Global warming and climate change are becoming facts of life.
Their impacts are wide and varied.
For rural or poor communities, the effects can be devastating. Unpredictable weather can make agriculture, the lifeblood of some communities, difficult or even unsustainable.
It can force them to change centuries of tradition – just to survive.
But in Peru, six communities from an ancient Incan town have found there is safety and profitability in numbers. This week, Heather-Lynn’s Habitat hears how they are revolutionising potato cultivation and production.
WHEN BARBADIANS think of potatoes, we think English, Irish or the varieties of our sweet potatoes.
But picture 1 436 varieties in every colour of the rainbow, in every shape, size and texture, grown in 12 000 hectares using centuries-old Peruvian techniques.
This is the innovative project of six Andean mountain communities which have pooled their land resources to establish a potato park in Pisaq, Cusco, one of the many mountain communities in the South American country.
It is about how the communities, which have been farming potatoes before the Spanish conquest of their lands, are dealing with climate change and ensuring the sustainability of their root crops.
International coordinator of the Quechua-Aymara Association for Sustainable Communities and Indigenous Peoples’ Biodiversity Network, Alejandro Augumedo, was more than willing to share the group’s success.
He spoke of how the varieties of potatoes had jumped by 127 per cent from the figures in 2004 to the over 1 400 varieties of today.
But just in case, in this era of climate change, the farmers have sent thousands of potato seeds for storage to the Norwegian Svalbard Seed Bank as a means of ensuring the future of their tubers.
“This is the only community in the world to send their seeds just in case we might lose it,” he said matter of factly. “The chances are very soon we won’t be able to grow the ttalaca (a long banana shaped variety of potato).”
But until that time comes, Augumedo said the communities have developed a collective trademark to be used by all the potato-growing farmers in the potato park and are also diversifying their products from chips to shampoos, soaps and even chocolate.
Then there are the eco-tourism spin-offs, where the collective is working with university students to study climate change adaptation, and tourism officials. And obviously, there are culinary partnerships just waiting to be forged with restaurants “dedicated to the potato”.
“Adaptation also means sustainable development,” Augumedo said. “It’s not just conserving for the sake of conserving or adapting or doing research to adapt for the sake of creating knowledge. If you don’t create an economy that the community can see the importance of keeping these resources, then there is no chance that they will continue.”
One of the benefits, Augumedo went on to say, had not only been the sharing of wealth among what were considered to be some of the poorest rural mountain communities in Peru, but the sharing of information on how each community dealt with the effects of climate change.
“The information they share is very critical to let them know they are not alone,” he noted.
The entire project has been done on donations from American and European foundations. Not a cent has come from the local government.
“The investment was not much; [it was] more like donations particularly to infrastructure, the restaurant and gene bank, the greenhouses and welcome centre,” he explained.
“We don’t get anything from local government to keep independence. In that way there is more autonomy in the communities.”
