Each project took part in the celebration by taking posters and promotional material that was presented in a fair open to the public where the public came from research Institutions, Universities students and journalists. In the morning of the Tuesday an FORUM was held about the Future of family farming where 4 farmers were invited carefully selected to represent the different face of farmers today who gave talks about their coming of age in their diverse communities and their current experiences and needs, (young people who leave their community to the city, yapuchirs, women seeking more equity either as wifes or as single mothers) Interesting leader were invited to comment on the backdrop of a paper prepared and given by Carlos Perez.
Seminars: fortunately this year we were able to attend more of the seminar as the presentations and discussions are rich learning experiences, we are happy there are less parallel sessions. Yanapai´s topic was participative selection of varieties and clones with high micronutrient content with 14 women’s groups in the Chopccas communities of Huancavelica. It was well received and well commented, even though we could not show r acceptability or ts impact on nutrition, since we were just at the stage of having achieved selecting and adaptability in year 4 of the project, which had caused an extension of the project in order to be able to deliver this seed to the women groups.
At the end of the meeting we stayed two additional days for planning the activities for the project “diversification of Andean agro ecosystems”led by Steven Fonte. Katherin Meza from Yanapai joined the group. We had two intense planning days with the group from Ecuador en CIF from Bolivia, and left Cochababamba early on Monday morning arriving in Lima at 10 p.m just in time to catch the 11 :30 bus to arrive in Huancayo early the next morning.