KEY POINTS:
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 their daily rations would now 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. Bangladesh and the rest of Asia are gripped by a rice crisis that has sent governments into panic, and 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.
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 this year 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," it said.
"The potato is ideally suited to places where land is limited and labour is abundant, conditions that characterise much of the developing world.
"It produces more nutritious food more quickly, on less land, and in harsher climates than any other major crop."
Its cultivation is already spreading to non-traditional places. It is now the third most-produced crop for human consumption worldwide, after rice and wheat.
China, already the world's largest producer of potatoes, has set aside large areas of agricultural land in an effort to increase cultivation.
India has told food experts it wants to double potato production in the next five to 10 years, and Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan are also working to increase the area under cultivation for potatoes.
Belarus currently leads the world in potato consumption - each resident eats an average of 170kg a year.
In the northeast Indian state of Nagaland, which borders Burma, local authorities are working to develop quick-maturing potatoes that can be grown between the region's two rice harvests.
In Peru, where the potato was first cultivated, a doubling in the price of wheat in the past year has resulted in 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.
"We have to change people's eating habits," said Peru's agriculture minister, Ismael Benavides.
In Latvia, a sharp increase in the price of bread in the first two months of the year slashed sales by up to 15 per cent. To make up for Latvians' shortfall in calories, sales of potatoes increased by around 20 per cent in the same period.
The potato was first cultivated 7000 years ago, high in the Andes close to Lake Titicaca. There are at least 5000 varieties, ranging in colour from white to yellow to purple.
It was taken to Europe by the Spanish, who apparently encountered it in 1532. Documentary evidence suggests that by 1573 potatoes were being sold in the markets in Seville.
It arrived in India some time afterwards, possibly brought by the Portuguese who seized Goa.
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.
The potato has more protein than corn and nearly double the calcium. It also contains iron, potassium, zinc and vitamin C, and was once eaten by sailors as a guard against scurvy.
And yet, for all its nutritional wonders and easy-to-grow charms, the potato seems to have 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 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.
"In the West we take the potato for granted," said Paul Stapleton, a spokesman for the International Potato Centre, a non-profit group 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."
Mr Stapleton said potatoes could help solve the challenges of feeding a world with a population that is growing by 600 million people every 10 years.
"There are no more areas to plant rice or wheat," he said. "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 they are not a global commodity that attracts professional investment. About 17 per cent of the 600 million tons of wheat produced every year is traded internationally, compared with 5 per cent of potatoes. As a result, potato prices are driven by local tastes rather than international demand.
For these reasons, the Lima Potato Centre scientists say, it is in the developing world that the potato will reach new heights. "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.
- INDEPENDENT
