Potatoes From Chips to Chuno

The world would certainly be a dull place without potato chips, French fries, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, tater tots, potato skins, colcannon, potato salad, potato pancakes, a freeze-dried potato called chuno, and dozens of other delicious foods, as well as beverages such as vodka that are made from potatoes. This humble lump of mainly carbohydrates and starch has made humanity healthier, more disease resistant and generally made us taller than our ancestors who did not eat as many potatoes as we do today.

Like many of today’s staple foods, potatoes started out as a basically a weed. Around 10,000 years ago it was discovered to be edible by neolithic people living is what is now the Altiplano area of Peru and Bolivia around Lake Titicaca, which at over 12,000 feet in elevation is one of the highest lakes in the world. The nights are cold there and plants cultivated in other areas such as teosinte which became today’s maize would not grow well, nor would wheat that grew in the Fertile Cresent of west Asia, nor rice that originated in eastern Asia.

For hundreds of years, potatoes were the staple crop for the groups of Indians that grew into the Inca Empire. They learned to cultivate the tuber and its nutrients were important in giving them the energy needed to build impressive cities and stone monuments in a region where other edible plants did not grow well.

Then in the 1530s when Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizzaro and his soldiers conquered the Incas, they sent to Spain gold, silver, and potatoes. The gold and silver financed guns, warships, and weapons for soldiers, but the potato outlasted all of that Spanish military apparatus to become one of the most important foods in Europe and the rest of the world.

Our English word for potato comes from the Taino Indians of South America who called them batata, which today we know as a white sweet potato. The name spud did not come into use until the 1840s probably after the word spade, the tool most people use to dig potatoes out of the ground.

Over the years, potatoes spread north from the Andes Mountains and were grown by Native Americans in North America. It was said that scientist Thomas Harriot who was part of Walter Raliegh’s expedition to Roanoke Island, brought potatoes with him when he returned to England with Sir Francis Drake in 1586 and introduced the crop there. Some accounts have the potato being introduced to Ireland by Basque fishermen who would stop in western Ireland on their way to fishing grounds in North America. As people traveled around the world, so did the potato.

At first the lumpy and unattractive potatoes were not welcomed as a wholesome food, especially among the upper classes of polite society. As it spread, it mainly became a peasant food. Oddly enough, one of the reasons potatoes became popular was the propensity of Europeans to frequently wage war. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries when armies moved to battle areas, they lived off the land by foraging crops and animals from the peasant farmers whose land they crossed. As Napoleon famously quipped: “An army marches on it stomach.” Wheat, corn, and cattle were easy targets. But potatoes, growing underground were not readily detected and were often left undisturbed. So, when the army moved on, the peasant family could dig up their potatoes and have food to eat.

In time, people began to recognize the health benefits of potatoes over grains and other foods. Europeans a few centuries ago had no idea that potatoes contained up to four times as many calories as wheat, plus a substantial amount of carbohydrates, protein, vitamin C, calcium, iron, potassium, dietary fiber, and other nutrients humans needed. They just knew that people who ate them were generally healthy.

One of the early promoters of potatoes was French pharmacist, Antoine Parmentier. As a soldier during the Seven Years War of 1756 to 1763, Parmentier was captured by the Prussians and while in prison ate lots of potatoes which was a staple food in Prussia thanks to the encouragement of King Frederick II in the 1740s. When Parmentier returned to France, he began to promote the value of potatoes as a nourishing food for people instead of just hog food as was its main use in France at the time.

At first, Parmentier faced strong opposition by many people and even the French government, but by the 1770s and 1780s, he had convinced the French that that potatoes could be a delicious and nutritious food. especially when compared to wheat and other grains. Gradually the French came to appreciate Parmentier and potatoes and when died in 1813 a potato plant was engraved on his tombstone showing that the nation was grateful for his persistence.

Potato cultivation was a boon to peasants who did not have enough land to grow wheat or other grains that required several acres for a successful and profitable crop. It was especially beneficial in Ireland where most of the tillable land was controlled by English landlords interested only in rent from the tenants and profit from the crops. It was said that an Irish family of seven or eight could survive on an acre of potatoes and enough grass for a cow. By the early 1800s, many Irish families were living on nothing but potatoes and milk, pratai and bainne. And when the cow died, the meals were pratai only.

For a few years this arrangement worked well enough. Potatoes alone provided a survival level of nutrition for the Irish. Then in 1845 a fungus called phytophthora infestans, or the late blight, that flourished in the cool, wet weather of Northern Europe, wiped out millions of acres of potatoes from Ireland to Russia. Potatoes that started out healthy looking, by harvest time had turned into inedible brown and black lumps. Most Europeans who ate a varied diet of meat, grain and potatoes survived the blight in good shape. The Irish who had become dependent on potatoes alone began to starve.

The next year was even worse and nearly every potato crop in Ireland failed. At that point the Irish had nowhere to turn except for help from the English government. Their pleas for help, however, largely fell on deaf ears.

A few public works were started that gave jobs to some of the poor and starving. But the works system was poorly administered and did not last long. Soup kitchens were set up but their effect was small in light of the enormity of problem. People were starving on a large scale.

A situation that could have helped was stopping the continued exportation of wheat and other grains from Ireland to England. The grain would have fed thousands but the English government would not stop the shipments although many people, urged them to. A few quotes by a few government officials shows an attitude of indifference to the plight of the Irish people who many felt were not worth saving.

Charles Trevelyan, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in England wrote in December 1846: “The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse, turbulent character of the people.” He later stated that: “If the Irish once found out there are any circumstances in which they can get free government grants, we shall have a system of mendicancy such as the world never knew.” And, of course, to get a point across, it is expedient to bring in God: “The judgment of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson; that calamity must not be too much mitigated.”

