THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF QUINOA GIVES THE BATTON, AFTER AN EXEMPLARY CAMPAIGN.

The 2014 has been declared as the “International Year of Family Farming”, for the contribution that small producers make to global food security, reported the director general of the United Nations Agency for Food and Agriculture (FAO), José Graziano da Silva.

Graziano da Silva participated today with Nadine Heredia, wife of the president of Peru, Ollanta Humala, at the ceremony that closed the International Year of Quinoa, held in the Andean community of Capachica, in the Puno region, close to the border with Bolivia.

The Peruvian Ministers of Agriculture also attended that ceremony., Milton Von Hesse; Foreign Trade and Tourism, Magali Silva; and Development and Social Inclusion, Monica Rubio; in addition to the regional president of Puno, Mauricio Rodriguez.

“There is an important and natural link between the year of quinoa and that of family farming, since almost all quinoa production is in the hands of small farmers. They were the ones who knew how to preserve and improve grain for thousands of years”, indicated Graziano da Silva.

The FAO noted, in a statement, that more than 80 % of agricultural holdings in the region correspond to family farming, which produces most of the food for domestic consumption in Latin American countries and near the 70 % of agricultural employment at the country level.

Graziano da Silva also thanked the Peruvian government for granting “such a high priority” to quinoa and said that Peru obtained recognition from the FAO for having reduced by half the proportion of people suffering from hunger, two years before the deadline established between the Millennium Goals.

Peru closed yesterday the activities of the International Year of Quinoa with a ceremony in which Heredia, appointed FAO Special Ambassador for the International Year of Quinoa, He highlighted the nutritional value of Andean grains and asked that junk food be banished from children's diets..

Heredia thanked the farmers for having contributed to making quinoa known and valued internationally and said that food security and nutrition for children is one of the key policies of the Humala government..

Among the main quinoa producing regions in the country are the southern Puno, Ayacucho, Cuzco, Apurimac and Arequipa, and the Junín power plant, and the main destination markets for Peruvian quinoa were the United States (64 %), Australia (6 %), Canada (5 %), Germany (5 %) and Netherlands (3 %).