The remote communities of Ecuador’s inter-Andean valleys have long faced the twin challenges of food insecurity and environmental degradation. Malnutrition affects approximately 40 percent of the region’s population, and farmers receive limited technological and economic support from formal institutions. The Union of Farmer and Indigenous Organizations of Cotacachi was founded to address these challenges and turn the relative abundance of rare native crop and fruit species to the advantage of farming communities. By conserving a wide variety of native, tuber, root, fruit, cereal, and medicinal plant species, the initiative has improved the diversity of income and nutrition sources for 3,225 farming families. In addition, the initiative has developed value-added processing of local varieties, and ‘agro-tourism
