For thousands of years, Andean communities have adapted to harsh high-altitude conditions: low oxygen, frigid temperatures, strong sun, and astonishingly steep grades of land. The same is true for Peru’s native potatoes. Where most crops cannot survive the stark climate, papas nativas thrive at heights ranging from 11,000 to 14,000 feet. Thus, through many civilizations, it has been the potato that has provided critical sustenance and nutrition to the people of the Andean highlands.

At the end of a long day—sunburned, sore, and suffering from mild altitude sickness—we find the closest restaurant to our guesthouse and, though they don’t serve papas nativas specifically, we devour our first Peruvian potato meal: greasy french fries served with chicken, smothered in hot green chili sauce. Though it satisfies our hunger, it neither feels healthy nor tastes all that different from potatoes we’ve eaten in other places around the world.

Over many generations of cultivation, papas nativas reached a high level of nutrition. Almost all varieties are a good source of starch, vitamin C, and calcium. Others are high in protein, vitamin K, or phosphorous. The potatoes that Ernesto and Martina grow organically, without any agrochemicals, have far more vitamins and amino acids than the common white potatoes we find at home in the Netherlands.

Papas nativas also have many uses beyond cooking. Ernesto and Martina use them for their health benefits, applying or ingesting the juice of the potatoes to treat skin rashes, kidney stones, or headaches. Papas nativas are believed to offer a wide range of other medicinal benefits, with different varieties containing properties that are known to boost the immune system, prevent cancer, aid in the treatment of osteoporosis, and more.

Ernesto and Martina invite us to share a meal with their family. Alongside a healthy slab of goat cheese, they serve two varieties of papas nativas. One looks similar to the potatoes we eat at home but tastes far richer and more complex. The other, cooked in a pot atop a bed of straw, is small with coarse skin, a bitter taste, and dry texture. Martina tells us this is the chuño—the river potato.

The chuño, also called tunta or moraya, is a type of papa nativa that has been dehydrated through a process that dates back to the Tiahuanaco culture, which flourished near lake Titicaca around 800 CE. The same process is used today: Once the papas are harvested—usually in June and July—a farmer selects some of the smaller potatoes to be made into chuños, which can either be black or white in color, depending on which dehydration process is used. Black chuños are made by leaving the potatoes out in the freezing Andean air overnight. They are then crushed to remove any liquids. If a farmer wants the chuños to be white, she will soak them in a mountain stream and then sun-dry them. Whatever the color, the chuños are essentially freeze-dried and can be stored for up to a decade.

Growers of papas nativas are almost entirely subsistence farmers, growing only what’s needed to feed their own family. For most of them, it is not practical to produce these crops at a larger scale: this is, in part, because it is so labor-intensive to forego commercial pesticides and fertilizers; but there is also little demand for these native potatoes, even within Peru.

The potato fields that we encounter in Chahuaytire and Amaru are a sea of purple, white, and pink flowers. Each color—and the varying shades of that color—indicate different varieties of papas nativas growing belowground.

The potato, Solanum tuberosom, is an herbaceous annual: it sprouts, flowers, produces tubers, and dies in a single growing season. The ambolocoto, or stamen, of the flower carries the seeds of the plant, which enable it to reproduce through pollination, but farmers reproduce the next year’s crop of potatoes vegetatively—planting tubers from last year’s harvest.

As we travel by bus across the country, we eat at many roadside family restaurants. Potatoes are on the menu at all of them. The food is tasty and plentiful and there’s no risk of going hungry. Soup is served first with a side of potatoes, followed by the main course, also served with a side of potatoes, and often rice. While modern diet fads may discourage so many carbs, from the Peruvian perspective, the potato is a nutritious staple.

In the evening, we indulge in street food from the local carts and stalls: salchipapas (sausage and french fries), papas rellenas (fried stuffed potatoes), and anticuchos (grilled beef heart) with a boiled potato on top. Despite the food being delicious, we learn that none of the vendors cook with papas nativas: almost all of them use Canchán, Yungay, Andina, Perricholi, or Única—the most common potatoes grown in Peru, often grown with chemical fertilizers and adapted to be mass-produced at the expense of crop diversity and nutrition.

Different communities across the Andes have different preferences for the varieties of papas nativas that they cultivate, based on local history, social values, and climate. Though most of the potatoes never make it to any market, they are traded between highland and lowland communities, given as gifts for weddings and other special occasions, and, of course, eaten throughout the year by the families who grow them.

As the story goes, when the ancient Andean people first encountered potatoes growing in the ground 8,000 years ago, they took them to be gifts from the gods. Archaeological studies show that the Incas later came to worship Acsumama (acsu for potato, mama for mother). Potatoes continue to hold a central place in both the Peruvian diet and mainstream culture: “Be more Peruvian than the potato” is a common saying, restaurants advertise themselves through the quality of their potato dishes, and images of potatoes line the streets.

Regular potatoes are often fried, mashed, mixed, stuffed, baked, and dressed with sauces and cheese. Papas nativas, on the other hand, are most often simply boiled or steamed in their skin, enabling them to retain their nutrition and natural flavor. There’s great pride in the fact that they need only a bit of boiling water to be delicious and healthy. Consistent with this tradition, the papas nativas at Hatunpa are cooked and presented with an ethic of simplicity.

Papas nativas are not only used for savory dishes. A popular dessert is dulce de chuño—a freeze-dried potato served like a sweet porridge with cinnamon, anise, cloves, and sugar.

More than one billion people worldwide rely on potatoes as part of their diet. But like any industrialized crop, monocrop potatoes have lost much of their original nutrition and are susceptible to blight.

CIP has scientifically documented the high nutritional value and wide adaptability of papas nativas, and this research has confirmed their belief that native tubers constitute a reliable and sustainable source of sustenance, especially in communities that are more likely to face food scarcity. Through the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, CIP distributes potato seeds internationally—particularly to farmers in developing countries—offering varieties that are healthy, disease-resistant, and able to withstand harsh climate conditions.

With Andean farmers carrying on the ancient practice of planting papas nativas in their native landscape, and a growing number of small-scale farmers around the world planting them in new soils of diverse climates and communities, the unique heritage of this Peruvian crop continues its 8,000-year journey.