World Potato Revolution to Help Food Security
Potatoes Have Become Sexy Rather than Stodgy as Food Crisis Bites
Apr 22, 2009
China plans to increase its potato output to 120 million tons a year from the current 70 million potato as it leads an informal but powerful group of nations which see the potato as a star player in which terms of food production and security, a top industry body has been told.
The Lima-based International Potato Center (CIP to give its Spanish acronym) was briefed by board member Dr Song Jian about the plans which have the support of the highest levels of the Chinese government.
China Tackling Its Own Food Security But the Problems are Immense
The Center is helping the Chinese with increased productivity and better long term utilization of resources, said its Director General Dr Pamela K. Anderson in an interview.
China is very much to the forefront, but not alone, in trying to find ways to tackle the problem of food security hence why it has turned its attention to potatoes.
The first part of the problem it faces is the sheer numbers involved. China’s population is expected to stabilize at around 1.5 billion up from the current 1.3 billion and Beijing is aware that if it has to buy it on the world markets such demand will cause epic price-distortion. This explains why it has set the goal of 95% food self-sufficiency.
It needs each year over the next two decades 100 million tons of new food, Dr Anderson said, adding “half of that will come from potatoes.”
Part of the immediate problem is the low productivity of China’s already voluminous potato-growing, just some 15 tons per hectare as opposed to multiples of that in Europe and the United States. “The reality still in the developing world is that we have low productivity per hectare and one of the challenges is to get that increased,” said Dr Anderson.
This is to be addressed by better seed systems and disease resistance. The former could produce a 30% increase in yield and if ways could be put in place to manage late blight, bacterial wilt and virus diseases better there could be “another significant increase,” said Dr Anderson. Although she did acknowledge that getting, and keeping, better systems in place was not without challenges.
Rethinking the System via the Seventy Day Potato
Beyond that was also the bigger issue and the second part of the strategy of rethinking the system to make it more productive which means trying to get the potato better established in different farming cycles. “We should be able to reintroduce potatoes into the rice-rice rotations,” she said.
Although she is among the first to acknowledge that there is “no one size fits all strategy.”
Helping matters here is the 70-day potato – a challenge CIP set itself but one which will likely have major implications as and when it happens. The basic idea is to create a potato which matures within 70 days as this could then be planted within the two rice crops without limiting either.
“Its early days” said Dr Anderson who estimated it would take five years for such a variety to hit the market.
Nor is China a solitary example as other countries are following its lead closely and the ideas and practices CIP develops can as Dr Anderson said “be rolled out to the rest of the region” although she particularly stressed India’s involvement. Other countries that are involved include Bangladesh, Vietnam the Philippines and Korea and Africa.
To help out with its work in Asia CIP is hoping to set up a centre in Beijing to promote its work both in China and throughout the Asia Pacific region at some point this year.
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