The English Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel is quoted as saying: “There is such a tendency to exaggeration and inaccuracy in the Irish reports that delay in acting on them is always desirable.” But compare this statement with one from a doctor in the town of Skibbereen in County Cork where thousands of famine victims were buried: “All talk of exaggeration is at an end. The people are dying – not in twos or threes – but by dozens; the ordinary forms of burial are dispensed with.”

Over a million Irish died in the famine from 1845 to 1850, and another million emigrated to other countries such as America and Australia. It was a tragedy brought on by too many people depending on one vegetable and the lack of concern by English landlords and government officials. The memory of that tragedy lingers in the minds of the Irish wherever they live.

Today most of the varieties of potatoes we eat, like wheat, corn and other major crops, are the result of scientific research that has been done from China to America to improve productivity and nutrition. One example is the Commonwealth Potato Collection started in 1938 in Scotland to study heritage and wild varieties of potatoes for their resilience and sustainability.

In the early 1900s, Danish nutritionist, Mikkel Hindheder, demonstrated that humans can live on a very limited diet of potatoes, butter, and apples, at least for a while. He advocated what he called a lacto-vegetarian diet. Based on diets practiced by members of some Eastern religions, the diet consisted of vegetables, dairy products, and very little meat.

In the United States, a great deal of research was done by Luther Burbank, who in the early 1900s developed a potato called the russet Burbank, a reddish-brown, rough-skinned potato, that because it tastes good and stores longer than other varieties, is the most widely cultivated potato in America today. Russet Burbank potatoes are somewhat resistant to the blight that ruined the potato crop in Europe and Ireland in the 1840s. In spite of the resistance however, the blight is still a concern in some moist areas. Other varieties of russet developed later are the Idaho russet – that is grown only in Idaho and the Norkodah, a type of russet developed in North Dakota. All are considered good for baking and making French fries.

It is interesting that long before scientists got involved in potato research, farmers had figured out that the best time to plant potatoes is during a waning moon going from full to new. It is all based on the gravitational pull of the moon. Just as the full moon pulls ocean water up to create a rising tide, it also pulls moisture up from soil. So, a waning moon will pull less water, leaving it in the ground where it can be soaked up by young potatoes.

Although hundreds if not thousands of varieties of potatoes grow wild in the Andes Mountains, less than 200 are cultivated around the world. And in the United States a shopper can usually find only five or six varieties to choose from such as: Idaho russet, russet Burbank, Kennebec, Yukon gold, and red bliss.

Of course, one of the concerns of potato growers today is the warm weather brough on by climate change. Most varieties are more productive in cool weather with a moderate amount of rain. High temperatures and either drought or too much rain can limit a crop.

This is a problem being worked on at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru where wild varieties of potatoes are bred to taste good and be hardy enough to adapt to changes in temperature and rainfall. It has been noted that Andean and other potato farmers in mountainous regions are having to plant their crops at higher elevations to get the cool temperatures their potatoes need for maximum production.

It is an on-going challenge facing all crops. There does not seem to be much that humans can do to stop the problems caused by climate change. The problem is big and most of the eight billion of us are set in our ways and don’t want to change. And whether a few stubborn politicians and fossil fuel executives want to admit it or not, for one reason or another, it is happening and it is beginning to affect our food supply.

The best we can do now is consider the problem another challenge in our long history of natural selection. We’ve adapted before, and hopefully we will adapt again. At this time, farmers are producing more food than ever in our history. The challenge is that there are now more of us to feed, and the world population is growing by several thousand each day.

In order to rally support for environmental issues some people have compared our climate situation to a war. Not a people-to-people war. Unfortunately, we have not even evolved in our humanity far enough to stop fighting each other. And we surely cannot fight nature. The natural forces governing our universe, our solar system, and our planet are unstoppable. We can mitigate the effects of nature on small scales with such things as air conditioners to keep us cool, electric vehicles to decrease the amount of carbon we are spewing into our atmosphere. But we cannot change the forces that have brought a number of ice ages, volcanoes, and warming trends to our planet. The best we can do is try not to exacerbate the situation.

The good news is that unlike our ancestors who had little power over their future, today we have scientists studying the problem and trying to figure out ways we can adapt to the erratic weather patterns we see today around the world. Hopefully we can develop potatoes and other crops that grow well in warmer weather, drier weather, or wetter weather.

This is the real war. Forget about fighting each other. We don’t have time for that. We need to turn our technological prowess toward feeding each other instead of building more weapons to destroy each other. Or do some macabre-minded people think that killing a few millions of ourselves in wars will help take the strain off our food supply?

But as mean and thoughtless as some of us are, our human moral base cannot long allow us to watch each other die. At this time crop production numbers are high. China, India, Europe, United States, and most other nations are growing enough food to feed themselves. So far, our technology from field to table is helping us keep up with the needs of our current population of 8.1 billion. Problems occur, however, where military conflicts create trade and transportation barriers. We see this happening in many places around the world today with the result that many people are starving even though there is enough food available for them. This is not an agricultural problem. It is a human morality problem.

If we can keep growing lots of corn, wheat, potatoes, soybeans, broccoli, spinach, cabbage, celery, apples, oranges, and the many other crops that keep us alive, we should be able to survive into the next billion population, and the next. Let us use our land and our water, and our natural resources wisely. It is all we’ve got and there is not any more being made. As astronaut Suni Williams put it while looking at our fragile planet from space: “It really is difficult for me to imagine people on Earth not getting along. It’s the one planet we have, and we should really be happy that we’re there together because that’s it. That’s our place.”

Ted McCormack