Stop, Collaborate and Listen: Saving the World, One Potato at a Time?

I need collaborators. I need photographers and professional chefs and nutritionists who want to help me improve the quality of life for Andean natives and residents of "developed" nations alike. I am embarking upon a new project that has life, has energy, has devoured carbohydrates and aphrodisiacs that my dissertation research has, well, at least temporarily sidestepped. But there's one caveat: you'll need to come to the high Andes.

L and I went on a voyage today, after she dizzily washed her feet. I have been planning said voyage for at least a month, working from the States to set appointments and earn respect and special privileges to individually tour the facilities of a very special potato-protecting institution.

We hailed a cab, and after I negotiated the price from San Isidro, I realized it was going to be a long drive. We were going to be late. I tried to call Viviana, my connection at the potato-protection institution, but my 1999 Nokia phone ran out of saldo as soon as she said " 'Alo?" Anal Virgo that I am, I began to stress hard, and then I let it go into the universe, evoking saints and gods and what-have-yous. Step One: I have no control.

Lima traffic is like L.A. traffic but way more insane, way more diesel fumy, and way louder. Christ, but this city is loud.

We got to La Molina at 9:42 and I found a secret Lima. There is in this city a National Agricultural University (here? Why?), and, nestled behind it like a tuber, the C.I.P.

I might be a post-doctoral fellow, or affiliate at the C.I.P. The C.I.P. is the International Potato Center, whose mission it is to:

"reduce poverty and achieve food security on a sustained basis in developing countries through scientific research and related activities on potato, sweetpotato, and other root and tuber crops and on the improved management of natural resources in the Andes and other mountain areas."

International Center for Potatoes

Carlos showed L and I around, speaking in his Oxford-educated accent about potatoes, potatoes, and some other potatoes. He discussed the health benefits, the origins, the uses of the crop, and the problems indigenous Andean people have in maintaining their intellectual and land rights, as well as preserving the ancestral varieties of potatoes that their grandparents knew. He showed us in vitro potatoes, potatoes in gardens, plastic-covered potatoes boldly fighting viral infections (it evoked for me memories of the scary parts of "E.T."). 

I love potatoes and my heart is in the Andes (and L.A. and Prescott and sometimes Lima and Tucson and and and and) ... I want to help.

My contribution is to generate an ethnographic cookbook of broad interest, delineating all the wonderful creencias (beliefs, folklores) and recipes related to approximately 35 of the 2300 varieties of Peruvian potatoes and other tubers. I will provide recipes for each tuber (for they each taste different, and all the varieties I have had are really delicious roasted with sea salt and olive oil), their nutritional content (more than 50% higher protein content than our potatoes'), and, most interestingly to me, the beliefs and sayings that surround each variety. For example, in Ancash, the north-central Peruvain state where I conducted my masters research, native people say that "life without chuñyu (an important potato soup) is like life without love."

A beautiful book like this will seduce norteamericanos to buy new varieties of potatoes; they are organic, they are lovely, they are purple and yellow and white and chemical-free. In order that we can be legally export them to Europe, Japan, Canada, the EE.UU., et cetera, we must freeze-dry them, but that is a traditional way to prepare them anyway, and they are easily restored to plumpness (though never juiciness per se).

Thus the people of the Andes will see an increase in income (they are incredibly impoverished); their varieties of potatoes will be maintained (the CIP does this in their important labs, but the Andean people are proud of their food heritage and would like to do it themselves as well); and consumers of these newly imported crops will realize well documented health benefits. 

We need:

1. help starting a company or NGO to start the freeze-dry process so we can export the new varieties of potatoes

2. a photographer to illustrate the book

3. a nutritionist willing to help me determine the content of the recipes (potato nutrition is well documented)

4. a chef to help design the recipes (and/or replicate the indigenous ways of cooking the potatoes)

5. a layout artist

6. a publisher

I will conduct all the research, do the writing, find the funding. The CIP will sponsor us and give us office space, scientific/genetic knowledge and library access at their pretty facilities in Lima, ensure that profits are properly disseminated, and ensure that the freeze-dry process is well maintained throughout its lifespan.

Who wants to come to Peru, for real? 2012?