Far from the vacuous goings on in celebrity circles Governments and organisations concerned with soaring  food prices and food shortages  in the developing world are looking to the humble potato as a cheap partial solution to world hunger as the nutritous tuber root vegetable can be grown at almost any elevation or climate, requires very little water, matures in as little as 50 days, and can yield between two and four times more food per hectare than wheat or rice, the traditional staples in many of the poorer areas of the world.

As wheat and rice prices have soared, a process partly driven by countries like the US using more    and more of their wheat crop and land for the production of ' Green'  biofuel, so have fears that the shock to the worlds food supply will create a situation where the demand for food outstrips supply.

Yesterday President Bush released $200 million in emergency aid after the UN and World Bank called for Governments to co-ordinatte a response to rising food prices which have generated instability and crisis around the world.

Jacques Diouf director General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned that  rising food prices were fermenting instability and forcing the poor and the hungry out on to the streets in poorer countries adding  "The reality is that people are dying already in the riots,"

In recent weeks there have been food riots in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean as the price of basic food stuff has doubled.   

The US emergency aid, welcome as it is,  is little more than a gesture which is why Governments and organisations working to alleviate hunger globally are pinning their hopes on the humble potato. 

To focus attention on this, the United Nations have named 2008 the International Year of the Potato, calling the vegetable a "hidden treasure".

In Peru , where the potato orginates from,   soaring wheat prices have led  the Government to  introduce a program  encouraging bakers to use potato flour rather than wheat to make bread and have introduced policies to feed potato bread to school children, prisoners and the military in a bid to boostwider acceptance . Supporters say it tastes just as good as wheat bread, but complain that there are not enough mills are set up to make potato flour

"We have to change people's eating habits," said Ismael Benavides, Peru's agriculture minister. "People got addicted to wheat when it was cheap."

Its an addiction thats reflected around the world, a dependence on cheap food and its a potentially fcatastrophically fatal addiction when market forces are driving up prices and encouraging the economics of scarcity.

India has told food experts it wants to double potato production in the next five to 10 years. China, a huge rice consumer subject to devastating famines, has become the world's top potato producer. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the potato is being rapidly becoming a major staple.

But there are still difficulties to overcome.  

Around the world food experts echo  Ismael Benavides concersn  , in a climate of soaring food prices  peoples basic eating habits have to change .

Attitudes of growers need to change too  but  poor farmers need incentives to plant a different crop and its the cheapness of the potato that provides a disincentive to them making the switch away from more land and resource intensive traditional crops .  Potatoes cannot match the lucrative returns possible with wheat and rice , poor farmers know this, investors tned to  shun  potato production as well. This is where Governments and aid have to help out. 

The potato is already the world's third most-important food crop after wheat and rice  but 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 diseases , hampering export to avoid spreading plant diseases.

Rising food prices and scarcity are also increasing demand for and take up of  gentically modified crops, including potatoes that resist "late blight" , the cause of the  famine in Ireland during the 19th century ,as the pathogenes behind this  still causes about 20 percent of potato harvest losses in the world. Scientists say farmers who use clean, virus-free seeds can boost yields by 30 percent and be cleared for export paving the way for poor farmers to earn more money  specialising in high value potato crops

International Environmental groups are fiercely opposed to genetically modified crops but with the worlds population increasing by a billion people per decade their argument , legitimate or otherwise , is becoming increasingly academic, if the Governments and farmers of  poorer countries see some immediate advantage to genetically modified crops, that is what they will grow whateverwe think  the long term risks are and  whether we like it or not.

In the age of scarcity choice is the first casualty.  

Source Reuters

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