The potato conquers the world

A group of schoolgirls I was speaking with recently, told me that their favourite food is potato. I bet it is yours too!

Potato is a favourite with the young and old alike. We have it curried, boiled, sauteed (cooked in a little fat or oil) or fried as potato chips or French fries (thin oblong pieces). We use it as a binding agent in cutlets.

Now we often hear and read about globalisation. One commodity that became globalised long, long before the word was even invented was the potato.

Today I am going to tell you how this humble tuber left its native home in South America, spread around the world and became one of the most popular vegetables and one of the world’s main food crops.

The potato is a tuber not a yam. The swollen end of an underground stern is called a ‘stolon’. The stolon may form five or six or as many as 20 tubers. These tubers are called potatoes.

The skin of the potato is brownish, but there are potatoes with deep purple skins. The Nuwara Eliya potato has a light purple skin. The flesh of most potatoes is white or yellowish, but there is a variety with purple flesh.

The valleys high up in the Andes Mountains in South America is the home of the potato. It was cultivated about 5,000 years ago, long before the Incas established their empire, about the time Parakramabahu 1 reigned in Polonnaruwa. So, the potato is one of man’s oldest food crops.

The Spaniards came to South America in 1520 or so (a little later than the coming of the Portuguese to Sri Lanka). They found the potato being cultivated in the Andes Valleys facing the Pacific Coast, in the region from present day Chile to Ecuador.

The people of this region continue to cultivate potato, not one, but many varieties. I have read that at any village market in these countries, one may find as many as 50 varieties of potato.

The Spaniards brought the potato to Europe, and Walter Raleigh, soldier, explorer and favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, brought it to England about the year 1586. The Irish took to potato cultivation in earnest and the harvests were good. By the end of the next century, the newcomer was a major crop in Ireland.

Ireland’s economy became largely dependent on the potato. A hundred years later, the potato was a major crop in Germany too. When the British, the Dutch the Germans, Spanish and Portuguese began to extend their empires to Asia, America, Canada and Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries, they introduced the potato to their new colonies.

In countries where the climate and soil were suitable, potato cultivation spread rapidly, as in India.

Rice is the staple food of more than half the world’s population. Maize comes second and potato is a close rival for second place. You might ask “Can people live on potato?” Yes, they can.

Potato was the staple food of the majority in Ireland from about the late 17th century to mid 19th century, until the crops failed in 1846 and 1847 due to a blight (plant disease). A great famine followed. People had nothing to eat. Many Irish people migrated to America.

The Government realised the danger and folly of depending only on one crop. Early this year, there was a great shortage of rice in Bangladesh due to the great floods last year.

The Government asked the people to eat potato. It was not absurd advice like the answer Queen Marie Antoinette gave the French peasants who came to her and complained that there was no bread, she told them. “If there is no bread, eat cake”.

Potato is a crop cultivated on a large scale in Bangladesh. Last year Bangladesh had a potato harvest of seven million tonnes and was expecting a bigger harvest this year. Until 1947 Bangladesh was part of India where potato was being cultivated from the time the British became rulers of India.

We Sri Lankans too began to eat potatoes after we became a British colony; but we were not encouraged to grow potatoes. We were eating potatoes imported from India until about the early 1960s. Now potato is being cultivated on a large scale in the Nuwara Eliya and Badulla districts in places like Welimada.

Local potatoes and Indian potatoes are both for sale in our markets. The price difference!! The Indian potato is cheaper. Why? The cost of production is less because labour is cheaper in India.

Potato is sometimes called ‘arthapal’ to differentiate it from other tubers and yams which are called ‘ala’. Arthapal is from the Dutch word aardappel. So, it must have been the Dutch who first brought the potato to our country and Lankans too called it by the Dutch name.

Fact file

* This is the International Year of the Potato

* The International Potato Organisation has its headquarters in Lima, the capital of Peru, the birth place of the potato.

- Sumana Saparamadu