AMY D'AGORNE

Peeling the Paris Green dedicated Website CLICK HERE


Essay by Maywa Montenegro de Wit, Professor of Environmental Studies at UCSC.


Genetic Scientist at CIP. 


CIP (The International Potato Centre) in Lima, Peru, is a part of CGIAR (Consultive Group on International Agricultural Research). A global partnership that unites international organisations engaged in scientific research around food security.


Occasionally working with Parque de la Papa through CIP, CGIAR have a research presence in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.


When investigating CGIAR's funders, among the governmental funding, there are also private funders such as The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation is among the five top donors of the World Bank's Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) program, which guides policymaking for pro-business reforms in the agriculture sector.

This conflict of interest usually has dire results for farmers, landworkers, and indigenous peoples. As gene editing, chemical-intensive agriculture and patented seeds get pushed as the solutions to food insecurity.

"...beyond the elemental act of day to day nourishment, food, like gold, functions as currency."

  • Ackerman, 1990, p.129

In Peeling The Paris Green, the value placed on different knowledge systems is investigated in relation to the growing issues surrounding global food security in the face of the ever-increasing climate crisis. The contentious debate between the more industrial-based science of gene editing vs. the more holistic-based movement of agroecology and the importance and rights of indigenous knowledge is expressed through an in-depth, rhizomatic, research-based photographic investigation of the humble potato. The project traces the politics surrounding this complex issue, through genetic engineering laboratories in the UK, the indigenous-led communities of Parque de la Papa (The Potato Park) in the Peruvian Andes, seen widely as the guardians of potato diversity and advocates against biopiracy, to the cryopreservation of potatoes at The International Potato Centre in Lima, a step deemed necessary as plant varieties rapidly become extinct.


Interspersed with constructed still lives, research and data, the project mixes discernibly disparate visuals that disrupt and ultimately seek to confront the limitations of documentary photography, while shedding light on the complex secrets hidden beneath the food on our plates.

Potato Seeds being sorted at CIP.

A potato berry in the glasshouses of The Commonwealth Potato Collection, housed at the John Innes Centre, Dundee.

National Potato Day Celebrations at Parque de la Papa, Peru. 


Parque de la Papa is a Biocultural Territory dedicated to the conservation of biological and cultural diversity set 3,200 - 5,000 ft above sea level in the Peruvian Andes. Managed by a collection of five indigenous communities, Amaru, Chawaytire, Pampallacta, Paruparu and Sacaca, with support from the NGO, Association Andes, they grow, cultivate and protect over 3,000 different varieties of potato, and act as in situ conservationists and guardians of potato diversity.


This diversity is more important than ever in face of the continued climate crisis. As temperatures rise, so do pathogens and viruses that attack crops. More and more frequently the peoples of Parque de la Papa have to move their potato crops further up the mountains to avoid them succumbing to crop-failing diseases.

The diversity of varieties they grow protects them however from complete crop failure.

Another reason that indigenous knowledge and agroecology must be truly valued in the fight for food security.

Paris Green, or copper acetoarsenite, is an inorganic compound made with arsenic and copper that was originally invented as a type of powdered pigment used in a popular green paint of the 19th century. In 1867, farmers in Illinois discovered that by throwing the highly toxic powder onto their potato crops, they could rid them of the dreaded Colorado Potato Beetle. And thus, one of the first mass-produced insecticides was born. Paris Green, and a few other potato-focused early pesticides, were the first “to be worthy of production on an industrial scale; to this extent...the potato was a catalyst for the creation and development of the agrochemical industry which today wields so much power”.(Reader, 2008, p. 45)

The Actors (Local actors re-staging and re-claiming from the 1939 British Empire Potato Collecting Expedition Archive).


After arriving in Peru in 1939, The British Empire Potato Collecting Expedition travelled more than 9,000 miles through South America, and ‘collected’/took over 1,000 samples of wild potatoes, as well as land races or varieties cultivated by the indigenous population, (that archaeologists now believe to have been cultivating the potato for over 8,000 years).


This collection was at first housed at the Potato Virus Research Station at Cambridge University, but now makes up The Commonwealth Potato Collection housed at The John Innes Centre in Dundee, Scotland.


When in Peru I worked with local actors and food sovereignty activists to bring this biopiracy that is the basis and history of Western agribusiness to light.

As a part of its conservation program, The International Potato Center currently uses cryopreservation to freeze and preserve thousands of varieties of potato plants, for a future in which they have possibly become extinct. The wild varieties of potato usually have higher resistance to certain pathogens and viruses, as such, they are used within both traditional and bioengineered breeding to create new varieties of potato with higher climate resistance, such as resistance to certain pathogens, diseases or drought.


Like The Commonwealth Potato Center, and Parque de la Papa, The International Potato Center also has a seed deposit in the Svalbard seed vault, the international ‘doomsday’ seed vault dug deep into the permafrost within the arctic circle in Norway. 

On May 30th, the Peruvian national day of the potato, the communities of Parque de la Papa come together to celebrate and give homage to the vegetable that is an integral part of their culture, livelihood and way of life.

Potato powered lightbox


The Sipswami Medicine Women's Collective (who live with Parque de la Papa/The Potato Park) holding their developing prints at a cyanotype workshop we did together.

