“Opening our eyes” -Community seed banks at the heart of Peru’s Agrobiodiversity Zones

Andenes de Cuyocuyo, a zone bordering Peru’s lowland Amazon region and located 200 km north of Lake Titicaca, in the department of Puno, Peru. Its the first, out of 10, officially recognized Agrobiodiversity Zones (ABDZs). In this zone, farmers conserve 243 potato varieties, 33 of maize and 129 of indigenous tubers (Oca [Oxalis tuberosa], Mashua [Tropaeolum tuberosum] and Olluco [Ullucus tuberosus]). Here, one can find the remnants of  the widely extended agricultural terraces (andenes in Spanish) built by the Incas.

These impressive stone terraces, painstakingly carved out on the steep Andean Mountain slopes, are still used nowadays, but no longer to their full potential: the mid- to high altitude terraces are abandoned. The number of farming households is on the decline and the remaining households do not have enough labor to use all the terrace space.