When the order came down from the top brass of Bangladesh‘s armed forces it sounded like a joke. Some of the soldiers and sailors who were told that from now on their daily rations would include increased servings of potatoes almost certainly did not take it seriously either.

But in a country where rice is overwhelmingly the staple dish, this was no
laughing matter. With Bangladesh and the rest of Asia gripped by a rice
crisis that has sent governments into panic, last Friday’s announcement by
the military that it was turning to the potato to supplement its troops’
rations was for real. “The daily food menu now includes 125g of potato
for each soldier irrespective of ranks,” it said.

But it is not just in Bangladesh that the humble spud is being turned to for
help. With world food prices soaring and with riots breaking out everywhere
from Egypt to Indonesia, experts believe that increased use of potatoes
could provide at least part of the solution. Easy to grow, quick to mature,
requiring little water and with yields two to four times greater than that
of wheat or rice, the potato is being cultivated more in an effort to ensure
food security, agronomists say.

Such are the hopes being placed on the tuber that the UN named 2008 the
International Year of the Potato. “As concern grows over the risk of
food shortages and instability in dozens of low-income countries, global
attention is turning to an age-old crop that could help ease the strain of
food price inflation,” said the world body.

“It is ideally suited to places where land is limited and labour is
abundant, conditions that characterise much of the developing world. The
potato produces more nutritious food more quickly, on less land, and in
harsher climates than any other major crop.”

The emergence of the potato as a potential solution to global hunger comes
amid mounting concern about the increased cost of food around the world. The
price of rice, wheat and cereals has soared in recent months, as a result of
the increasing price of oil, rising demand and uncertain supplies. Many
countries have been forced to take special measures to protect their food
suppplies. India, for instance, recently banned the export of rice except
for its premium basmati.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, expressed his own concern about the
mounting food prices at globalisation talks in Africa this weekend, saying
they posed “a threat to the stability of many developing countries”.
Meanwhile, the UN’s food envoy, Jean Ziegler, went much further, saying they
were leading to a “silent mass murder” that he blamed on the West.

Mr Ziegler said that growth in biofuels, speculation on the commodities
markets and European Union export subsidies meant the West was to blame for
the problem. “Hunger has not been down to fate for a long time – just
as Marx thought. It is rather that a murderer is behind every victim. This
is silent mass murder,” he told the Austrian newspaper, Kurier am
Sonntag.

“We have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits
who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror. We
have to put a stop to this.”

Against such a stark backdrop, the global challenge being presented to the
potato by its champions could hardly be tougher. And yet, already the potato
is quietly going about its business, often in places that one might not
normally associate with it. Indeed, around the world it is the third
most-produced crop for human consumption, after rice and wheat.

Take China. Already the world’s largest producer of potatoes, the country
has set aside large areas of additional agricultural land from the
south-west to the north-east in an effort to increase their cultivation.

India has told food experts it wants to double potato production in the next
five to 10 years while Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan are also
working to increase the area under cultivation for potatoes. Belarus
currently leads the world in potato consumption, with each inhabitant eating
an average of 376lb a year.

In the north-east Indian state of Nagaland, which borders Burma, local
authorities are working with NGOs to develop quick-maturing potatoes that
can be grown between the region’s two rice harvests. It is seen as an
additional source of food rather than a replacement and the NGOs are working
with the communities to educate people about the benefits of the potato and
how to grow it. (Could the chip butty become a Nagaland delicacy?)

In Peru, where the potato was first cultivated, a doubling in the price of
wheat in the past year has led to the launch of a government programme to
encourage bakers to use potato flour rather than wheat flour to make bread.
As part of the scheme, potato bread is being given to schoolchildren,
soldiers and even prisoners in a hope that it will catch on. At the moment,
there is a shortage of mills that are able to make potato flour.

“We have to change people’s eating habits,” Ismael Benavides,
Peru’s Agriculture Minister, told Reuters. “People got addicted to
wheat when it was cheap.”

In Latvia, a sharp increase in the price of bread in the first two months of
the year saw sales fall by up to 15 per cent. To make up for the Latvians’
shortfall in calories, sales of potatoes increased by around 20 per cent
during the same period.

