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Zach Glassett

Dr. Smith

Span 4510

10/12/15

Lord of the Potato

For centuries, Andean farmers have cultivated over 3,000 varieties of potato, but we always eat the same kinds. If

the potatoes grown in Peru are the tastiest, healthiest, and can save us from hunger in extreme climates, then why

do we only talk about French fries?

Julio Hancco is an Andean farmer that grows 300 varieties of potato and recognizes each

one by name. ‘The one that makes your daughter-in-law cry’, ‘the little pig poop’, ‘cow horn’,

‘mended old hat’, ‘hard sandal’, ‘pig testicle’, ‘guinea pig fetus’, ‘baby food for weaning’. They

aren’t scientific names; they are names chosen by the farmers to classify the potatoes by their

appearance, flavor, character, and relation to everything else. Almost all of the varieties of potato

that Hancco produces, at higher than 13,000 feet above sea level in Cuzco, already have their

names. But sometimes there is a new potato planted, or maybe the potato has lost its identity

over time, and the Lord of Potatoes can name it. The “puka Ambrosio” – “puka” is Quechua1 for

red – a variety of potato grown only in his fields, Hancco gave it the name as homage to one of

his nephews that fell off a bridge and died. Ambrosio Huahuasonqo was a friendly farmer, docile

like mashed potatoes, that followed his uncle wherever he went and won people over with his

jokes. They said that his Quechua last-name defined his character: Huahuasonqo means “child at

heart.” After his death, Hancco chose his Greek name to give the potato a destiny: Ambrosio

1 Quechua – a Native American language family, derived from a common linguistic ancestor. Spoken mainly in the Highlands of Bolivia and Peru, there are over 6 million speakers today.

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means immortal. The namesake potato is long, soft, has a light sweetness, with yellow flesh and

a red ring in the center: it is one of Hancco’s favorites, a farmer that only speaks Quechua and

has a Latin name – Julio means “of strong roots.”

One spring afternoon in 2014, in his house shortly after planting, Julio Hancco raises a

large hand, rough like tree bark, and signals to a plate on the table.

“A potato is like a son,” he says. Inside Hancco’s house –a room built out of rock without

windows, with an old table and stove – it’s dark enough that one cannot see his face to know if

he says it smiling or with a certain hint of solemnity. His wife, seated on a stool over a dirt floor,

stirs a pot of soup on the stove. On the table, a bowl of Red Ambrosio potatoes grows cold. They

are delicious, but a large majority of Peruvians will never try them. We know that the potato was

born in Peru, and that the farmers in the Andes cultivate more than 3,000 varieties of potato, but

we know almost nothing else about them. We know where the iPhone is made, who the richest

man in the world is, the color of Mars’ surface, and the name of Lionel Messi’s son (Thiago and

Mateo), but we know very little about the foods that we eat daily. If the saying ‘you are what you

eat’ is true, then the majority of us don’t know who we are.

For those who go to any market in Peru, their biggest dilemma is choosing between white

or yellow potatoes. They can recognize potatoes from Huayro – brown with shades purple,

especially good in sauces –, get together with friends around “cocktail” potatoes – they are the

size of mushrooms –, or feel patriotic if they buy a bag of home-grown potatoes – produced at an

elevation of around 11,500 feet. But, like everyone else, they are citizens of the “French fry

world”; during 2014 in Peru, the producer of the most varieties of potatoes in the world, over

24,000 tons of pre-cooked potatoes were imported: the same kind used in fast food to make

French fries.

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When he looks towards the snow covered hill in front of his house, Julio Hancco slows

his gaze as some might do walking through the city when they pass a church; cross themselves

on the inside with an imperceptible reverence. Hancco is a 62 year old farmer that has been

called a keeper of knowledge, Guardian of biodiversity, and a star producer. He received the Ají

de Plata (The Silver Pepper) award in the gastronomic festival “Mistura,” and has welcomed

researchers from Italy, Japan, France, Belgium, Russia, the United States, and producers from

