Problem: Extreme poverty still exists amongst the remote mountain people in SW China. The local government is mandated to alleviate it. Potatoes are a staple food crop; however, yields are low primarily due to very poor-quality planting material of varieties that are susceptible to late blight and virus diseases.
Outcomes: Over the last 4 years SPSI has supported its local partner, Tudobang, in bringing together many farmers into cooperative groups. As cooperative groups they successfully produced excellent quality seed potatoes. Local government officials were ordered to study and adopt the Tudobang strategy for large scale seed potato production in the remote mountain areas. For this the World Potato Congress awarded them a plaque of recognition for their outstanding accomplishments.
High on a Himalayan mountain plateau above 2,300 masl resource poor farmers survive on a single summer crop of potatoes, barley, pasture, and mustard. Winters are extremely cold. These conditions are ideal for basic seed potato production using virus free greenhouse grown minitubers as the starting planting material. Tudobang, our partner, started this work in 2018 assisting groups of farm families in growing high quality seed potatoes. Tudobang sourced and provided the crop inputs at wholesale prices plus transport costs. They gave weekly technical support. Bank or Tudobang financing was provided for all the crop inputs as well as cash for paying the labor costs for all the cooperative members who participated in the field operations. The results were successful in not only producing virus free seed potatoes of early generations but also getting highly profitable yields and prices for their harvests.
Figure 2.a: Map of Asia showing the Himalayan mountain range, often referred to as the 3rd pole! Area circled is the plateau at the end of the mountain range that creates the 2nd home of the potatoes after the Andes of South America.
Figure 2.b: farmers controlling Late blight in the cooperative potato farming operation.
Poverty alleviation is in the overall mandate from the Central Government and this goes to the regional governments like that of Zhaotong City and down to its 13 counties with a population of over 6 million. The cooperative group model developed by Tudobang was carefully studied by local government leaders and adopted in 2020 to be implemented on a very large scale by local leaders in each of several counties of Zhaotong. Quality seed potato production of new adapted varieties was mandated and carried out by numerous county level agencies with the support of Research stations, Academies and Universities providing the expertise. County governments followed the Tudobang model and successfully worked with farmers covering about 3,000 hectares with quality seed potato production in 2020.
Figure 3. Party Secretary Yang visits and sees the work being lead by cooperative leaders under the direction of Elven Huang in March 2019.
The success of this program can be attributed in a very large part to the Party Secretary of The CPC of Zhaotong. PS Yalin Yang listened to our successes in 2018, visited our cooperative groups of seed potato growers in 2019 and mandated that this be done on a larger scale in 2020. His enthusiasm and personal interest in this work is what lead to Elven Huang, CEO of Tudobang, to recommend to the World Potato Congress (WPC) to bestow this honor on PS Yang and his leadership for doing this outstanding work. After a careful review of the merits a special ceremony was held on August 19, 2020 to grant the award to PS Yang and his government. The granting of this award comes with more responsibilities in the coming years. Romain Cools, President and Peter VanderZaag, Director of the WPC both spoke at the ceremony with words of congratulations as well as challenging the leaders to further development of the seed potato sector for SW China as well as for the neighboring countries. Both recognized that the slopes of the Himalayan mountains is rightfully the 2nd home of the potato after the Andes of South America where the potato originally evolved.
Figure 4. Awarding of the plaque of recognition to PS Yang by Elven Huang and Xiaoping Lu, both Directors of the World Potato Congress