LivinginPeru.com
Isabel Guerra

Thanks to a new $116 million global fund established this summer by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), Quechua Indians are being paid to maintain their rare potato varieties.
The Quechua people, who live in the high mountains of Peru, are one of 11 communities chosen around the world to work with a project which aims to maintain a reservoir of essential species for all our major food crops.
Having a broad variety of agricultural crops is essential for the future of agriculture, because different species of plants are often able to cope with widely differing environmental conditions and have a higher resistance to plagues.
The ITPGRFA has two major aims: to prevent the loss of underused crops and ensure the full diversity of common crop species is maintained.
(
Condensed from CNN)
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