Bolivia and Ecuador that have traveled to his land in the farming community of Pampacorral to

learn how he is able to produce so many varieties of potato. Hancco lives at 14,000 feet above

sea level at the foot of the snow capped mountain Sawasiray, in a landscape of shades of yellow,

arid hills and giant rocks where European engineers can get to but automobiles and electricity

can’t. To get to his house, you have to follow a trail off the road and hike almost ¾ of a mile on

foot up a pine-covered hill: something that any foreigner would call climbing a mountain. People

that come to see it from the city get discouraged, run out of breath, and pant, then get nauseous

and dizzy from the lack of oxygen. Up here the blood runs slower and the wind blows harder. In

the summer, runoff water is so cold that it hurts to wash your face with it. In the winter,

temperatures drop to around 14° Fahrenheit, which will freeze skin in an hour. To get firewood,

Hancco has to walk a 5K, some 3.1 miles, to get somewhere trees can grow, chop them down,

and haul them back to his house with the help of his horse. To get propane gas, he has to walk

back to the paved highway and take a Kombi truck ( a VW bus made in the 60’s and 70’s) back

to Lares, a city some 12 miles away, where they also sometimes buy bread, rice, fruits,

vegetables; anything he can’t produce on his own land. The only thing that blooms at that

altitude, on the lands he inherited from his forefathers, is the potato.

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The potato is the first vegetable that NASA grew in space for its capacity to adapt to

distinct environments. It’s the most important and widespread non-cereal crop in the world; the

plant with the best yield per acre ratio in the world. It’s the buried treasure of the Andes that

saved Europe from hunger, the staple food for Napoleons army, the base of the ‘Tortilla

Española,’2 Italian Gnocchi, Jewish Knish, French puré, and the Russians primitive attempts at

vodka. It’s the delicacy that, in the 19th century, Thomas Jefferson served fried and cut in sticks

to his dinner guests that had been invited to the White House. It’s the root of the purple flower

Marie Antoinette wore in her hair as she strolled in the Gardens of Versailles. It’s the vegetable

that has dedicated to it 3 museums in Germany, 2 in Belgium, 2 in Canada, 2 in the U.S., and 1

in Denmark. The tuber that inspired one of Pablo Neruda’s odes – “A universal delicacy; don’t

wait for my song; because you are blind, deaf, and buried” – a song by James Brown – “Here I

am and I’m back again/I’m doing mashed potatoes.” – two paintings by Van Gogh – one of

them, called The Potato Eaters, features five peasant farmers eating potatoes around a square

table. Thousands of its seeds are saved with a thousand species of potato under the earth in a

mountain in the Norwegian arctic, to protect the resource of the potato against future national

disasters. It’s the crop that Julio Hancco treats like a son, but that his younger sons don’t want to

continue producing to avoid a life full of sacrifices in exchange for basic subsistence. Hancco

says that he would rather be alone, and that his 7 sons should live in the city where they can find

easier work that pays better. If he was the age of Hernán, his 29 year old second son (who is now

translating our conversation) the Lord of the Potato jokes that he would find a foreign girlfriend

and get out of the country.

One morning fifteen years ago, Julio Hancco woke up his son Hernán and told him to

carry a rock the size of a soccer ball from his house to the port of Calca; an hour and a half walk

2 A dish made of fried eggs with potatoes inside common in Spain and parts of South America.

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to the south. Hernán Hancco was 13 years old when he first accompanied his father to sell

potatoes in that city, the most important center of commerce in the region. To arrive at Calca by

seven in the morning they had to leave at 3 a.m. and walk for four hours. Hernán’s christening

consisted of carrying that rock until the halfway point. It was a test of resistance and acceptance

that the producers of the region repeated with their children. A tradition that no longer exists,

Hernán tells me later as he sells his last packet of Sumaj chips – potato chips made with home-

grown potatoes – in an organic produce fair that happens in Lima every Sunday. Julio’s second

son moved to the Peruvian capital almost a decade ago, when he was only 20 and had barely

graduated from high school. He arrived in Lima with 400 soles3 – about $130 US – in his pocket

and the decision to study accounting and English. He was never able to finish his studies because

his work consumed all his time, but his help selling the potatoes that his family produced in the

capital of Peru soon became fundamental. With Hernán Hancco in Lima, his father, mother, and

older brother Alberto avoid being charged by middle-men and only pay for transport of the

potatoes. Even with Hernán’s help, their profit is minimal. But it’s worse for the farmers who

have no one to help them.

“For that reason, farmers stop making potatoes,” he says, “to go do tourism.”

