Women’s day: Cashing in chips against hunger and food insecurity in Colombia

In the village of Bajo Calima in Colombia’s main Pacific port, Buenaventura, papachina growers, now supported by the World Food Programme (WFP), came together to embark upon a new enterprise: creating nutritious chips – professionally branded for retail. In 2024, their dream became a crisp reality.

Similar to the Chinese potato, papachina (taro) is a root crop rich in fibre, calcium, potassium and vitamins.

Among the farmers is Daira, who is intent on furthering the training she's received from WFP to become an entrepreneur in her own right. As well as putting food on the table for her six daughters, she is inspiring them with a sense of independence. 

The significance of this cannot be overstated. In Colombia 13 million people – around 25 percent of the population – suffer moderate-to-severe levels of food insecurity. In Afro-Colombian communities women and girls are particularly at risk. 

Self-sufficiency is a value Daira prizes.

“Before I separated from my daughters’ father,” she says, “I learned how to plant papachina from him. It means income for me, but also for my girls, to support their schooling and get the things they need.”

Indeed, Daira has passed the knowledge on to her teenage daughters (her youngest is aged 2). “They clear the ground, they plant, they know how to process, they sell,” she says. As a mother she wants them “to learn how to get things by themselves, and know that you have to work for it.”

The thing to avoid, she adds, is “thinking because some man says, ‘Oh, hey there - gorgeous’, that they can depend on him.”

Daira’s oldest daughter is 19 and has lymphatic filariasis (also known as elephantiasis); she is super-keen to support her mother so that they can buy the treatments required for her swollen feet. 

Daira is among the 100 members of the Asochip (the Association of Afro-Colombian Men and Women Producers and Processors of the Papachina of Bajo Calima).

WFP has provided Asochip members with safety training and essential equipment, enabling them to scale production from 60 to 1,000 packs per day. They now sell in local stores and through WFP’s Ancestral Markets, a digital platform that connects Indigenous and Afro-descendant food producers with urban consumers.

“The challenge for us now is to create the demand,” says Daira – “to get that point of sale where a customer says, ‘We need 1,000 packs.’”

With the machinery, “know-how and desire” in place, Daira and her colleagues are all set to find solutions to challenges such as not having premises or transport - even short distances are a haul because of the weight and shape of the crops.

“It’s a lot of walking,” she says. “The most challenging thing is carrying the sacks (full of harvested taro) – especially when it’s raining. You end up getting scratched and everything.” 

Cultivating is a problem, too, because “12 peones (day labourers) are needed to plant one hectare of papachina,” she says. 

For Daira, producing Afrochips is a source “not only of income but also personal growth” on what she sees as the road to independence.

For years, she believed that her survival depended on her husband. She says that if he didn’t bring anything home, there would be no food on the table. Her late mother inspired her.

“My mother sat me down and told me I couldn’t depend on that man,” she recalls, referring to her husband. “She said women were made for more than that - she was the one who raised me, and she asked if I had ever seen her rely on a man to bring anything home.”

It was a turning point. Looking at how her children had to wait for their father to provide the basics, she took control. “I worked very hard … just for food – because there wasn’t enough to buy anything for myself.”

Her mother was right, she concluded. Her children were somewhat neglected despite the money she earned. “I was the one bringing the food in. His mother and sisters were all nicely dressed, while my daughters and I were not. That was my wake-up call. That’s when I left.”

A callout from Ancestral Markets to food producers to pitch products brought Daira and the association into contact with WFP.  

“WFP gave us an excellent chopper and a fryer,” she explains. “They supplemented our work so that now we can say to someone, ‘We can supply you with 20,000 packs of chips a month.’”

She adds: “When they (Ancestral Markets) called us and said, ‘Look, your product is up on the site,’ that was really great.”

Looking back, she is pleased her entrepreneurial spirit saw her through. “WFP’s support has been fundamental. The change from what we were to what we are now has been huge,” she says.

Learn more about WFP's work in Colombia