Potatoes: A staple at home and abroad
by MARY ANN REECE
WHILE IDAHO’S STORIED POTATO still reigns as king of Gem state crops, with 2007 potato farm receipts at an all-time high of $721 million, potatoes elsewhere are making such significant gains, too, that the United Nations has declared 2008 the “International Year of the Potato.”
Until the early 1990s, most potatoes were grown and consumed in Europe, North America, and countries of the former Soviet Union.
photo©DREAMSTIME.COM
Since then, a dramatic increase in potato production and demand in Asia, Africa, and Latin America has seen those continents’ outputs quadruple from less than 30 million tons in the early 1960s to almost 120 million tons by the mid-1990s. Among third-world populations, potatoes are fourth in importance after rice, wheat, and corn.
China & India & Idaho
Today almost a third of all the world’s potatoes are harvested in China and India. In 2007 China grew the most potatoes (72 million tons), followed by the Russian Federation (35.7 million tons), India (26.3 million tons), Ukraine (19.1 million tons), and the USA (17.6 million tons). Of that, 6.2 million tons came from Idaho.
All but the Idaho figures come from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Recognizing the potato’s growing presence, the United Nations in late 2005 resolved 2008 should affirm “the need to focus world attention on the role the potato can play in providing foodsecurity and eradicating poverty.” So welcome, International Year of the Potato 2008!
Idaho still a potato leader
With all the international attention, it seems a good time to step back and review Idaho’s role with the potato and how the University of Idaho’s Agricultural Experiment Station and UI Extension researchers, faculty, and educators have played a continuous major role in the potato’s success.
A chance seedling of the Early Rose potato in 1870s New England and a mutant russet later in Denver resulted in the Russet Burbank, for nearly a century the reigning king of baked potatoes, sought after in restaurants and homes throughout the U.S. and world for both texture and taste.
The Russet Burbank is also hard to top for versatility—processed for chips and French fries and adored mashed, boiled, fried, or baked any meal of the day. But since Idaho made the “accidental” baked potato famous, little else about potatoes has been left to chance.
The phenomenal popularity of the Idaho potato is the result of hard work, experimentation, and innovation by Idaho’s potato growers alongside industry and scientists from the university and USDA Agricultural Research Service.
“If you look at University of Idaho research during past generations, I bet it was potato research that kept this college and even, in the early days, the university going,” says Greg Bohach, associate CALS dean and director of the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station.
For decades, everything has been studied. How far apart should seed potatoes be planted for best yields? How much water and how often? How soon before harvest should potato vines be killed? How do we get rid of knobs on potatoes? How can we store potatoes longer?
Potatoes are delicate. They bruise easily. Scabs, bacteria, fungi, and insects attack potatoes via soil, air, and water. All of these things are topics of more than 80 potato publications currently available from UI researchers and educators (see More about potatoes,)
Idaho boasts many successful agricultural stories, but none more complex and intriguing than that related to the potato.
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