With over 5,000 varieties, potato is a popular vegetable grown in many countries. Today, May 30, is the first International Day of the Potato. The United Nations chose May 30, to spread awareness on the crop’s economy, nutrition, culture and sustainability. Humanity’s starchy staple deserved its annual day, but every day is potato day in different parts of the world. Thousands of farmers in Asia, Africa, and South and North America would be sowing or harvesting the tuber every day.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced the 2024’s theme as ‘Harvesting diversity, feeding hope‘, recognising the efforts of small-scale farmers who are custodians of thousands of native potato varieties. The day advocates for the replication of best practices and development of sustainable value chains.

Potato’s production and trade

Like the potato farmer’s harvest under climate change, harvesting potato data in the information era, is difficult. Statistics vary across market research reports and databases.

The trade value of potatoes was $5.31 billion for 2021-2022, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), an online data visualization and distribution platform. The production data is more forthcoming. In 2022 the world produced 375 million tonnes of potato. The total harvested area was 17,788,408 hectares or 177,884 sq.km. For scale, this area is bigger than Nepal, that loves its alu ka achar (pickled potato) and alu dum (slow cooked potato). And even bigger than Greece, where the patatosalata (potato salad) is a favourite and now popular on menus in India as well.

China is the world’s largest potato grower and it cultivated 95 million tonnes in 2022. In the same year, India the second largest potato grower, produced 56 million tonnes.

The Netherlands, France and Germany are the largest exporters. Belgium, U.S.A. and Spain were the largest importers of the crop in 2022.

Potatoes have both food and non-food uses. Food uses include fresh potatoes for cooking, frozen potatoes for fries and chips and dehydrated ones for starch (for thickening and crisping) and flour (gluten-free baking and a healthier thickening agent). The value of the global dehydrated potato market was between $5 and 6 billion in 2023. As for non-food uses, potato starch’s adhesive, binder, texturiser and filler qualities make it valuable for the pharmaceutical, textile, wood, and paper industries. The starch market alone is speculated to be around $4 billion or more.

Now, any billion-dollar food commodity business, even if ‘green’, has environmental costs.  There is also an environmental history to the commodification of the food.

The sustainability challenge

We mistake the potato for a traditional crop, or a customary carbohydrate, in the Western Ghats and Himalayas. However, it was in the Peruvian Andes that Inca Indians first domesticated it 8,000 years ago.

Most potato varieties are nurtured in the Andes. They farm and name colourful and asymmetric varieties. Peruvians name their ‘papa‘ (potato) after their colours – the purple one (púrpura), or the multicoloured peruanita. Peruvian farmers safeguard heirloom seeds and traditional varieties. Potatoes are also treasured wedding gifts in Peruvian heritage.

In 2002, six indigenous communities founded the Potato Park in Peru, to preserve the genetic diversity of the crop and the cultural heritage. Contrast this with the more utilitarian potato farming in India –  Kufri Chipsona which is perfect for chips, Kufri Jyoti, an early-maturer, Kufri Badshah for size and taste, or Kufri Chandramukhi for light skin, oval shape and shape retaining abilities when cooked. This shape maintenance is possible due to pesticide use.

Mass production of what became a staple tuber that defied class boundaries and tastes, required intensive pesticide use, especially against ‘late blight’ caused by Phytophthora infestans. This pest triggered the great Irish famine of 1845, and the mass emigration to America. Even in the Nilgiris in southern India, in the mid-1960s, late blight hit the district’s potato crop. Also, with the use of several fertilisers and pesticides for the mass production of the crop, the Nilgiris today is a chemical-intensive district.

How we grow, process and cook potatoes matters for soil and societal health. This applies to other root vegetables too. One way could be shifting away the focus from the shape and light colour of potatoes and embracing varieties that could be uneven in appearance, but effective in nourishment.

Read more: Rising temperatures alter insect-crop interactions and impact agricultural productivity

Growing climate-resilient varieties

Studies have shown that potatoes produce lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to other crops. Sourcing good seed varieties is also an adaptive measure under climate change.

An important institution for a climate-era plant and genetic exchange is the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima. CIP preserves the planet’s largest in-vitro potato collection and breeds climate-smart varieties for developing countries, whose food-security it invests in.

Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)-Central Potato Research Institute (CPRI), located in Shimla, carries out research, education and extension on potato in collaboration with national and international partners for enhancing productivity and profitability, achieving sustainable food and nutritional security. It is viewed as a crop that helps the rural poor to rise out of poverty. Countries such as India must balance cultivation of mass varieties for food security with the cultivation of diverse varieties that are climate-resilient and also support good health.

The author is Lead, Ecosystems and Human Well-being Programme, ATREE.

Banner image: A potato farmer in India. Image by Vishahsh521 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 Deed).

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Priyanka Shankar Editor

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AgricultureIndia

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