Why should the potato become the fourth major staple crop?
China is strongly promoting the strategy of making the potato a staple crop
Why let the little potato become the fourth major staple crop
Is the potato a vegetable or a grain? At the potato staple-crop development strategy seminar held on the 6th, a rich variety of potato-based staple foods was an eye-opener. Steamed buns and bread made with 40% whole potato flour, potato peanut frozen cookies, potato hazelnut mille-feuille, potato cheesecake and others all overturn people's perception of the little potato.
Vice Minister of Agriculture Yu Xinrong said at the meeting that scientific and technological innovation should lead the development of making the potato a staple crop, and efforts should be made to promote a new pattern of coordinated development of potatoes and grains. According to the introduction, the potato is expected to become the fourth major staple crop after rice, wheat and corn, with the planting area gradually expanding to 150 million mu, annual fresh potato output increasing by 200 million tonnes, equivalent to about 50 million tonnes of grain, which will significantly raise the level of national food security.
Experts said that the essence of making the potato a staple crop is to process potatoes into staple products such as steamed buns, noodles and rice noodles that suit Chinese people's consumption habits, realizing the transformation of the potato from a non-staple food to a staple food, from a raw material product to industrialized series of finished products, and from subsistence consumption to nutritious and healthy consumption, so that as a supplement to China's three major staple crops it gradually becomes the fourth major staple crop.
According to the introduction, in the future China's grain consumption demand will still show a rigid growth trend, and by 2020 the incremental grain demand will be more than 100 billion jin. However, constrained by arable land and water resources and affected by planting returns, ration varieties such as wheat and rice face higher costs, less room and greater difficulty in continuing to increase production, so new ways to increase production need to be opened up. The potato is cold-tolerant, drought-tolerant and tolerant of poor soil, with wide adaptability; in particular, developing and utilizing winter fallow fields in the south offers great potential for expanding potato planting. In addition, China's potato yield is relatively low, and the potential to raise per-unit yield through science and technology is even greater.
Especially from the perspective of water saving, advancing the staple-crop transformation of the potato helps ease pressure on resources and the environment and achieve sustainable agricultural development. Potatoes need less water to grow, with a minimum transpiration coefficient (water requirement) of only 350, while wheat and rice are 450 and 500 respectively. In the arid and semi-arid areas of the northwest with annual precipitation of around 350 mm, grain crops have difficulty growing and developing, while potatoes can not only grow normally but also reduce soil erosion. Last year the Ministry of Agriculture organized a trial in Hengshui, Hebei; in the groundwater overexploitation area of North China with annual precipitation of 500 mm, under fully rain-fed conditions the potato yield per mu still reached 1.8 tonnes. Farmers growing potatoes save water, fertilizer and pesticide, and also save effort.
Wan Baorui, director of the National Food and Nutrition Advisory Committee, introduced that the potato is called a “perfect” nutritional product, rich in dietary fiber and low in fat, and is helpful for controlling weight gain and preventing high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. Making the potato a staple crop is conducive to improving residents' dietary and nutritional structure.
Experts suggested that making the potato a staple crop involves many links such as scientific research, production, processing, distribution and consumption, and support must be continuously increased and efforts concentrated on tackling key problems. In particular, it is necessary to strengthen policy support for the staple-crop transformation, increase investment, and advance the staple-crop transformation in an orderly manner. It is necessary to strengthen planning guidance and tackle key technical models for the staple-crop transformation, and accelerate the breeding and selection of a batch of special varieties that are high-quality, high-yield, stress-resistant, excellent in comprehensive traits and suitable for staple-crop transformation. At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the improvement and refinement of staple-crop processing techniques, carry out comparative analysis of the nutritional components of different potato varieties, study the optimal proportions and develop the best products. The focus should be on tackling the formulas and processing workflows for noodles, steamed buns and rice noodles in which whole potato flour accounts for 50%, and accelerating the research and development of processing machinery suitable for making the potato a staple crop, and so on.