Peeling the Paris Green dedicated Website CLICK HERE


Essay by Maywa Montenegro de Wit, Professor of Environmental Studies at UCSC.


Genetic Scientist at CIP. 


CIP (The International Potato Centre) in Lima, Peru, is a part of CGIAR (Consultive Group on International Agricultural Research). A global partnership that unites international organisations engaged in scientific research around food security.


Occasionally working with Parque de la Papa through CIP, CGIAR have a research presence in more than 20 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.


When investigating CGIAR's funders, among the governmental funding, there are also private funders such as The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation is among the five top donors of the World Bank's Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) program, which guides policymaking for pro-business reforms in the agriculture sector.

This conflict of interest usually has dire results for farmers, landworkers, and indigenous peoples. As gene editing, chemical-intensive agriculture and patented seeds get pushed as the solutions to food insecurity.

"...beyond the elemental act of day to day nourishment, food, like gold, functions as currency."

  • Ackerman, 1990, p.129

In Peeling The Paris Green, the value placed on different knowledge systems is investigated in relation to the growing issues surrounding global food security in the face of the ever-increasing climate crisis. The contentious debate between the more industrial-based science of gene editing vs. the more holistic-based movement of agroecology and the importance and rights of indigenous knowledge is expressed through an in-depth, rhizomatic, research-based photographic investigation of the humble potato. The project traces the politics surrounding this complex issue, through genetic engineering laboratories in the UK, the indigenous-led communities of Parque de la Papa (The Potato Park) in the Peruvian Andes, seen widely as the guardians of potato diversity and advocates against biopiracy, to the cryopreservation of potatoes at The International Potato Centre in Lima, a step deemed necessary as plant varieties rapidly become extinct.


Interspersed with constructed still lives, research and data, the project mixes discernibly disparate visuals that disrupt and ultimately seek to confront the limitations of documentary photography, while shedding light on the complex secrets hidden beneath the food on our plates.

Potato Seeds being sorted at CIP.

A potato berry in the glasshouses of The Commonwealth Potato Collection, housed at the John Innes Centre, Dundee.

National Potato Day Celebrations at Parque de la Papa, Peru. 


Parque de la Papa is a Biocultural Territory dedicated to the conservation of biological and cultural diversity set 3,200 - 5,000 ft above sea level in the Peruvian Andes. Managed by a collection of five indigenous communities, Amaru, Chawaytire, Pampallacta, Paruparu and Sacaca, with support from the NGO, Association Andes, they grow, cultivate and protect over 3,000 different varieties of potato, and act as in situ conservationists and guardians of potato diversity.


This diversity is more important than ever in face of the continued climate crisis. As temperatures rise, so do pathogens and viruses that attack crops. More and more frequently the peoples of Parque de la Papa have to move their potato crops further up the mountains to avoid them succumbing to crop-failing diseases.

The diversity of varieties they grow protects them however from complete crop failure.

Another reason that indigenous knowledge and agroecology must be truly valued in the fight for food security.

Paris Green, or copper acetoarsenite, is an inorganic compound made with arsenic and copper that was originally invented as a type of powdered pigment used in a popular green paint of the 19th century. In 1867, farmers in Illinois discovered that by throwing the highly toxic powder onto their potato crops, they could rid them of the dreaded Colorado Potato Beetle. And thus, one of the first mass-produced insecticides was born. Paris Green, and a few other potato-focused early pesticides, were the first “to be worthy of production on an industrial scale; to this extent...the potato was a catalyst for the creation and development of the agrochemical industry which today wields so much power”.(Reader, 2008, p. 45)

The Actors (Local actors re-staging and re-claiming from the 1939 British Empire Potato Collecting Expedition Archive).


After arriving in Peru in 1939, The British Empire Potato Collecting Expedition travelled more than 9,000 miles through South America, and ‘collected’/took over 1,000 samples of wild potatoes, as well as land races or varieties cultivated by the indigenous population, (that archaeologists now believe to have been cultivating the potato for over 8,000 years).


This collection was at first housed at the Potato Virus Research Station at Cambridge University, but now makes up The Commonwealth Potato Collection housed at The John Innes Centre in Dundee, Scotland.


When in Peru I worked with local actors and food sovereignty activists to bring this biopiracy that is the basis and history of Western agribusiness to light.

As a part of its conservation program, The International Potato Center currently uses cryopreservation to freeze and preserve thousands of varieties of potato plants, for a future in which they have possibly become extinct. The wild varieties of potato usually have higher resistance to certain pathogens and viruses, as such, they are used within both traditional and bioengineered breeding to create new varieties of potato with higher climate resistance, such as resistance to certain pathogens, diseases or drought.


Like The Commonwealth Potato Center, and Parque de la Papa, The International Potato Center also has a seed deposit in the Svalbard seed vault, the international ‘doomsday’ seed vault dug deep into the permafrost within the arctic circle in Norway. 

On May 30th, the Peruvian national day of the potato, the communities of Parque de la Papa come together to celebrate and give homage to the vegetable that is an integral part of their culture, livelihood and way of life.

Potato powered lightbox


The Sipswami Medicine Women's Collective (who live with Parque de la Papa/The Potato Park) holding their developing prints at a cyanotype workshop we did together.

Using Format