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Cusco, Peru and Rome, Itaoy
25 March 2008
With cereal prices soaring
worldwide, an international conference opens in Cusco, Peru
today on a crop that produces more food on less land than maize,
wheat or rice.
That crop, which some scientists are calling “the food of the
future,” is the potato. Grown in more than 100 countries, potato
is already an integral part of the global food system. It is the
world’s number one non-grain food commodity and world production
reached a record 320 million tonnes in 2007.
Potato consumption is expanding strongly in developing
countries, which now account for more than half of the global
harvest and where the potato’s ease of cultivation and high
energy content have made it a valuable cash crop for millions of
farmers.
The Cusco
conference -- a flagship event of the United Nations
International Year of the Potato, being celebrated in 2008 --
aims at tapping the potato’s potential to play an even stronger
role in agriculture, the economy and food security, especially
in the world’s poorest countries.
Potato’s prospects are bright. In Peru itself, food price
inflation has spurred government efforts to reduce costly wheat
imports by encouraging people to eat bread that includes potato
flour. In China, the world’s biggest potato producer (72 million
tonnes in 2007), agriculture experts have proposed that potato
become the major food crop on much of the country's arable land.
However, say the conference sponsors, the
International Potato Center
(CIP) and FAO, extending the
benefits of potato production depends on improvements in the
quality of planting material, farming systems that make more
sustainable use of natural resources, and potato varieties that
have reduced water needs, greater resistance to pests and
diseases, and resilience in the face of climate changes.
During the four-day conference, more than 90 of the world’s
leading authorities on the potato and on
research-for-development will share insights and recent research
results to develop strategies for increasing the productivity,
profitability and sustainability of potato-based systems.
They will address potato development challenges facing three
distinct economic typologies -- identified in the World Bank’s
World Development Report 2008 -- in developing countries.
The first is agriculture-based economies, mainly in sub-Saharan
Africa, where the poor are concentrated in rural areas and
produce potato for home consumption first and then sale to local
markets. CIP and FAO say a priority for these economies is
research and technology sharing to support a “sustainable
productivity revolution” and to link producers to domestic and
regional commodity markets.
Different strategies are needed for the “transforming economies”
of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, where potato systems are
characterized by very small, intensively managed commercial
farms. A challenge for those countries is to sustainably manage
intensive systems, increasing productivity while minimizing
health and environmental risks.
In the urbanized economies typical of Latin America, Central
Asia and Eastern Europe, the challenge is to ensure the social
and environmental sustainability of potato-based systems and to
link small potato producers to the new food markets.
On the third day of the conference, participants will visit a 12
000 hectare "Potato Park" near Cusco, where farmer-researchers
have restored to production over 600 traditional Andean potato
varieties, providing plant breeders with the genetic building
blocks of future varieties.
One of the expected outputs of the conference has been dubbed
the “Cusco Challenge,” a year-long dialogue within the global
potato science community that will address issues and
opportunities in the future development of this essential crop. |
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