The Great Potato Route goes beyond Eurasia: Viktor Kovalev brings the project to the World Potato Congress in Kenya

Naivasha, Kenya — 26–30 October 2026. Viktor Kovalev, founder of the industry outlet potatoes.news, head of the International Potato Tour project and host of the Potato 2.0 podcast, will take part in the 13th World Potato Congress (WPC 2026). He will not be travelling alone: a delegation of industry professionals and sector representatives from Central Asia, the South Caucasus and Russia will join him in Kenya.

For the first time in the Congress’s thirty-year history, the event is being held in Sub-Saharan Africa. The venue is the Sawela Lodges & Convention Centre on the shore of Lake Naivasha in the Great Rift Valley. Organisers expect more than 1,000 delegates from over 60 countries — growers, breeders, processors, researchers, regulators and investors. This year’s theme is “Global Potato Partnership for Enhanced Food Systems, Nutrition Security and Trade”. The programme includes plenary and scientific sessions, policy roundtables, a trade exhibition, a demonstration field day and technical tours of Kenyan farms.

Why the delegation is coming

The main purpose of the trip is to present the Great Potato Route project to the international potato community.

The idea is to connect potato-growing regions along the logic of historic trade routes: from Eurasia outward to the markets and research centres of other continents. This is not a one-off expedition but a long-term research and media programme running more than five years, with a launch scheduled for 2028.

2027 has been designated the preparatory year. Over that period the project team plans to:

• agree and verify the routes — countries, regions and points of entry into industry clusters;
• assemble a pool of institutional and commercial partners;
• define the scientific framework of the study and the research participants;
• build the production pipeline for media coverage — filming, publications, podcast.

In that logic, the Kenyan congress is the first venue where the project moves beyond the Eurasian perimeter and is discussed simultaneously with partners from Africa, North and South America, Europe and Asia. The format — a thousand delegates from sixty countries in one place over five days — offers a rare concentration of the right people for that conversation.

What stands behind the project

The International Potato Tour and potatoes.news have spent several years working where industry journalism meets field practice: reports from farms, technology reviews, interviews with growers, breeders and processors, and the Potato 2.0 podcast. The Great Potato Route continues that line but changes the scale: instead of isolated country cases, it sets out an end-to-end comparison of agronomic, seed, logistics and market practices along an extended route, gathered under a single methodology and over a long horizon.

Meeting at the Congress

Viktor Kovalev is open to meetings in Naivasha during the Congress — with growers, breeding and seed companies, processors, machinery and crop protection suppliers, industry associations, research institutes and prospective project partners.

Arrange a meeting in advance — the Congress schedule is tight.

Contacts: Viktor Kovalev — potatoes.news / International Potato Tour / Potato 2.0 podcast Phone: +7 967 712-02-02 Email: i@viktorkovalev.ru

Background. The 13th World Potato Congress takes place on 26–30 October 2026 in Naivasha, Kenya. It is organised by World Potato Congress Inc. together with the National Potato Council of Kenya and FreshCrop Limited. Source: potatopro.com, official WPC 2026 materials.