International Year of the Potato

A third of the year has already passed, and I just found out that the United Nations has named 2008 as the Year of the Potato.

They're looking to raise awareness about potatoes during a time of food shortages. Potatoes are a productive and cost effective crop, and they've helped to alleviate food shortages in the past, especially during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, soon after they had been introduced to Europe from the Americas.

They were a tough sell at first. Wealthy Europeans shunned them, finding them insipid and bland. The poor weren't interested in a food that held no appeal for the rich. An eighteenth century French public official named Parmentier got the French citizens to plant potatoes by convincing the king to plant a royal garden, surrounded by armed guards. After a time they stopped guarding the garden. The peasants then stole the potatoes, and planted them for themselves.

I think the potato is an important symbol to help us find a way out of our current predicament, which is being caused in part by rising standards of living in India and China, enabling more people to be able to afford meat. Meat production is much less efficient than production of plant based foods, which is one of the reasons why it has always been a high status food.

We can take a step towards finding our way out of today's food shortages by collectively learning to value foods differently. Like the French peasants who stole the potatoes out of the king's garden, we need to shift out perception of plant based foods, and to see them as special, rather than as something to eat when you can't afford meat.

In some ways this is starting to happen. The current enthusiasm for local, seasonal food represents a kind of transformation from a way of thinking where imported, exotic items are more special than fresh foods from our own neighborhoods. In some way, the perception of farmers' market food as expensive helps to create a special status for local foods, even though we can grow them inexpensively in our own gardens.

So let's celebrate the potato. Yukon golds, fingerlings, Ozettes, Desirees, butterballs, Purple Vikings, even the humble russet.