AS WHEAT and rice prices surge, the humble potato is being rediscovered as a nutritious crop that could cheaply feed an increasingly hungry world.
Potatoes, which are native to Peru, can be grown at almost any elevation or climate: from the barren, frigid slopes of the Andes to the tropical flatlands of Asia. They require very little water, mature in as little as 50 days and can yield between t
wo and four times more food per hectare than wheat or rice.
"The shocks to the food supply are very real and that means we could potentially be moving into a reality where there is not enough food to feed the world," said Pamela Anderson, director of the International Potato Centre in Lima, a non-profit scientific group.
Like others, she says the potato is part of the solution to the hunger caused by higher food prices, a population that is growing by one billion people each decade, climbing costs for fertiliser and diesel, and more cropland being sown for biofuel production.
To focus attention on this, the United Nations named 2008 the International Year of the Potato, calling the vegetable a "hidden treasure".
Governments are also turning to the tuber. Peru's leaders, frustrated by a doubling of wheat prices in the past year, have started encouraging bakers to use potato flour to make bread. Potato bread is being given to schoolchildren, prisoners and the military, in the hope the trend will catch on.
Supporters say it tastes just as good, but not enough mills are set up to make potato flour. "We have to change people's eating habits," Ismael Benavides, Peru's agriculture minister, said. "People got addicted to wheat when it was cheap."
Even though the potato emerged in Peru 8,000 years ago near Lake Titicaca, Peruvians eat fewer potatoes than people in Europe: Belarus leads the world in consumption, with each inhabitant devouring an average of 376lb a year.
China, a huge rice consumer that historically has suffered devastating famines, has become the world's top potato grower, while in sub-Saharan Africa, the potato is expanding more than any other crop. India has told food experts it wants to double potato production in the next five to ten years.
In Latvia, sharp price rises caused bread sales to drop by 10 to 15 per cent in January and February, as consumers bought 20 per cent more potatoes.
The developing world is where most new potato crops are being planted, and as consumption rises, poor farmers have a chance to earn more money. "The countries themselves are looking at the potato as a good option for both food security and also income generation," Ms Anderson said.
The potato is already the world's third most-important food crop after wheat and rice.
Potatoes come in some 5,000 types, and Peru is sending thousands of seeds this year to the Doomsday Vault near the Arctic Circle, contributing to a gene bank for food crops that was set up in case of a global disaster.
In colours ranging from alabaster white to bright yellow and deep purple, and with countless shapes, textures and sizes, potatoes offer inventive chefs a chance to create new, eye-catching dishes.
The Lima potato centre says they are a great source of complex carbohydrates, which release their energy slowly, and have only 5 per cent of the fat content of wheat.
They also have a quarter of the calories of bread and, when boiled, have more protein than corn and nearly twice the calcium. They contain vitamin C, iron, potassium and zinc.
One factor helping the potato remain affordable is the fact that, unlike wheat, it is not a global commodity, so has not attracted speculative professional investment.
Each year, farmers worldwide produce 600 million tonnes of wheat – almost double the potato output – and some 17 per cent of that flows into foreign trade.
Analysts say less than 5 per cent of potatoes are traded internationally, and prices are mainly driven by local tastes, as opposed to international demand. Raw potatoes are heavy and can rot in transit, so global trade in them has been slow to take off. They are also susceptible to infection with pathogens.
The downside to that is prices in some countries aren't attractive enough to persuade farmers to grow them. People in Peruvian markets say the government needs to help lift demand. "Prices are low. It doesn't pay to work with potatoes," said Juana Villavicencio, who spent 15 years planting them and now sells the tubers for pennies a kilo in a market in Cusco, in Peru's southern Andes.
But science is moving fast. Genetically modified potatoes that resist "late blight" are being developed by the German chemicals group BASF. That is the disease that led to famine in Ireland during the 19th century and still causes about 20 per cent of potato-harvest losses in the world, the company says.
Scientists say farmers who use clean, virus-free seeds can boost yields by 30 per cent and be cleared for export. That would generate more income for farmers and encourage more production, as companies could sell speciality potatoes abroad, instead of just having them turned into frozen chips or crisps.
USE THEM TO MAKE FLOUR, VODKA – OR GOLF TEES• TO BOOST demand, Peru's government has started to serve bread made from potato flour in its schools, hospitals, prisons and to members of its armed forces. The move counters high wheat prices, but is also a point of Andean pride. The potato was first domesticated in Peru some 8,000 years ago, but the average Peruvian eats only 176lb of potatoes a year, compared with 376lb in Belarus, the world leader.
• To make potato flour for bread, you have to boil, dry, peel and then grind the potatoes into a fine powder. As an added bonus, bread made from potato flour is safe for people with an allergy to gluten, which is found in most grains.
• Vodka was first made from potatoes in Poland at about the turn of the 20th century, halving the cost of making vodka from wheat. Some 5kg of potatoes are needed to produce one litre of vodka.
• The potato, sometimes dismissed as a fat-filled food, is actually nutritious. A medium-sized potato has about 110 calories, contains almost no fat and is full of vitamins and complex carbohydrates, which release energy over time. Potatoes come in many colours – not just white – and contain antioxidants, which are thought to help prevent cancer.
• Most of the world's potatoes are consumed fresh, but they can also be used to make less-perishable products, such as alcohol, crisps and biodegradable golf tees.
• The potato is the obvious inspiration behind the classic Mr Potato Head toy, which was introduced in 1952 by Hasbro, and followed a year later by his wife, Mrs Potato Head. The plastic toys, which starred in the blockbuster films Toy Story and Toy Story 2, are brown, hollowed-out potatoes that have detachable eyes, ears, arms and feet.