To do tourism, Hernán explains, is to offer oneself as a pack mule for the foreigners who

come to Cuzco to retrace the Road of the Inca. During the 3 or 4 days of hiking the path to the

base of Machu Picchu, the farmers carry the backpacks and gear of the tourists so that they can

climb more comfortably. Four days of travel carrying luggage yields them a wage of 200 soles

with another 200 soles in tips, around 130 dollars in total. For one bag of potatoes that weighs 26

½ pounds you can hope to make 20 soles, or roughly $6.50.

“And here it’s work all day, every day,” he says.

3 The Sol is the national currency in Peru, equivalent to about $0.31 US or 31 American cents.

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The dimples that potatoes have are called eyes, but you never see potato eyes. Potatoes

have thick eyebrows that cover them. They have belly buttons, freckles, and body shapes that are

round, thin, oblong, elliptical, and elongated. The most popular potato in northern Tenerife,

Spain, is the “pretty one with pink eyes.” The “black bit potato”, from Chile, has very abundant,

deep-set eyes and smashed eyebrows. The “Asterisk potato” from Holland has red skin, yellow

meat, and shallow eyes. Catalogues describe the world’s potatoes by their traits like you would a

person, but once upon a time they were wild, bitter, and inedible. Today it’s the civilized

Solanum tuberosom. Just like the tomato, eggplant, or peppers, it belongs to the Solanacae

family, called such because their leaves, stalks, fruit and buds contain solanin, a toxic substance

to protect itself from disease, insects and other predators. It’s well known that solanin at elevated

levels can kill a person, yet there aren’t ever reports of a killer potato in the news. Humans

domesticated the potato over 8,000 years ago in the Andes, when the Ice Age ended and Homo

sapiens walked the Earth testing agriculture, their new invention to get food. The inhabitants of

the Peruvian highlands were the first who learned to manipulate the potatoes so that they weren’t

toxic and to make them bigger and juicier. The potatoes returned the favor by conquering the

world.

One afternoon Michael Pollan, a writer, was in his garden planting a potato that he had

bought from a catalogue, and he asked himself if he really chose this potato or if the potato had

seduced him into planting it. Pollan, the author that changed the way we see our relationship with

our food, believes that ‘the invention of agriculture’ can be thought of as a way that plants found

to make us move and think for them. From the plant’s point of view, Pollan writes in The Botany

of Desire, human beings could be thought of as an instrument in the strategy of survival, not

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unlike the bumblebee that is attracted by a flower and whose function is to spread the pollen that

contains the genes of that flower.

One winter morning of 2014 on Hancco’s land, in front of a pile of llama manure, it’s

fairer to think of the Andean farmers as the co-workers of the potato, not its domesticator. Right

now, at 7:30 on a Saturday, Hancco, his two oldest sons, and his neighbor Julián Juarez, chew

coca leaves and drink moonshine before starting the day’s work: moving llama droppings to a

plot sown with potatoes ¾ of a mile from there to fertilize it. The llamas that wait by their side

already know the route. The men grab their shovels and fill sacks with fertilizer until they reach

waist high. They fill 39 sacks, sew the tops so that they don’t open, and tie each one down to the

back of a llama. They take the animals to the plot of land, unload them, spread the manure, fold

the sacks, gather the reins, and send the llamas back to the pile of droppings and follow them,

returning to the starting point. It takes two more trips and six more hours until five acres can be

fertilized by 4 men, 2 women, 3 dogs and 40 llamas. As the procession of fertilizer laden llamas

snakes through the mountain that has been sculpted by farmers, one would think it was a scene

from the Bible – one of the old movies from Semana Santa4. It’s a doubly false image; there are

neither llamas nor potatoes in the Bible. (For that reason, when Catherine the Great of Russia

ordered her subjects to grow potatoes, the more orthodox Catholics refused to do so.) But that

knowledge only breathes life into the fire of heresy; after watching how four farmers fertilize one

piece of a potato farm over six hours, one feels like he should kneel every time he eats one.

Julio Hancco descends from many generations of Hanccos that dwelt in this area of

Cuzco “from practically the creation of the world.” He inherited the land, the animals and over

60 varieties of potato from his parents. In the last 15 years, Hancco multiplied his inheritance and

4 Semana Santa, Spanish for Holy Week, is a traditional Latino holiday celebrated during the week leading up to Easter. Days are referred to as Holy __, Like Holy Friday.

