Currently the world’s fourth largest food crop, after rice, wheat, and maize, the potato was first cultivated in 8,000BC by Inca Indians in Peru. A relative of the perennial nightshade it contains a toxin glycoalkaloid (Solanine), which protects it from predators. Wild potatoes contain sufficient quantities to cause toxic effects in humans. It’s said when humans first began eating potatoes they ate clay with them to absorb the toxins, after observing wild animals licking the soil before eating the tubers to achieve a similar effect.
Today there are thousands of varieties available, bred to reduce the solanine content, so you can enjoy your chips with salt’n’vinegar instead of a sprinkling of clay. However, green potatoes should be avoided as they can contain far higher levels of solanine; 250–280 mg/kg, for a green tuber, 1500–2200 mg/kg for a green skin, compared to the 2–20 mg/kg for a normal potato.
The potato got off to a slow start in Europe. In 1536 Spanish Conquistadors who conquered Peru, brought the potato back home and by the end of the sixteenth century, families of Basque sailors began to cultivate potatoes along the Biscay coast of northern Spain. However this was frowned on by the Church who considered them the food of the devil as they were not mentioned in the bible. Meanwhile Walter Raleigh introduced potatoes to Ireland in 1589 but it wasn’t till 40 years later they spread to the rest of Europe.
Europe had long struggled to feed itself and was plagued by periodic famines and the political instability that came with them. So, once agriculturalists realised the value of the potato, its success was assured. Less vulnerable to drought, suitable for cultivation over a wider range than cereal crops, easier to store, cheap, filling, rich in vitamin C, potassium, fibre, etc. And capable of producing 2-4 times as much dry food as a same acreage of cereal crops.
Friedrich Engels even declared that the potato was the equal of iron for its “historically revolutionary role” feeding the population boom that provided the labour needed to drive the industrial revolution. As this cheap source of calories that was both easy to cultivate and cook liberated workers from the land to serve in the factories and mills. It’s also been said it’s the food that the great European empires, such as the British Empire, were built on, as it wasn’t until the relative political stability that came with the end of famine at home that era of colonisation and empire really began.
Although the potato was itself about to give Europe one of its most devastating famines. The Great Famine of 1845 -1852 that saw Ireland’s population (40% of whom depended on the potato) fall by 20-25% as a million died and a million more emigrated.
Leaving aside the politics of the day, it was triggered by the blight to which European potatoes were particularly susceptible. Not only were most of the potatoes grown at the time from a single variety, but they were cultivated from tubers cut off potatoes rather than whole seed potatoes, creating fields of genetically identical clones vulnerable to disease. What we call monoculture today.
In 1802 Alexander von Humboldt (after whom Humboldt’s penguin is named) discovered vast seabird colonies of the coast of Peru with guano deposits 50 meters deep. He observed that local natives use the guano to fertilize their crops and it wasn’t long before shiploads of guano were being sent back to Europe for the same purpose, giving birth to the modern fertilizer industry. Unfortunately this guano contained Phytophthora infestans the fungus responsible for the potato blight that devastated Ireland and to which Europe’s potatoes were uniquely susceptible. Peru’s natives who had used the guano for 1,500 years had no such worries as they traditionally grew many different varieties of potatoes on their small plots.
European’s were also partly responsible for another potato pest, the Colorado Potato Beetle, which incidentally originated in Mexico and did not initally feed on potatoes. When the Spanish Conquistadors brought horses to South America the natives quickly recognised their value and acquired some them for themselves. These rapidly spread among the native tribes into the southern states of America, The horse’s manes and tails carrying buffalo-bur’s on which the beetles fed and the beetles themselves.
At some point after their arrival, the beetles are believed to have mutated to feed on potatoes and began destroying potato crops with devastating effect from 1859 onwards. It’s said the modern pesticide industry was born when a frustrated farmer threw a tin of paint over beetles eating his crops and killed them (Paint at the time contain arsenic).
So there we have it the humble potato gave us monoculture, fertilizer and pesticides, fed the industrial revolution and countless empires, not bad for the humble spud and something to think about next time you have fish’n’chips. Just be grateful you don’t have to sprinkle clay on them.