Let them eat spuds: potatoes - the world's new staple
Andrew Buncombe
Monday, 21 April 2008
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/let-them-eat-spuds-the-worlds-new-staple-812661.html
As the Bangladeshi army is ordered to march on potatoes rather than rice, Andrew Buncombe investigates whether the humble tuber, so popular in the West, can really help alleviate the global food crisis
When the order came down from the top brass of
But in a country where rice is overwhelmingly the staple dish, this was no laughing matter. With Bangladesh and the rest of Asia gripped by a rice crisis that has sent governments into panic, last Friday's announcement by the military that it was turning to the potato to supplement its troops' rations was for real. "The daily food menu now includes 125g of potato for each soldier irrespective of ranks," it said.
But it is not just in
Such are the hopes being placed on the tuber that the UN named 2008 the International Year of the Potato. "As concern grows over the risk of food shortages and instability in dozens of low-income countries, global attention is turning to an age-old crop that could help ease the strain of food price inflation," said the world body.
"It is ideally suited to places where land is limited and labour is abundant, conditions that characterise much of the developing world. The potato produces more nutritious food more quickly, on less land, and in harsher climates than any other major crop."
The emergence of the potato as a potential solution to global hunger comes amid mounting concern about the increased cost of food around the world. The price of rice, wheat and cereals has soared in recent months, as a result of the increasing price of oil, rising demand and uncertain supplies. Many countries have been forced to take special measures to protect their food suppplies.
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, expressed his own concern about the mounting food prices at globalisation talks in
Mr Ziegler said that growth in biofuels, speculation on the commodities markets and European Union export subsidies meant the West was to blame for the problem. "Hunger has not been down to fate for a long time – just as Marx thought. It is rather that a murderer is behind every victim. This is silent mass murder," he told the Austrian newspaper, Kurier am Sonntag.
"We have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror. We have to put a stop to this."
Against such a stark backdrop, the global challenge being presented to the potato by its champions could hardly be tougher. And yet, already the potato is quietly going about its business, often in places that one might not normally associate with it. Indeed, around the world it is the third most-produced crop for human consumption, after rice and wheat.
Take
In the north-east Indian state of Nagaland, which borders
In
"We have to change people's eating habits,"
Meanwhile, in
The potato was first cultivated 7,000 years ago high in the Andes close to
It was taken to
Experts say the potato has great nutritional value. It is a source of complex carbohydrates which release their energy slowly and have just 5 per cent of the fat content of wheat. They have more protein than corn and nearly double the amount of calcium. They also contain iron, potassium, zinc and vitamin C, and were eaten by sailors in previous centuries as a guard against scurvy.
And yet, for all its nutritional wonders and easy-to-grow charms, the potato seems to suffer from an image problem. It may have to do with the awfulness of the Irish famine, when the crop failed as a result of potato blight and perhaps a million people starved, their fate and suffering exacerbated by the continued export of other foods to England. Perhaps, too, it is linked to the early aversion Europeans had to the potato; when it was first brought back from the
"The thing is that in the West we take the potato for granted," said Paul Stapleton, a spokesman for the International Potato Centre, a non-profit group based in
Speaking yesterday from
Analysts say that while the price of other foods has increased sharply, one factor that has helped potatoes remain affordable for the world's poorer people is that it is not a global commodity that attracts the sort of professional investment that was so damned by the UN's food envoy, Mr Ziegler. Around 17 per cent of the 600 million tons of wheat produced every year are traded internationally compared to just 5 per cent of potatoes. As a result, potato prices are driven mainly by local tastes rather than international demand, they say.
In such circumstances, the scientists in
Confronted by such a challenge, could this really be the time of the potato?
The root of civilisation
The potato was first cultivated 7,000 years ago by the Incas in
By Claire Ellicott
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