Artemio Burga farms 2.5 hectares of steeply sloping land in the village of Mangallpa, in the northern Peruvian Department of Cajamarca. His hillside farm is typical of those in his village: a patchwork of
garden-sized plots of potato, maize, cassava, sweet­potato, beans, sugar cane, cabbages, peas, carrots and a parsnip-like root crop called arracacha.

“Arracacha has always been around,” says Burga, 73. “Until recently, we grew it because our parents and grandparents grew it. We didn’t know anything about the different varieties, or how to get the highest yields. We never really thought much about it at all.”

This and several other root and tuber crops were a mainstay of ancient Andean civilizations. Developed over centuries by highland farmers, they have recently lost ground to more commercial crops, leading them to be dubbed ‘the lost crops of the Incas’.

Now, arracacha is at the heart of a three-country, multi-institutional effort to preserve the diversity of native crops while promoting community-level agro-industry in the Andes. As a result, the root crop is undergoing a double transformation. Not only is it being prepared for introduction into regional and national markets; it also is taking on a new importance among the people who grow and consume it. Subsistence farmers who never thought twice about arracacha are beginning to see it as a step on the path toward a better future.

“We’ll be planting another one-third of a hectare in the next few days,” confirms Burga’s 42-year-old son, Segundo, as he surveys a freshly plowed field on the farm he shares with his father. “If it’s as profitable as we hope it will be, we can start to think about sending one of our children to high school. Right now there is no way we can afford it.”

The project was conceived and organized by the Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion (CONDESAN), of which CIP is a founding member. The initiative is grounded on strategic alliances at the regional, national and local levels, permitting a concerted response to a complex set of conditions and challenges.

“This project covers the whole chain, from genetics, to agronomy, to engineering, to eco­­­­nomic development,” says project coordinator and CIP post-harvest production specialist Sonia Salas. “When you are dealing with issues as complicated as these, you can’t really separate research and development. In each place, you try to bring all the institutions together to make the system work in an integrated way.“

A regional model

“The arracacha project is an excellent model,” says CONDESAN’s Elias Mujica. “There are some   800,000 small-scale agro-indutrialists in the Andes, making everything from cheese and biscuits to honey and jam. The products may be different, but the pro­ducers’ needs are similar. They have to modernize production, to make high-quality products, to make consumers aware of the products, and to maintain genetic diversity. They also have to make sure that the bulk of the profits don’t go to middlemen.”

To do all that, Salas says, requires a level of organization that doesn’t generally exist in poor rural communities. “That’s why it is so important to include a wide range of actors — from scientists and development specialists to small-scale merchants and farmers. The idea is to empower producers and local institutions to take on these challenges themselves.”

Researchers and development institutions throughout the Andes are getting the message. When CONDESAN’s electronic information arm, InfoAndina, used the arracacha project as a model in a  regional  ‘electronic forum’ on rural agro-industry, more than 500 people in 21 countries  joined in the debate. One of the themes was the role of agro-industry in the conservation of bio­diversity. Historically, industry-oriented agriculture tends to displace genetically diverse traditional cropping systems with mono­cultures based on new, ‘improved’ crop varieties. This agro-industry project, however, is linked to a larger CIP project aimed at conserving and utilizing Andean biodiversity.

“Big factories demand regular inputs, which means they want genetic uniformity in their raw materials,” Salas explains. “But our hypothesis is that small-scale, rural agro-industry, which isn’t so highly mechanized, can actually enhance diversity. That should be especially true where the raw materials are little-known native crops like arracacha.”

“Equally important,” adds Salas, “is the fact that agro-industry generates added value, income and employment in rural areas. This makes it a powerful weapon in the war on poverty.”

Simple changes

In Ecuador, the arracacha project is centered in San José de Minas, about 90 km from Quito. In Bolivia, the work is being carried out in San Juan de La Miel, 100 km from La Paz. In both cases, fresh arracacha enjoys a small but established niche in nearby urban markets.

Farmers are working to identify and select desirable varieties, produce disease-free planting material, modernize their cultivation methods, and reduce post-harvest losses that often approach
40 percent. Communities are also establishing on-farm collections of arracacha — a vital step toward conserving the diversity of native varieties.

“Just by making a few simple changes in the way they manage the crop, farmers have been able to more than double their productivity,” reports Fausto Do Santos, an agronomist from The Brazilian
Agri­cultural Resesarch Agency (EMBRAPA) who was invited by CIP to work with producers at the project sites. Do Santos has shown farmers how to improve soil preparation, create seedbeds, produce better cuttings, and space plants more efficiently. Not only have yields increased dramatically; the plants have also begun to produce straighter, more uniform roots, a major advantage for shipping and handling.

The project also has sponsored food fairs to spur local culinary interest in the crop. Farmwomen have presented a variety of dishes to what has been, by all accounts, a highly approving public. Now  tourist hotels near the project site in Bolivia are offering arracacha specialties on their menus.

Almost market-ready

In Peru, the arracacha project goes one step further. There, farmers are making the same sorts of agronomic improvements as those in Ecuador and Bolivia. But they are also launching the commercial production of a local specialty called rallado de arracacha, a sweet sticky paste made from grated arracacha cooked in sugar cane syrup.

For generations, rallado has been prepared in small quantities in individual households, mainly for consumption as a special dessert during local festivities. Only a tiny fraction found its way to village markets, and even less made it as far as the closest urban centers. Rallado was typically packaged in a banana leaf without a label and the quality of the product was variable, to say the least.

Yet all indications are that rallado has tremendous market potential. Detailed surveys conducted by Salas’ team in Lima and the northern coastal city of Chiclayohave shown it to be highly appealing to urban consumers. Mothers have reported a serious interest in rallado for inclusion in their children’s school lunches. The dessertwas even received with enthusiasm in Paris, where it was introduced at a major international fair.

For farmers, this is excellent news. Processed rallado is easy to transport and has a shelf life of six months, compared to just a week for fresh arracacha.

A community corporation

Working with a Peruvian NGO, Farmer Schools for Education and Health (ESCAES), Salas and her colleagues have helped families from two villages organize a legally recognized, community-owned business to produce and market rallado. The villagers have built a model processing plant in Sucse, a district of Sócota, Cajamarca.

“The idea of the plant is to improve the last steps of the process to meet exacting sanitary standards and satisfy consumer preferences,” says Salas. Producers are learning about quality control, packaging, and marketing. The hope, Salas says, is that they can take what they learn here and apply it to other activities. One of their most important lessons is that there are benefits in working together.

“The producers are changing their mentality,” Salas observes. “People who thought only as individuals are now thinking of how they can join forces to reach bigger and better markets.”

“This project is more than just the logical outcome of all the research that has been done by CIP and others on arracacha; it is a fundamental part of that research,” says Gilberto Coronado, coordinator of the local office of ESCAES. “Commercialization is a crucial part of the chain of production.”

Early results have been encouraging. Market prices for rallado have doubled since the project began, thanks to improved quality and interest. Local producers are optimistic that more good things are coming.

“This is a change for us,” says Roberto Castillo, a 37-year-old owner-member of the rallado company, “My wife and I have been talking for a long time about how to improve things for our two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. To get ahead with our farming, we’d need more land and more money for inputs. Unfortunately, we don’t have more land or money. With the rallado, we can take advantage of what we already have.”

—reported by Jon Miller