On 20th November 2014, the Project Leader Li Henian, along with Farming Instructors and community leaders attended the training in Wanzhou（Chongqing）on “Establishing direct access between Farmers’ products and super markets” , which is organized by Carrefour Chongqing and targeted at assisting Farmers Cooperatives . Zhou Hua is a young farmer from Hong Huapo Group 4, he learnt from the training that black potato’s starch content is only as high as 13-15%, and is rich in anthocyanins - which has inhibitory effect on carcinogens. Farmers from the high mountainous region of Wushan County (Chongqing) have been planting this variety of black potato. Moreover, black potato is 4-6yuan/500g, which is 5 times more market value than the local potatoes. This gave Zhou Hua the idea of planting black potato, he can see that it has potential to bring development to his village.
 
Potatoes originated from the Andes in South America and were brought to other parts of the world over the last 400 years. It is the world's fourth-largest food crop, following maize, wheat, and rice. Globally there are about 5,000 cultivated potato varieties and 200 wild varieties. China is the biggest global producer of potatoes with 88.9 million tons in 2013 (source: FAO). Consumption and production in China are continuously increasing over the last 20 years.
 
Zhou Hua and Li Henian together shared this idea to the villagers when they came back, surprisingly the villagers want to pilot this new crop passionately, and have a long term plan to build up their own black potato brand. So then Li Henian started to research the planting technique and contacted some seed companies. Eventually, he decided to purchase the seeds from Gansu Province with the price 5yuan/500g.
 
Afterwards, Honghuapo Group 4 and Baiguoyuan were chosen to be the pilot villages as they fulfill the planting condition which requires a mountain area with an altitude of 1000 meters and low temperature. To minimalize the risks, the project originally planned to choose experienced farmers who are capable of taking risks to take part in this pilot. However in reality, all the farmers would like to be part of it in Baiguoyuan Village. The only concern in this case is that the households are too scattered to form big scale production, but after considering the benefits to promoting this crop if the village had a good harvest across many participating households, it was finally decided that the pilot would involve all households who are willing to participate. By the end of 2014, we mobilized 24 households through a black potato planting mobilization meeting in Honghuapo Group 4. Li Henian purchased 2 tons of seeds with 20000 RMB budget (including transportation), and then he distributed 1 ton to each village. In Baiguoyuan village almost all the households are participating, so considering that the amount of seeds distribute to each household is relatively small, the project provided these seeds for free. But the situation in Honghuapo Group 4 was different, 24 households participated so the amount of seeds distributed to each household is considerable, so the project requested each household to contribute 2yuan/500g for the seeds, and meanwhile we distributed pesticides to the farmers to encourage their motivation. Zhou Hua is the one most actively engaged in the pilot, he bought enough seeds to sow 2mu of land.
 
In March, Li Henian invited expert and organized black potato planting training to enrich farmers’ knowledge on planting. The gratifying achievement they’ve had so far is that the black potato plantlet have all come out!
 
Everyone is looking forward to the black potato harvest in July, at the same time, Li Henian and Zhou Hua are looking for potential markets to be well prepared for their own Fengdu black potato brand.

 
This project is supported by Carrefour Foundation