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The Altiplano, a plateau located between Peru and Bolivia, is one of the poorest regions in the world. Approximately 75% of its 6 million inhabitants live in poverty and around 55% live in extreme poverty. This social vulnerability is evidenced by low income, food insecurity, and high child malnutrition and mortality. The region is affected by climatic extremes, salinity and drought; and the subsistence farming systems are characterized by low production and productivity due to the lack of adequate technology, inadequate access to markets, incipient credit, and inadequate roads. Degradation of natural resources and environmental pollution are additional problems. However, the region is an important source of water, energy and biodiversity. In particular, native potatoes possess extraordinary qualities, including nutritional characteristics that are superior to those of modern hybrids, and possess the ability to adapt to environmental extremes.

The project aims at contributing to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals by working with rural farming communities in the Altiplano. The five specific objectives are: Improve the productivity, diversity and income generation of farming systems in the Altiplano and explore innovative local non-farming sources of employment and income; Organize and train peasant women to enable them to effectively participate in postharvest activities that add value to primary products, such as potato, bitter potatoes, milk, quinoa, and alpaca meat and fiber; Improve child nutrition and health through enhanced food availability, dietary diversity and nutritional education; Increase the knowledge of peasant women as relates to human and environmental health factors, to convert them into effective change agents in the family unit and the community; Promote the utilization of agricultural technologies that reduce and reverse natural resources degradation.

The project will benefit the indigenous people in the Altiplano, and consumers in the Andean region and international markets. The number of rural communities existing in the target area is 700 approximately and the total number of potential beneficiaries of the outputs of the project will approach 42,000 families. The project will also represent a model for rural development based on a comprehensive view of sustainable agriculture, which encompasses the economic, biophysical, socio-cultural and environmental aspects of market-oriented development. It takes advantage of CIP's generated technologies and approaches and the rich regional eco-systems and biodiversity. The project follows a systems and participatory approach, which constructs upon the long and successful experiences of CIP and its regional partners. It establishes a mechanism for the systemic integration into farming systems of agricultural technology produced by the commodity-oriented research carried out by several of CIP's divisions, through a holistic approach. Tools and methods for systems, vulnerability, climatic risk and trade off analyses developed by CIP's Research Divisions provide support. The entire framework will be informed by social, gender, economic, market and policy analyses, so as to yield sound research-based options for rural development and the evolvement of a peasant economy into a market-oriented economy.