A key component of CIP’s strategic plan was its namesake crop – the potato. Over the past decade, CIP’s Potato Agri-food Systems program has continued to drive success for smallholder farmers and their communities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The program set out to deliver a game-changing solution: early maturing, market-preferred, and biofortified potato varieties, along with high-quality seed potatoes. The goal was to improve productivity and farm incomes for more than seven million households. CIP recognized that small-scale farmers struggled to produce enough nutritious food for their families, let alone have a surplus to sell. Growing populations, urban expansion, and severe weather events exacerbated this challenge. The answer lay in doing more with less while boosting nutritional value.

Skilled breeders rose to the challenge, harnessing the latest innovations to develop early maturing, stress-tolerant, and disease-resistant potato varieties that were in high demand by consumers and processors alike. These solutions reduced the pressure on scarce land and water resources, increased economic and nutritional value, and eased the strain of food price inflation. CIP also made significant advances in potato biofortification, elevating essential nutrients like iron and zinc to contribute to global efforts to end malnutrition.

The Potato Agri-food Systems program focused on improving seed systems. In many developing countries, farmers typically plant seed potatoes saved from their harvests or purchased from informal markets. Left unchecked, this practice perpetuates poor harvests due to the spread of plant pathogens and reduced yields.

CIP tackled this challenge head-on, expanding the supply of high-quality seed potatoes through rapid propagation and multiplication. Complementing this effort, CIP established farmer training schools to empower growers with skills in on-farm seed quality management, integrated crop management, postharvest storage, and seed value chain optimization. By combining these innovative approaches, CIP helped farmers across the regions increase their yields of more nutritious potatoes, delivering tangible benefits to their livelihoods and the communities they feed.

Over the past decade, the remarkable success of CIP’s orange-fleshed sweetpotato captured global attention. In 2016, three CIP scientists and one HarvestPlus scientist were awarded the prestigious World Food Prize, in recognition of their decades-long effort to bring biofortified sweetpotato varieties to millions of undernourished people suffering from “hidden hunger” – a deficiency in essential vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients.

Pivotal to this transformative work was CIP’s Sweetpotato Agri-food Systems strategic objective. This ambitious program sought to enable at least 15 million resource-poor households in Africa and Asia to improve the quality of their diets and raise their crop incomes by 15% by 2023.

One particularly noteworthy initiative within CIP’s Sweetpotato Agri-food Systems program was the Sweetpotato Genetic Advances and Innovative Seed System (SweetGains) project. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded this three-year endeavor to modernize Africa’s sweetpotato breeding and early generation seed production systems. The goal was to introduce improved sweetpotato varieties and rapidly disseminate them across the continent, providing a solid foundation for better nutrition and diversified diets among African rural and urban households.

The strategic vision that guided CIP over the past decade has served the organization and the smallholder farmers it supports remarkably well. By developing more nutritious, climate-resilient crop varieties and strengthening seed systems, CIP has empowered millions of resource-poor households to improve their diets, boost their incomes, and adapt to the growing challenges posed by climate change. The lessons learned and the successes achieved have been invaluable in shaping CIP’s 2030 strategy, which builds upon this solid foundation to drive an even more significant impact in the years ahead. CIP extends its deepest gratitude to the dedicated scientists, staff, partners, and donors whose tireless efforts have been instrumental in improving the livelihoods of the communities CIP serves worldwide. Together, we will continue to harness the power of agricultural innovation to create a more food-secure and sustainable future for all.