The chief of Peru’s Sierra Exportadora, Gastón Benza, called Thursday on President Alan Garcia’s Council of Ministers to approve the construction of 100 potato flour production plants to offset the rising cost of wheat and to promote the export of Peruvian potato bread, “papapan.”
“There is an important demand for potato flour in Europe, Japan and the United States,” Benza told Radio Nacional. “And it is consumed by people who cannot eat wheat flour, and they are about two million.”
The potato flour processing plants, Benza argued, would be financed by a $6 million fund, including the allocation of 15 million soles, or $524,0000, to help small and medium sized business and bakeries.
Garcia’s Sierra Exportadora program, which encourages farmers to work in cooperatives to ensure reliable and regular supply chains, was designed to assist some of the country’s most backward provinces — such as Puno and Huancavelica — and to finance the exportation of agricultural products that are traditionally traded domestically.
The program is already running an experimental potato flour plant in La Concepción, near Huancayo, in Peru’s central highland department of Junín. The potato flour produced there is sold in bakeries that supply bread to the National Food Assistance Program, or Pronaa.
“The project is already underway,” said Benza, “and has shown that it is feasible and now what we must do is install 99 additional plants, if this financial mechanism is approved by the Council of Ministers.”
According to Benza, the additional 99 plants could benefit up to 300.000 farmers who are presently unable to sell an estimated 600,000 tons of potatoes because of overproduction and saturated markets.
“They will be able to sell (their potatoes) because this flour will be used to produce potato bread as well as everything else that is being produced with wheat flour,” said Benza.
“The poor’s income isn’t increasing,” Benza added. “And this is why we must generate more wealth and employment with the transformation of agricultural products in the country’s high Andean zones.”
The promotion of potato bread and potato flour are key priorities for Peru in its strategy to substitute food products whose prices have risen in domestic markets due to international fluctuations.
It is also part of a larger plan designed to encourage Peruvians to eat more potatoes, which have a high content of Vitamin C and iron as well as Vitamin B6, thiamine, amino acids and magnesium, rather than the less nutritious but ubiquitous rice and noodles. Peruvians consume an average of 77 kilos of potatoes per year, but government officials hope to increase consumption to 100 kilos by 2011.
“We are launching a campaign to urge the poor populations to change their eating habits. We want to promote the consumption of potatoes in the face of rising international prices for wheat, corn and soya,” Agriculture Minister Ismael Benavides said in May, during the EU-LAC summit that gathered European and Latin American government officials to discuss climate change and the imminent world food crisis.
