This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Donna Martinez, associate editor of Carolina Journal.
Some readers may have skipped the story about the International Year of the Potato published in the March 1 issue of The Economist, seeing it as fodder for a good chuckle, but not a food with worldwide impact, like corn has today.
I was engrossed in every word. When I was a kid, almost every day, my family ate potatoes smothered in homemade gravy. They were filling and easy to fix. And they were cheap, key to my working-class family’s budget. We ate so many that we bought in bulk. I was a teenager before I realized not every family had a 50-pound bag of spuds in the garage.
I’ll forever associate potatoes with childhood, but it was The Economist that taught this free-marketer to appreciate their worldwide economic importance. Turns out the staple that played a vital role in my family’s diet and economic security has a history of providing stability and opportunity to millions.
So critical is the world’s fourth-largest food crop that, in 2005, the United Nations passed a declaration “affirming the need to focus world attention on the role that the potato can play in providing food security and eradicating poverty in support of achievement of the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals.” The International Year of the Potato (IYP) is the result.
Because they’re packed with nutrients, it’s possible to subsist entirely on potatoes. My mom jokes that she knows this firsthand. So did millions of Irish in the mid-1800s. The History Place Web site notes that an acre’s harvest in Ireland could feed a large family for a year. When the crop began to fail in 1845, catastrophe ensued. A million or more died from starvation and disease over several years.
Today, the potato is vital to the developing world. The IYP Web site assesses its impact on global food security and health this way: “Nutrient-rich potato (and sweet potato) can contribute to improved diets thus reducing mortality rates caused by malnutrition. As well as improving food security, such action will inevitably improve the health of target populations, especially women and children.”
When it comes to economic development and opportunity, potatoes are hard to beat. They’re relatively easy and fast to produce — typically 90 to 120 days. Historically, the ease of production has given farmers the ability to pursue additional work and raise their standard of living. The Economist reports that citizens of England were able in the 19th century both to produce potato crops and to work in factories, helping propel that country’s industrial revolution.
The U.N. believes the potato can also aid this century’s impoverished farmers. Reports the IYP Web site: “In sub-Saharan Africa and many parts of Asia, farms are still shrinking and may continue to do so for the next several generations. As farm size shrinks, many farm families are switching from grains and legumes to root and tuber crops to meet subsistence and income goals.” The site adds: “IYP can focus global attention on the need to alleviate poverty by increasing incomes and linking farmers to markets.”
Today, more than 100 countries capitalize on the potato’s nutritional, economic, and production attributes. China is the No. 1 producer, with 72 million tons in 2007, followed by the Russian Federation, India, and Ukraine. The U.S. took fifth place, producing nearly 18 million tons.
In North Carolina, potatoes are grown in the coastal plain, and next month Elizabeth City will host the North Carolina Potato Festival. The May 17 event includes a potato-peeling contest, the Little Miss Tater Tot contest, and an intriguing anything-but-fries cook-off.
Too bad my mom isn’t here to compete.