Seeing the north coast of Peru for the first time, you would be hard-pressed to believe it’s one of the driest deserts in the world. Parts of the region receive less than an inch of rain in an entire year. Yet, water and greenery are everywhere. This is the nation’s agro-industrial heartland, and, thanks to irrigation canals, almost every inch of the floodplain is blanketed in lucrative export crops, such as sugarcane, asparagus and blueberries. However, the apparent success of this system masks...