Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] To Counter Problems of Food Aid, Try Spuds

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] To Counter Problems of Food Aid, Try Spuds
  • Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:49:23 -0600


To Counter Problems of Food Aid, Try Spuds
Reuters
by ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: October 25, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/world/26spuds.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

VITORIA-GASTEIZ, Spain — With governments having trouble feeding the growing
number of hungry 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 potato
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 are subject
to severe market gyrations.

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 2007, and the government has
called potatoes “a way out of poverty.” In Peru, where potatoes are
traditionally part of the highland diet, President Alan García 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 increase 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 big potato-eating countries in the past — rank first and third,
respectively, in global potato production. 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 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization 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 they were just two years ago. The
United Nations agency continues to strongly encourage countries to diversify
into potato production, Mr. 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 United
Nations announced last year that 2008 would be the Year of the Potato, few
took it seriously. That was before grain prices doubled between early 2007
and spring 2008, and the United Nations World Food Program announced that it
needed an extra half billion dollars to buy grain.

Dr. 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?’ ” Dr. Anderson was one
of dozens of international scientists who met this month here in the heart of
Basque country at Neiker Tecnalia, 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 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 tons of potatoes per hectare (about 2 1/2 acres), less than 15 percent
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
Program avoid them. Pound for pound, they contain less protein than wheat,
although, looked at another way, an acre of potatoes yields more protein than
an acre of wheat.

“They are quite perishable, especially in hotter climates; they sprout and
rot quite quickly,” said Tina van den Briel, a nutrition expert at the World
Food Program. She said, too, 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 transportation
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 Food and Agriculture Organization.

One sign that potato growing is spreading: The world’s largest potato
processing company, McCain Foods Ltd., has opened factories in China and
India in the past two years.

The yield at a number of farms in India doubled in the past two years, to 20
tons 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,” Dr. Anderson said. “It
strengthens the local economy, instead of just sending in food.”





  • [Livingontheland] To Counter Problems of Food Aid, Try Spuds, Tradingpost, 10/26/2008

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page