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was able to produce over 300 varieties. His decision to rescue and cultivate more varieties was

an exercise in distress. Like almost all the farmers in the Andes, his productive lands are a sum

of irregular plots spread out at a certain altitude. The mastery of the Andean farmers can be

attributed to this difficulty: in an area governed by variables, every usable corner gets its quota of

moisture, sun, and wind. The land on one side of the mountain is always exposed to sun, and the

other side is constantly in the shade. A giant rock that blocks the rain from one piece of land

protects another from the wind. To survive in this territory, the farmers had to improve their

chances of feeding themselves. Distinct plants were sown in every field, and they trained

themselves in minute observation of every plant, tried and created thousands of varieties, and

became kings of genetic riches in hostile lands. It was a way of seeing the future: more potatoes

meant more possibilities of securing food in the face of plagues, sickness, freezing, hail and

drought. Instead of trying to control nature, which is what industrial agriculture tries to do,

Andean farmers have adapted to it.

“Nature doesn’t have a cure,” says Hancco while looking at snow covered Sawasiray and

bending over to pick up a handful of earth. He has just finished spreading the last sack of manure

over the seeded ground, a strip covered by a green moss that gives easily. It’s a trial strip of

ground, in the middle of the mountainside, without any natural protection. Hancco can use his

techniques to cultivate and natural pesticides for sicknesses and plagues, but he doesn’t have a

way to protect them against hail or frost. Lately it has been worse, Hancco says. The climate has

become more whimsical and unpredictable.

In the 60’s, when Julio Hancco was a kid and began to grow potatoes alongside his

father, his vice was bread. Young Hancco worked his own land to earn money to be able to buy

his bags of bread when the salesmen came to peddle their wares. A Peruvian in that time would

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consume around 265 pounds of potatoes every year. In the following decades consumption

dropped to around 177 pounds as the farmers began to migrate to the cities to escape terrorists. In

the 90’s, during the presidency of Alberto Fujimori, the consumption of potatoes had reached a

historic low: 110 pounds per person per year. These potatoes that disappeared, Celfia Obregón

Ramirez, a potato engineer, will later explain to me, were replaced by foods like rice and

noodles.

“Just like the noodle has more status, and a chicken foot has more status than eating cuy5,

people began hiding their potatoes,” says Obregón, President of the Association for Sustainable

Development of Peru and promoter of National Potato Day. Against white rice, yellow noodles,

and pale chicken, the dark skin of potatoes renewed the stigma of “backwards” and poverty that

they represented for years, ever since its discovery by the conquistadores and its arrival in

Europe in the 16th century in the belly of a Spanish ship, as legend has it. It would take almost

200 years until the potato was eaten as a common food on the Old Continent. Every European

country had its own story of rejection and seduction: the potato was considered lewd and

aphrodisiacal, the cause of leprosy, witch’s food, sacrilege and food fit for savages. In Ireland

they didn’t doubt in adopting potatoes from the start. The farmers of that country, rejected by the

English for their lack of usable land, were dying of hunger trying to extract foods from horrible

soil. When the potato arrived in Ireland at the end of the 16th century – it’s thought at the hand of

English Privateer Walter Raleigh – the Irish discovered that from a little bit of almost unusable

land they could produce enough food to feed their family and livestock. At the beginning, the

potato saved Ireland from starvation: it was later accused as the source of poverty in the same

country. In one century, the population grew from 3 to 8 million because parents could feed their

children with the little they had.

5 A traditional dish in Peru made of Guinea Pig.

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The American writer Charles Mann tells us that the economist Adam Smith, who was an

admirer of the potato, was impressed to see that the Irish had exceptional health even though

they ate almost nothing but potatoes. “Today we know why,” writes Mann in his 1943

publication A New History of the World After Columbus: “The potato is capable of sustaining

life better than any other food if it’s the only food in the diet. It contains all the basic nutrients

except vitamins A and D, which you can get from milk.” And the diet of the poor Irish in the

times of Adam Smith, explains Mann, basically consisted of potatoes and milk. Today’s potato

that is grown in over 150 countries produces a greater amount of nutrients per unit than rice or

corn. One potato contains half of an adult’s daily recommended value of vitamin C. In some

countries, like the U.S., they offer more vitamin C than even citrus fruits, which are now

industrialized and of poor quality. What are important in a food, agricultural engineer Obregón

Ramirez explains to me, are the dry mass and its nutritional value: a common white potato, for

example, has an average of 20% dry mass. The rest is water. This means that if a potato weighs

10 ounces, 2 ounces are actual food. Native potatoes that are gown at a higher altitude and in

more extreme conditions than the commercialized variety have between 30-40% dry mass. They

are twice as nutritious as a common potato and have elevated amounts of Iron, Zinc, and vitamin

B. But, of course, the native potato has a lower yield, is more difficult to transport, and the

selling price is more expensive. We still believe the myth that potatoes makes you fat, and we

don’t understand why you should pay more for a potato even if it is an exotic color or shape if a

potato is a potato is a potato.

