eruption – in a given country and similar climate might not be subject to the same challenges. We saw that the environment, such as government policies, played an important role into how the natural hazard would translate into harmful impacts for farms. We also learned that the way farmers conducted their productions, as well as the types of productions themselves, could shape the severity of a tephra fall’s impact on the farm. 

While this information is already a great step forward into understanding farm vulnerability to tephra fall, we also needed to gather more data, this time from another country and under different climatic conditions. Our question was, would we see the same patterns is we studied two other volcanoes elsewhere? Would the population around one volcano mirror one of those we already interviewed? Most likely not, but what differences could we pinpoint, and how would those differences feed our knowledge?

To that end, we conducted an eighteen-days mission in Ecuador, conducting semi-structured interviews in ten farms around two volcanoes, the Tungurahua and the Sangay. Those interviews were conducted with the help of the Ecuadorian Instituto Geofisico. The mission took place for September 1st, 2023, to September 17th. 

The Tungurahua volcano is situated in the Cordillera Real and reaches an altitude of 5020 meters with a diameter of 16 km. Considered one of Ecuador’s most active volcanoes of the past decades, it awoke in November 2002 and has been in constant eruption since. The Tungurahua province is at the centre of Ecuador and hosts over half a million people, with around 43% of the population in rural areas. The Instituto Geofisico selected five farms in a 8.5 km radius around the volcano where our interviews took place. 

The Sangay volcano, located in the Chimborazo province of Ecuador and culminating at 5286 meters, is also one of the most active volcanoes of the Andine region and has been erupting since May 2019. The lands used for agriculture reach up to 4650 meters, where the climatic conditions only allow for livestock raising because of vegetation restrictions. The Instituto Geofisico selected five farms in a 50 km radius around the volcano where our interviews took place. Indeed, the volcano is located in a national park, and the closest town is roughly 40 km away. 

All the farms we interviewed combined crop production and livestock raising, potatoes and Guinea pigs being the most common respectively. The surface areas ranged from 5 to 20 for the Tungurahua region, and 3 to 16 ha for the farms around Sangay, with pastureland reaching up to two thirds of the bigger farms’ surface, for larger livestock. Unlike what we witnessed in the Philippines, the use of manure as fertilizer is commonplace here, and one of the farms also used crop residue to that effect. The farms’ productions were used for family consumption as well as intended for trade, but while some farms sold a portion of everything they produced, one only sold livestock, keeping the crops for the family alone. 

We learned that the farmer’s view of the volcanoes, and particularly tephra fall, varied greatly. Some, in areas less affected, considered that tephra was not a particular issue, sometimes even considering it good for the crops, much like a natural fertilizer. Others were quite vocal about tephra destroying everything, crops and livestock alike, causing them much distress and financial hardship. Finally, in between those extremes, we also encountered farmers who acknowledged that while tephra vas very detrimental to farm productions at the time of eruption, it later became good for the plants, for the following crop cycles. 

Unlike what we encountered in the Philippines, plastic tarp greenhouses were more widely spread in Ecuador, sheltering crop production from the rain and the cold, and to some extent, from tephra fall. However, it is important to note that if the tephra caused the greenhouse to collapse on itself, the damage caused to what was inside could be more severe than if the crop had been directly exposed to the tephra itself. We also surveyed a farm which raised battery chickens, necessarily kept inside of a building and therefore less exposed to the tephra than in the Filipino farms where the chickens were, at most, kept in cages. 

What was most striking in comparison with our fieldwork in the Philippines was the implications of Ecuadorian climate on agricultural production. Around the Tungurahua especially, where temperatures and rainfall are quite stable, and where the duration of the day in unequivocally the same all year round, there was no need for a specific production calendar. Where in the Philippines, specific crops had to be planted at specific times in order to allow the plant to reach maturation, this requirement for a timeline was not in place here. In terms of farm vulnerability to tephra fall, we see an intriguing potential for resilience here. Indeed, if a crop is destroyed by tephra fall and the farmer needs to wait months before that crop can be planted again, the implications surely will not be the same as if the new production cycle can be started right away. On the other hand, crops which produce fruit all year round and on which the farmer relies for income and food every month, if destroyed, might cause distress to the household’s usual inner workings. Further investigation of this aspect is therefore quite an interesting prospect. 

This research avenue might also give us insight into the importance of the timing of an eruption, when considering ancient societies exposed to tephra fall. Indeed, if the civilization thrived into seasonal climate, for instance Minoan Crete, or one like Ecuador, such as Mayans, the implications of the month during which the eruption occurred will likely not be the same. 

Finally, it is important to note that, resonating with the population close to the Mayon volcano, Philippines, who feared typhoons more than the volcano itself, we learned that the farmers in Ecuador had other concerns than the volcano as well. For instance, the growing threat of cattle thieves in some regions brought farmers to organize neighbourhood watches, showing solidarity in patrolling in turns to ensure the safety of the farms’ assets. A more widespread concern is that of wild dogs roaming everywhere and entering farm buildings, sometimes quite far from the farmer’s house, to kill small livestock like chickens and guinea pigs, prompting the need for many watchdogs. This underlines the fact that while studying the impact of volcanic hazard on agriculture is important, it is not the only danger that rural societies face, even when it seems to be the loudest.