opinion and background CIP organises the Hero for Life campaign that time. With the arrival of the Europeans in South America, the distribution of the potato over the entire world followed. First to feed the soldiers on the battle fields and then to help the conquerors recover. Moreover, the potato provided food during times of floods and drought, and it was and still is an excellent crop for places where land is expensive and there is little space. We owe those very first potato breeders and conservationists of the world a great deal. Thanks to them, the potato is currently the third most important food crop in the world. And what is even more remarkable is that we have only just started to find out about the treasure that the Tiawanaku left us. The potatoes, as they are now known, only still contain the smallest fraction of the genetic riches that the estimated five thousand indigenous Andes varieties harbour. Very little is left today of the enormous variety that these original inhabitants put into their potatoes. At this moment, 95 percent of all the commercially-grown potatoes in the world – having an annual economic value of 650 billion dollars – only contain a tiny range of 5 varieties. This is a very small basis indeed. If we want to keep them healthy, we will badly need those five thousand original varieties in the future, for they contain a wealth of information that may give answers both to alreadyknown questions and any future new ones. Why does the world need the potato so much? ‘Despite the fact that there is more than enough food in the world for everyone, over one billion people still do not have enough food to lead an active and healthy life. Irregular distribution, climate change, water and fertiliser shortages, pollution, poor living and working conditions, wars and natural disasters are among the causes. The food crisis of a few years ago and the current imminent shortages warn us that our global food supply is rather fragile. It is therefore time to learn from the original keepers of the potato who – thousands of years ago – already knew that they had to be prepared for every possible change in the food situation.’ What can the Roots for Life Foundation contribute? ‘The Roots for Life Foundation was founded with the primary aim to preserve the biodiversity of both potatoes and sweet potatoes. The reason why precisely these two crops were chosen has to do with the fact that, in our opinion, these are the two most important crops for preserving the food supply in the world. Over the past 150 years, a handful of researchers and scientists have attempted to map out the diversity of the wild potato in the most remote areas in the Andes. They walked the mountain plateaus and valleys braving freezingcold nights and burning-hot sun during the day, to collect all the data about all these varieties that not only grew naturally but had also been developed by the ancient inhabitants. The largest collection of all these gathered potato varieties is stored at the Centre International de la Papa, usually abbreviated to CIP. This international centre for the potato was established in 1971 and its headquarters is located in the Peruvian capital of Lima. Why did you start your campaign this year? ‘2010 is International Biodiversity Year. To participate in this, we started the first fund raising campaign for the Roots for Life Foundation in September, which aims to preserve for the future the 4235 potato varieties stored in our gene bank. For example, what we need for storing the genes longer and better is new storage space. This is important because the genetic biodiversity of the ancient potato varieties have in them the answers that we will desperately need later to continue to preserve one of the most important food crops for the world’s population. We already know now that this is not going to be an easy task because of various factors such as changing climate, decrease of good soil, availability of water and the increasing need to use land for the cultivation of bio-energy crops We have called our fund raising campaign Hero for Life. Each donor of € 5,000, which is the amount necessary to preserve one variety for eternity, is called a Hero. It is our aim to find 4235 Heroes.’ How do you plan to announce your campaign to the world? ‘To bring the campaign to the attention of the world, we have created the www.rootsforlife.org website, which was launched on 1 October. In February 2011, in the Norwegian Svallbard on the island of Spitsbergen, we intend to present to the world all the donors who register as a Hero during the Heroes for Life event. Our organisation has intentionally opted for Svallbard because it harbours the famous Global Seed Vault, the underground storage space for the world gene bank of seeds. All heroes will also receive a certificate and an award that underlines their commitment to the future of humanity. The shamans in the cold highlands of the Andes still thank Mother Earth for the potato every day. They have not forgotten how much we owe this nutritious tuber and its enormous biodiversity. When you realise what the original inhabitants of the Andes have made of the potato, then we owe it to them to further invest in the future of this crop. We hope that many in the potato world, including the readers of this magazine, will wish to register as a Hero for Life.’ ● Jaap Delleman Potato World 2010 • number 4 7 Pagina 6

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