A survey was conducted on the main activities and profit-generating businesses of seven agricultural associations based in the Ecuadorian Andes region. The key resources of these associations are as follows: Virgen del Volcán de Lloa: high-quality organic products include barley, wheat, and quinoa from San Antonio de Valencia, which also boasts good genetic resources of cattle for breeding and association-owned land; Agropapa: native potato varieties and a chip processing facility; Asoagroquero: a store selling agricultural supplies, including pesticides, to local farmers; Mushuk Yuyay: production of flour made from quinoa, lupine, barley, wheat, faba bean, and pea; Corpopuruwa: certified seed production of Andean crops under the association’s own brand; Asorprosariv: uniquely devised grain-based beverages and cookies. This study presents the cases of farmers’ associations in the Ecuadorian Andes region that add value to agricultural products and engage in various profit-generating businesses by producing and selling high-quality agricultural products utilizing local native crops.

This study examined planting seasons, crop rotation, and seed utilization across nine Andean p rovinces i n Ecuador: Carchi, I mbabura, Pichincha, C otopaxi, T ungurahua, C himborazo, Cañar, Azuay, and Loja. A total of 67 farms, representing 60.9% of those surveyed, employed legumes such as peas, beans, broad beans, lupins, and green beans to enhance soil fertility through rotation or intercropping. Among the 110 farms surveyed, 59 (53.6%) implemented a combined crop rotation scheme (including both pastures-to-crop and crop-to-crop rotations), 27 (24.5%) utilized a crop-to-crop rotation, and 18 (16.4%) focused solely on pastures-to-crop rotation. High-quality or certified seeds developed by the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIAP) were used in 58 fields (19% of the surveyed fields), while the remaining 81% relied on self-saved seeds. These findings indicate that family farming in the Ecuadorian Andes is increasingly adopting sustainable agricultural practices that are resilient to climate change, thereby promoting biodiversity through the use of locally adapted agricultural resources.

This paper examines the variation of the intervocalic /b, d, g/ in the Spanish spoken in one of the Andean Spanish varieties. One of the regional phonological features that characterize the Andean Spanish is the use of occlusive [b, d, g] in intervocalic positions where other standard varieties would favor approximate variants [ß, ð, ɣ]. This research provides the first quantitative study on the linguistic and extra-linguistic factors influencing the use of [b, d, g] in Andean Spanish. A total of 4,080 tokens from 24 speakers in the Tupe district were analyzed via multivariate statistical analysis with Goldvarb X. The results show that the most important extra-linguistic factors are speakers’ gender and age, with old female speakers producing significantly more occlusive [b, d, g] than other speakers. The results also indicate that the speakers are standardizing their use of /b, d, g/ but its process is quite different between the male and female speakers.