Recognition Comes Home to Papas
The UN Seed Awards celebrate a project to enhance to
marketability of Peruvian native papas - and so improve
potato farmers' livelihood.
The T'ikapapa initiative, which markets specially selected
and packed native Peruvian potatoes under the T'ikapapa
trademark, has been awarded the United Nations' prestigious
Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development Awards
(SEED Awards) for 2007. The initiative was one of five winning
projects selected from among 10 finalists first winnowed from 230
entries received from 70 countries.
| Together with members of the initiative, Dr. Pamela K.
Anderson, director general of the International Potato Center (CIP
by its Spanish abbreviation), received the award on behalf of the
project Innovation and Competitiveness of the Peruvian Potato
(INCOPA by its Spanish abbreviation ), from the United States
Ambassador to Peru Mr Curtis Struble at the National Potato Day
celebrations in Lima, Peru, 30 May 2007. Mr Struble was making the
award on behalf of the SEED organizers . The citation noted that
the T'ikapapa initiative was selected because it represents a
new way to link small-scale Andean farmers with new urban markets,
helps to improve local farmers' livelihoods, and utilizes
environmentally friendly technologies to conserve local
biodiversity. The method helps public and private groups form
partnerships at all the stages of the market chain from farmer to
consumer - from cultivation and harvesting to packaging and
marketing. |
Specialists of the CIP partnership program Papa Andina and the
INCOPA project, its strategic partner in Peru, commented in Lima
that the award is recognition of the enormous biodiversity
contained in the Peruvian native potato, which the entrepreneurs of
T'ikapapa knew how to assess. It also recognizes the
contribution of Andean farmers, who have developed and conserved
the varieties over the centuries.
T'ikapapa is one of several potato products brought to
market in recent years through the project, which is funded by the
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and coordinated by
CIP. Broadly, the project aims to revalue the Peruvian native
potato and reposition it in the national and international
market.
The UN's Seed Initiative is an international awards program
and learning tool designed to encourage local entrepreneurs,
communities, companies and others to join forces in partnerships
for sustainable development. Partners in the Seed Initiative
include the World Conservation Union; United Nations Environment
Programme; United Nations Development Programme; governments of the
United States of America, Germany, Netherlands, South Africa and
United Kingdom; and private sector partner Swiss Re. The Seed
Awards program publicly recognizes the contribution of innovative,
entrepreneurial partnerships to the achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation.
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