Minka Fair Trade

The Peruvian camelidae is the specie that has more regulations in the world and in spite of this the coloured vicuñas and alpacas are in an accelerated process of extinction in the planet.

95% of the world’s population of alpacas – 3 500 000 heads – are in Peru. More than 200 000 families (1 000 000 people) are producers of camelidaes, 29% of them are poor and 54% survive in the Andes heights in extreme poverty.

Around 2 000 producers and manual transformers of the alpaca fiber have been supllying for 30 years the international market through MINKA FAIR TRADE.

The producers of camelidaes, as well as the majority of the indigenous population from the rural areas fo the Andes are experts in the manual transformation of the fiber of camelidaes. They are inheritors of the millenarian technologies of spinning and knitting. Nevertheless they are systematically unemployed and its survival is based on the incomes from the eventual, unfair, informal and underpaid activities they can do in their regions.

The peruvian ‘alpaqueros’ – alpaca breeders – are represented by MINKA FAIR TRADE, first Fair Trade Organisation in Perú and Latin America, constituted 30 years ago. Since 1981, we are members of the World Fair Trade Organization and were part of the Board of directors during two consecutive periods from 1991.