Food Sovereignty, Tourism, and Climate Change Effects: The Case of the Agro-ecotourism in the Potato Park (Cusco, Peru)
Is there any relationship between tourism and food sovereignty? My paper seeks to answer this question by looking at the Potato Park case study in Cusco, Peru. Indeed, the Potato Park’s agro-ecotourism offers an interesting example of how tourism can support food sovereignty. My paper explains this relationship in which agro-ecotourism allows local comuneros – inhabitants of Andean communities – to continue with peasant activities, particularly with the native potatoes production, the Park with its five communities having more than a thousand types of potatoes (Terry 2017). That makes the difference between food security and food sovereignty where people can control what they eat, here their own production. I argue that the agro-ecotourism income is a key element to reinforce local food sovereignty since comuneros can reserve their agricultural production to self-consumption, rather than selling it in the market to get money. The money is even used, among other expenses, to buy some food like rice or pasta, included nowadays in Andean culinary practices. If the paper shows this relationship between self-consumption and monetary-based systems, it raises at the end the question about the future: How climate change affects this relationship? How can food sovereignty be maintained if it affects native potatoes production? The comuneros are already suffering climate change effects in Cusco (Cometti 2016), and some Potato Park’s comuneros affirm that they have to cultivate higher and higher. “What happens if we cannot go higher?” If agro-ecotourism is creating awareness of this situation, can tourism really prevent it?
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