The potato was first cultivated 7,000 years ago high in the Andes close to
Lake Titicaca. There are at least 5,000 varieties of potato, of which more
than 3,000 are found in the mountains. Ranging in colour from plaster-board
white through yellow to aubergine purple, the tuber retains huge practical
and cultural significance in South America.

It was taken to Europe by the Spanish, who apparently first encountered it
in 1532. Documentary evidence suggests that by 1573, potatoes were already
being sold in the markets in Seville. It arrived in India some time
afterwards, possibly brought by the Portuguese who seized Goa. Known in
Hindi as aloo it is the basis of a number of famous Indian dishes, such as
the potato and cauliflower curry aloo gobi.

Experts say the potato has great nutritional value. It is a source of
complex carbohydrates which release their energy slowly and have just 5 per
cent of the fat content of wheat. They have more protein than corn and
nearly double the amount of calcium. They also contain iron, potassium, zinc
and vitamin C, and were eaten by sailors in previous centuries as a guard
against scurvy.

And yet, for all its nutritional wonders and easy-to-grow charms, the potato
seems to suffer from an image problem. It may have to do with the awfulness
of the Irish famine, when the crop failed as a result of potato blight and
perhaps a million people starved, their fate and suffering exacerbated by
the continued export of other foods to England. Perhaps, too, it is linked
to the early aversion Europeans had to the potato; when it was first brought
back from the New World it was used mainly as a feed for cattle.

“The thing is that in the West we take the potato for granted,”
said Paul Stapleton, a spokesman for the International Potato Centre, a
non-profit group based in Peru that has been working with governments around
the world to develop faster-maturing strains of potato. “We just go to
the supermarket and buy a bag or else we’ll have fish and chips on a Friday
night on the way back from the pub.”

Speaking yesterday from Lima, Mr Stapleton said he believed potatoes could
help solve not just the current food crisis but also the challenges of
feeding a world with a population that is growing by 600 million people
every 10 years. “It can help with the current crisis and with the
population that is coming,” he said.

“There are no more areas to plant rice or wheat. What is going to
happen as the population increases? Either we are going to increase yields
of what we are already growing or use marginal land. The potato is perfect
for that.”

Analysts say that while the price of other foods has increased sharply, one
factor that has helped potatoes remain affordable for the world’s poorer
people is that it is not a global commodity that attracts the sort of
professional investment that was so damned by the UN’s food envoy, Mr
Ziegler.

Around 17 per cent of the 600 million tons of wheat produced every year are
traded internationally compared to just 5 per cent of potatoes. As a result,
potato prices are driven mainly by local tastes rather than international
demand, they say.

In such circumstances, the scientists in Lima believe it is in the
developing world that the potato will reach new heights. From Kenya and
Uganda to Nepal and Bangladesh, they envisage increased cultivation of
potatoes and a situation where farmers will grow them either as cash crops
to sell in the market or else to feed their families.

“The countries themselves are looking at the potato as a good option
for both food security and also income generation,” said the centre’s
director, Pamela Anderson.

Confronted by such a challenge, could this really be the time of the potato?

The root of civilisation

The potato was first cultivated 7,000 years ago by the Incas in Peru and the
name is thought to have derived from the Indian word batata.

The Incas revered them and buried them with their dead. Spanish
conquistadors in search of gold discovered the vegetables in Peru in 1532.
They failed to realise that they were more valuable than the gold, but used
them on their ships to prevent scurvy.

It was not long before farmers in the Basque region began to grow them and
the potato spread across Europe throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. It
wasn’t a smooth path, however. Most people knew more of the potato’s
disadvantages – the crop hails from the same family as deadly nightshade –
than they did of its considerable benefits. The Orthodox Church in Russia
rejected it outright as it was not mentioned in the Bible.

Potatoes arrived in Ireland towards the end of the 16th century. Although
popular legend has it that Sir Walter Raleigh introduced the crop to
Ireland, it is more likely to have happened through trade with the Spanish.

The nutritious vegetable caused a population explosion in Europe, especially
in Ireland. But the failure of the Irish crop in 1845 led to a devastating
famine. In 1995, the potato became the first vegetable to be grown in space.

Claire Ellicott

- Andrew Buncombe