Global warming is making food production more unpredictable, but while world leaders argue about how to deal with the consequences of climate change, indigenous people in the Peruvian Andes have taken their communities’ food security into their own hands. Six Quechua communities have joined forces to create a Potato Park, in which more than 1,500 varieties are grown in a living gene bank, where they adapt to new weather conditions. Unlike in traditional gene banks, where the seeds are stored in isolation, here they are cultivated in the field. Thanks to ancestral knowledge and techniques, hundreds of lost varieties have been revived, and the Potato Park now grows the largest variety of potatoes in Peru – completely organically.
‘Agriculture only works if there is diversity. This is especially true in times of climate change when no-one knows what the future holds,’ says Alejandro Argumedo, director of the organization ANDES that assists the Potato Park. As a back-up system for the future, the Quechua have sent their seed collection to the ‘Noah’s Ark’ of the world’s most important plants: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway.
