For us, “Potatobility” is the collective name that captures all valuable dimensions of the potato: sustainability, health benefits, food supply/food security and inclusiveness.
The core foundation for a sustainable potato value chain is profitability for farmers. If they are not able to make sufficient and sustainable profit, they will be less committed to producing potatoes but will prefer other farming activities instead. In emerging economies, most potato farmers are smallholder farmers.
It is the Potatobility vision that smallholder farmers can only realise a sustainable profitable income improvement when they acquire access to:
- Certified seed potatoes
- Crop protection & crop nutrition means
- Markets
- Finance
- Technology
- Knowledge
Worldwide impact
One of the consequences of this vision is smallholder farmers need to aggregate (via co-operatives, farmers’ producing organisations, self-help groups, hubs etc.) since – in general – individual smallholder farmers will not be able to require this access level autonomously. Co-creating such a holistic eco-system is the core of the Potatobility approach/strategy.
The stakeholders of Agrofoodcluster share this holistic vision. Together they create potato impact all over the world.