Children recover Andean crops

Jicama, oca, mashua, amaranth, white carrot and sweet potato are foods at danger of disappearing. Joselyn Liquinchano is one of the 73 students of the Intercultural Bilingual Community Education Center (Cecib) in the province of El Oro, whose program seeks to recover these crops. That’s why, with her hands she removes the weeds from a sweet potato crop growing in the garden of this campus, located in the Kichwa community El Morlan, in Cotacachi, Imbabura.

Teacher Blanca Grijalva, with the help of the students, implemented the crop as part of a project to recover the ancestral cultures. Liquinchano, like her classmates, not only organized groups to clean up the farm. They also took the initiative to bring home the seeds.

This project is about varied products that were formerly cultivated in the communes said Grijalva, a teacher with 21 years of experience. The Cecib Province of El Oro is one of the 12 schools that participated in the development of a guide of food sovereignty and conservation of agricultural biodiversity, aimed at basic education institutions of Cotacachi.

Source: http://www.elcomercio.com/tendencias/ninos-cultivos-ancestros-sembrio-agricultura.html