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Potatoes were born in Peru, and they were essential to the Incan empire. Farmers grow blue, purple, yellow and brown potatoes, some as large as an orange, some as small as a walnut. But, in many ways, Peruvian farmers and their tubers have always been under siege. When Spanish conquistadors muscled their way into the region, they coerced natives to grow European crops like barley, beans and wheat. And in the process, some potato diversity was lost.
Many generations later, the modern industrial age revealed another sort of conquistador – the government, which offered Peruvian farmers a more “progressive” type of potatoes that relies on pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers. But the farmers declined. Good thing, because the newest scourge for these mountainside potato villages is climate-induced blight, which can be devastating to farmers who switch to a monoculture.
In the past 40 years, farmers have seen the Andean mountains warm so much that glaciers are disappearing permanently. The new climate has encouraged plant disease and, in particular, “Late Blight” which caused the Irish Potato famine of the1800s. Farmers have moved up into the mountains seeking the right potato environment. Some farmers are experimenting with crops to find out which potatoes can handle the new climate trend. Many Andean villages keep large collections of seeds, and there's a potato gene bank in Lima that has socked away thousands of varieties.
Source: NPR
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