Conditions for Making Potatoes a Staple Food Are Ripe, but Concerns Over Price Fluctuations Remain
At a seminar recently held by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, advancing potatoes to become China's fourth-largest staple food crop was publicly proposed from a national strategic perspective for the first time, and it has also become a focus of heated public discussion in recent days.
As of January 10, on Sina Weibo alone, views of the topic “potatoes become a staple food” had reached 390 million, and a wave of making potatoes a staple food is surging. But as things stand now, can the public's focus, the government's expectations and enterprises' demands quickly ignite the potato economy? A reporter from the China Business Times conducted interviews and surveys with people from different backgrounds in the industry.
Conditions for making it a staple food are already ripe
⟦NL> After potatoes “endured” their way to becoming a staple food, the public's discussion still lingers on jokes such as “potato chips, shredded potatoes, mashed potatoes, hot and sour, quick-fried, vinegar-tossed…… how do you want to eat them?” or “Has Mr. Potato hereby withdrawn from the vegetable world? For Mr. Sweet Potato and Mr. Chinese Yam, that's too cruel!”
But whether viewed from the perspective of national security or residents' nutrition, the conditions for making potatoes a staple food, as proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other parties, are already ripe.
According to the explanation of making potatoes a staple food at the seminar, its meaning is to process potatoes into staple food products suited to Chinese people's consumption habits, such as steamed buns, noodles and rice noodles, so as to realize the current transformation of potatoes from consumption as a side food to consumption as a staple food, from raw-material products to industrialized series of finished products, and from subsistence consumption to nutritious and healthy consumption, thereby serving as a supplement to China's three major staple foods and gradually becoming the fourth-largest staple food crop.
The meeting held that making potatoes a staple food has become an inevitable choice, and it is estimated that by 2020, more than 50% of potatoes will be consumed as a staple food. Vice Minister of Agriculture Yu Xinrong also said that the potato planting area will be expanded according to local conditions, “on the premise of not crowding out the three major staple foods, expanding the potato planting area from the current more than 80 million mu to 150 million mu, and raising the per-mu yield of potatoes to more than 2 tons, so as to provide more guarantees for national food security.”
From the perspective of planting conditions, potatoes meet the new requirements of sustainable agricultural development and structural adjustment, and are qualified to become a major alternative crop for agricultural structural adjustment. Because potatoes are cold-tolerant, drought-tolerant and tolerant of barren soil, and highly adaptable, they can be grown in most areas from south to north and from high altitude to low altitude. Compared with other crops, they not only save water and land, but also save fertilizer and pesticides. “Rice needs a lot of water, but our country is short of water resources, especially in the north, which requires the South-to-North Water Diversion, and the cost is very high. At such a time, growing potatoes is very suitable, and even mountainous areas are no problem.” said Fan Zhihong, associate professor at the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, China Agricultural University.
“In many areas in the south that can produce two or three seasons a year, although water resources are abundant, because farming alone does not bring generous profits, people are also unwilling to grow not-so-valuable potatoes, and instead develop industry, and in the early stage they did not understand environmental protection; while some places in the north, because the economy is underdeveloped, are still farming. Although the land conditions are poor and there is not enough water, at least the pollution is relatively light.” Fan Zhihong said with emotion.
In addition, from a nutritional perspective, potatoes are indeed suitable as a staple food rather than a vegetable. As early as 2006, Fan Zhihong wrote an article calling for people to “persist in eating only potatoes for one staple meal every day,” and over the long term, this helps prevent overnutrition and reduce excess fat. The proposal this time to make potatoes a staple food exactly fulfilled her wish.
“What we eat most every day is staple food, so staple food is crucial to a person's nutritional supply throughout the day.” Fan Zhihong analyzed that if we replace part of the rice with potatoes, we will get more nutrients, including protein with a good amino acid balance and high utilization rate, potassium content comparable to bananas, and especially vitamin C, which rice and wheat lack——comparable to tomatoes, and vitamin B1, which rice lacks——a lack of which makes people feel tired and weak, slow in thinking and depressed. Moreover, because of the starch, when cooking (especially by steaming and roasting), the vitamins in potatoes are destroyed less than in ordinary vegetables.
“Potatoes are the world's largest tuber crop, but we seem to regard potatoes as something especially worthless, while Europe's largest staple food is wheat, and its second-largest staple food is potatoes. Europeans hold potatoes in high regard, so why don't we?” Fan Zhihong said.
Changing habits is the biggest challenge
The origin of the potato can be traced back to Peru and Bolivia between 8000 BC and 5000 BC, and it also has a history of several hundred years in China, also known as potato, yam, foreign taro, yam egg and numb potato.
During the 2008 financial crisis, because only 5% of potatoes were involved in international trade, their prices and supply were very stable, and they were rated by the United Nations as a hidden treasure. That year was also called the International Year of the Potato. Around 2008, China had already become the world's largest potato-producing country. At that time, academic and political circles also proposed several plans for making potatoes a staple food, and in recent years the industry has also been discussing it, but only recently did it truly enter the national strategic level. Many people in the industry lamented that it was “better late than never.”
Liao Hongle, a researcher at the Rural Economy Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, told our reporter that potatoes were long used as feed in the past, and in recent years have been more classified under vegetables. In China they are indeed a “niche thing,” and he himself rarely studied them separately. But with the proposal this time to make potatoes a staple food, if the potato planting area is expanded to 150 million mu, it will account for more than one-tenth of China's 1.316 billion mu of first- to sixth-grade cultivated land. “This is a fairly large proportion, and for industrial and commercial capital, there is great room for development.