Welcome to the Year of the Potato
GENIA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images I’ll bet you didn’t know that 2008 has been designated the “International Year of the Potato.” No, cuddly spuds aren’t going to replace Tai Shan the panda and Knut the polar bear as the photogenic organism that dominates the cuteosphere in the coming year. Rather, U.N. officials at the Food and Agriculture ...
GENIA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images
I'll bet you didn't know that 2008 has been designated the "International Year of the Potato."
No, cuddly spuds aren't going to replace Tai Shan the panda and Knut the polar bear as the photogenic organism that dominates the cuteosphere in the coming year. Rather, U.N. officials at the Food and Agriculture Organization have decided to push potatoes as an efficient way to combat hunger and poverty:
I’ll bet you didn’t know that 2008 has been designated the “International Year of the Potato.”
No, cuddly spuds aren’t going to replace Tai Shan the panda and Knut the polar bear as the photogenic organism that dominates the cuteosphere in the coming year. Rather, U.N. officials at the Food and Agriculture Organization have decided to push potatoes as an efficient way to combat hunger and poverty:
[The potato] is ideally suited to places where land is limited and labour is abundant, conditions that characterize much of the developing world. The potato produces more nutritious food more quickly, on less land, and in harsher climates than any other major crop – up to 85 percent of the plant is edible human food, compared to around 50% in cereals.
So, what does the Year of the Potato mean on a practical level? The first step is “increasing awareness” about potatoes and “activities related to the potato.” Over the longer term, the U.N. hopes to boost sustainable potato production in the developing world.
As it happens, a shift of potato production from developed to developing countries is already underway. In 2005, for the first time, the developing world harvested more tons of potatoes than did the developed world. As usual, China and India explain much of the shift: China is now the planet’s top potato producer, and together, China and India harvest about a third of the world’s spuds.
More from Foreign Policy


Is Cold War Inevitable?
A new biography of George Kennan, the father of containment, raises questions about whether the old Cold War—and the emerging one with China—could have been avoided.


So You Want to Buy an Ambassadorship
The United States is the only Western government that routinely rewards mega-donors with top diplomatic posts.


Can China Pull Off Its Charm Offensive?
Why Beijing’s foreign-policy reset will—or won’t—work out.


Turkey’s Problem Isn’t Sweden. It’s the United States.
Erdogan has focused on Stockholm’s stance toward Kurdish exile groups, but Ankara’s real demand is the end of U.S. support for Kurds in Syria.