Studies on the Peruvian potato insist, like a repeated formula, on the necessity of

protecting their thousands of varieties and their cultivating techniques for an evident reason: they

were created by farmers over centuries to ascertain food in the most extreme climates to resist

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freezing, hail, and drought. This is what awaits the world with climate change; hunger and

extreme conditions. But there is a more selfish reason to want to care for them: because they are

delicious. In comparison to large scale commercial production of potatoes, the Andean farmers

grow their potatoes thinking about eating them, about feeding their families and selling the rest.

New York chef Barber, who has become an international spokesperson for “from the farm to the

table,” would say that without good ingredients you can’t cook well. Technique doesn’t matter; if

you want better flavor, you turn to better ingredients. “And if that’s the case,” says Barber, “what

you look for is good agriculture.

In Peru, a country that has converted its gastronomy into a matter of self-esteem and

patriotism, more than 70% of what appears on its tables – its fruits and vegetables, its grains, its

tubers and legumes –are produced by small scale agriculture. The Peruvian gastronomy boom

that has invaded the political speeches during the last decade could be seen as the boom of the

ingredients of Peruvian food. But the government has transformed the boom into a controlled

burn: in the approved national budget for 2015, only 2.3% of the funds are allocated to small

agriculture, the lowest inversion percentage in that sector since 2010. The study The Potato

Sector in the Andean Region from the International Center for the Potato emphasizes this

paradox: the producers in the higher altitudes, who possess the richest resource, are among the

poorest economically.

The true homeland of a man is not found in his infancy; it’s the food from his infancy.

One Sunday, at 7 in the morning, before the days’ work, Julio Hancco’s wife serves a breakfast

of the following: rice pudding, bread with a fried egg, potatoes from their own crop, alpaca ribs,

and chuño soup – bitter potatoes dehydrated outdoors – with some sheep meat. Julio Hancco and

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his sons Hernán and Wilfredo, who will work the land all day, go back for seconds of the soup.

Hancco looks at me, motions to the plates, and speaks in Spanish:

“It’s all natural. Natural potatoes. Natural water. It’s all natural.”

Hancco jests, saying that if he was younger he would go and live in another city or

country. But ask him seriously and he says that he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t leave his animals.

“And on that note,” he continues, “on my own land I at least eat what I want. Here one eats

potato, pig, llama, alpaca, cuy, and rabbit. On the other hand, in the city it’s all noodles, rice, and

crackers.”

“That’s not food. Too many chemicals,” he says in Quechua while Hernán translates.

The Lord of the Potato has been to Italy twice. He was invited by Slow Food, an

international movement that opposes industrialized food and artificial flavors and looks to bring

back enjoyment from traditional production of food. With the support of the National

Association of Agro-ecological Producers of Peru and Slow Foods, who organize a Taste Hall

every two years, Hancco and his sons could fry and package hundreds of bags with snacks made

from native potatoes to sell in Italy. His farming techniques, the same ones that Andean farmers

have maintained for centuries and that Hancco perfected to produce his varieties of potatoes, are

no recognized as agro-ecological systems of production. Julio Hancco doesn’t call his seeds a

“bastion of agro-biodiversity,” but every time he participated in an event in Peru he could tell

that his work was important to everyone. In the last 15 years, Hancco and the regional producers

have received the support of NGO’s to produce and sell their potatoes, to obtain water, to adapt

to the effects of climate change and to create laws that favor their style of family-based

agriculture. Julio Hancco has reaped awards, press mentions that hang in his sons rooms, many

foreign visitors, and a photo with Gaston Arcurio, yet he hasn’t harvested royal recognition from

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the Peruvian government. Not a whole lot has changed in his working conditions, nor have the

habits of thousands of other producers who, like him, are admired world-wide for their work.

From his trip to Italy, the Lord of the Potato remembers that he liked the salmon and the airplane.