The Twelve Ingredients of A Christmas Dinner - Potatoes

The Twelve Ingredients of A Christmas Dinner - Potatoes

The humble potato is that thing staring at you from the dinner plate - be it bashed, boiled, bubble and squeaked, creamed, diced, fried, mashed, roasted, unpeeled and velouted. The variety of ways you can cook a potato is unrivaled by the worldwide number of potato varieties - with approximately five thousand cultivated species.

Three thousand of them are found in the South America mountain region of the Andes in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. It is also thought that there are around 200 wild species and subspecies. These species can and have been introduced to the cultivated species to create resistances to pests and diseases (see below for those diseases).

For a food stuff that was brought to the English shores from the Americas, it is the fourth largest food group, following rice, wheat and maize. It is thought that it may very well change the Asiatic diet as, according to the United Nations FAO's (Food & Agricultural Organisation) figures for 2010; China produced 74.8 million metric tonnes. The annual diet of the average global citizen includes 33 kilogrammes or 73 pounds of potatoes according to this pdf.

But before you complain about the price of a potato before you drown your par-bolied potato in molten duck fat; think of what that potato and the potato producer had to go through. The PCL Information Sheet IS02, published by the Potato Council, found here reports that 2012 was a year of contrasts with an early drought followed by low levels of sunlight and then high rainfall that leads to low yields and a late harvest. It was reported that 71% of the harvest was complete by the end of October. And with water, there always comes problems - the cost of the production of a potato has increased by 13% (over 2011) due to the increase in fungicide use and other chemicals.

To think that the potato, a vague relation of deadly nightshade, is attacked by 7 bacterial diseases including brown rot; 30 fungicidal diseases; 6 Nematode parasites; 3 Phytoplasmal diseases; 39 Viral and Viroid diseases; and 13 Miscellaneous diseases and disorders (source). It is a miracle of agriculture that it actually makes it to your plate.

An invader from the past

In the mid sevenites, and I mean the date and not the temperature, my father - a farmer - found a plant in the edge of his crop of wheat. The green leaves stood out amongst the yellowing heads and the serrated edges gave the leaves a more dubious nature. He was concerned enough to send a sample to both the Police and to Wye Agricultural College, he feared that an illicit plant had been sown near the edge of the crop. A potential crop of cannabis, perhaps. A similar plant had reared its vegetative head in gardens and industrial yards over England - Barking, Surrey, Sussex. What did it look like? It had the ability to grow a foot in length or height in a week, some say eighteen inches in four days; it had a white or violet trumpet shaped flower that would bloom at night; it produced a hard spiked date shaped fruit and that it had a chocolate-coloured stem.

The results came back from various sources, including a Mr. Rose from the Ministry of Agriculture that the plant was Datura stronomium, a thorn apple, also known as jimson weed or stink flower, the latter due to its unpleasant odour. According to the Royal Horticultural Society, it is "is an annual weed of gardens, roadsides and other waste or cultivated land. It is widely naturalised in warmer countries throughout the world, and is quite common in the British Isles, often appearing in waste and cultivated ground." But as it is linked to one of the family that includes deadly nightshade, potato and tobacco, it does have poisonous seeds. The linked website above does give pictures of both the plant and the hard spiked fruit.

Have any of the Eurolink members seen potential invaders in their crops, how have they dealt with them, what have you learnt from other farmers in dealing with these invaders? I would be interested in your thoughts as I am sure others would as well.