With governments having trouble feeding the growing number of poor and grain prices fluctuating wildly, food scientists are proposing a novel solution for the global food crisis: Let them eat potatoes.
Grains like wheat and rice have long been staples of diets in most of the world and the main currency of food aid. Now, a number of scientists, nutritionists and aid specialists are increasingly convinced that the humble spud should be playing a much larger role to ensure a steady supply of food in the developing world.
Poor countries could grow more potatoes, they say, to supplement or even replace grains that are most often shipped in from far away and subject to severe market gyrations.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
Even before a sharp price spike earlier this year, governments in countries from China to Peru to Malawi had begun urging both potato growing and eating as a way to ensure food security and build rural income.
Production in China rose 50 percent from 2005 to last year, and the government has called potatoes “a way out of poverty.” In Peru, where potatoes are traditionally part of the highland diet, President Alan Garcia has led a campaign to promote potato eating in cities. Schools, prisons and army canteens are serving papapan (bread made with potatoes), helping to increase potato consumption by 20 percent this year.
A decade ago, the vast majority of potatoes were grown and eaten in the developed world, mostly in Europe and the Americas. Today, China and India — neither a traditional potato-eating country — rank first and third respectively in global potato production. And in 2005, for the first time, developing countries produced a majority of the world’s potatoes.
“Increasingly, the potato is being seen as a vital food-security crop and a substitute for costly grain imports,” said NeBambi Lutaladio, an expert on roots and tubers at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome. “Potato consumption is expanding strongly in developing countries, where potato is an increasingly important source of food, employment and income.”
Though the price of grains has receded in recent months from historic highs, grains are still far more expensive than just two years ago. The UN agency continues to strongly encourage countries to diversify into potato production, Lutaladio said, adding: “The world economy has entered a phase of wild swings. New and even more severe high price events could be just around the corner.”
And so the potato’s image is shifting from that of a food fit for peasants and pigs (and associated mostly with a devastating famine in Ireland) to a serious nutritional aid and an object of scientific study.
When the UN announced last year that 2008 would be the Year of the Potato, few took it seriously. That was before grain prices doubled between early last year and spring this year, and before the UN World Food Programme announced that it needed an extra US$500 million to buy grain.
Pamela K. Anderson, director of the International Potato Center, a global scientific research center in Lima, Peru, said that as recently last year, the most common question she fielded concerned her favorite potato recipe: “Now the food system is so fragile that people have stopped laughing. People are asking, ‘How can potatoes help solve the problem?’”
Anderson was one of dozens of international scientists who met this month here in the heart of Basque country at Neiker Technicalia, a 200-year-old potato research center. Their goal: to discuss advances in potato farming, like the development of pest and drought-resistant strains that could be used in poorer countries.
Potatoes are a good source of protein, starch, vitamins and nutrients like zinc and iron. As a crop, they require less energy and water to grow than wheat, taking just three months from planting to harvest.
Since they are heavy and do not transport well, they are not generally traded on world financial markets, making their price less vulnerable to speculation. They are not generally used to produce biofuels, a new use for food crops that has helped drive up grain prices. When grain prices skyrocketed, potato prices remained stable.
Beyond that, potato yields can be easily increased in most of the world, where they are grown inefficiently and in small numbers.
Thanks to the “green revolution” of the 1970s, yields of wheat, rice and corn jumped by more than 50 percent in a decade as fertilizers and new planting techniques were used. Potatoes never got that kind of attention.
In poor countries, potato yields are still relatively low, at just one to five tonnes of potatoes per hectare, less than 15 percent of the yield in the developed world.
From the perspective of traditional food aid programs — which buy or receive food from where it can be produced cheaply and efficiently and send it to where it is needed — potatoes have limitations.
Because they spoil easily and are heavy to ship, groups like the World Food Programme avoid them. They contain less protein than wheat, although looked at another way, a hectare of potatoes yields more protein than a hectare of wheat.
“They are quite perishable, especially in hotter climates; they sprout and rot quite quickly,” said Tina Vanden Briel, a nutrition expert at the World Food Programme.
She also said that potatoes were currently a staple food in very few countries, although they were widely used in stews.
“Moving from rice to potatoes is a big leap for people,” she said.
Nonetheless, the agency has made it a priority to increase production of food for aid in the countries where it is needed, both to lessen transit costs when fuel costs are high and to aid local economies.
Potato growth and consumption have already markedly increased in African countries in the past five years, although potatoes were introduced to the continent only about 100 years ago. In Rwanda, potatoes have become the second most important source of calories after cassavas. Potato production and consumption are also expanding rapidly in Nigeria and Egypt, according to the FAO.
One sign that potato growing is spreading: The world’s largest potato processing company, McCain Foods, has opened factories in China and India within the past two years.
The yield at a number of farms in India has doubled in the past two years to 20 tonnes a hectare after McCain gave better seeds to small farmers who supply its new factory, said Daniel Caldiz, a company executive.
In Chile, where about 50 percent of production comes from small farmers, government projects to provide better seeds have increased yields by 25 percent in the past decade, said Horacio Lopez, a government potato expert.
In poor countries, farmers seed new potatoes using leftovers from the previous year’s crop, which are often infected with pests. International agricultural companies cultivate and export germ-free “clean seed” potatoes that are much more productive, but these are expensive.
The International Potato Center is trying to help poor countries produce their own clean seed potato lines.
“When you plant a potato it gives you food security,” Anderson said. “It strengthens the local economy, instead of just sending in food.”
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