Why a King Had to Force People to Eat Potatoes 🥔
Do It Yourself - Backyard Projects
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Frederick the Great pushed potatoes on his people with a royal order in 1756 and, so the story goes, with soldiers to make sure they planted them.
How did the potato go from the Andes to feeding the world, and what does the Irish famine teach about growing only one variety?
The potato was first domesticated in the Andes, near Lake Titicaca, around eight thousand years ago. Andean farmers still grow at least four thousand native varieties, and kept harvests through mountain winters with chuno: potatoes frozen at night, thawed in the sun and trampled, which keeps for years.
Spanish conquistadors reached the Andes in the 1530s, and by the 1570s potatoes were being eaten in Spain. Europe was not impressed. Critics said it was not in the Bible, grew in the dark, belonged to the nightshade family, and some even believed it caused leprosy. Governments tried to change habits, from Frederick's orders to the legend of Parmentier's guarded field in France.
What won Europe over was probably not a king's order. It was hunger and war, because armies could trample wheat but not easily carry off what was in the ground. Where it took hold, harvests became more reliable and populations grew. Economists Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian estimate, most conservatively, that the potato explains roughly a quarter of Old World population and city growth between 1700 and 1900.
Ireland depended on it most. Before the famine, around a third of the population lived almost entirely on potatoes, and in the poorest western counties mostly one variety, the Lumper. In 1845 late blight arrived, most likely from the Americas. An estimated third of the crop was lost in 1845 and about three quarters in 1846. Around one million people died, at least a million more emigrated, and Ireland lost about a fifth of its people in ten years. Food was still exported in the worst years, and many historians believe policy decided how many starved.
The lesson is that one variety is dangerous. The Russet Burbank has covered roughly forty percent of American potato fields for decades. Late blight is still out there: European growers spray more than ten times a season. Variety survives in the Andean fields, in gene banks and with growers of heirlooms, for a species that more than a billion people eat.
Chapters:
0:00 The King, the Order and the Soldier Legend
0:31 Where the Potato Began
1:03 Chuno, the Potato That Keeps for Years
1:23 The Gold Hunters Find Something Else
2:04 Kings, Pharmacists and a Polished Story
3:03 One Vegetable, a Quarter of the Growth
3:42 The Country That Lived on One Potato
4:10 Black Leaves and a Million Dead
5:05 The Lesson of One Variety
5:37 A Backup Copy in Your Garden
Sources: Spooner et al. 2005 (PNAS); International Potato Center (CIP); Hawkes and Francisco-Ortega; Rebecca Earle, Feeding the People (Cambridge UP); Nunn and Qian (QJE, 2011); Cormac O Grada and Christine Kinealy; Yoshida et al. 2013 (eLife); FAO.
Archival images: Unknown author, "Antoine Auguste Parmentier. Etching.", CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Diego Delso, "Amanecer en el lago Titicaca, Puno, Perú, 2015-08-01, DD 01", CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Samuel austin, "Solanum tuberosum esculentum.", CC BY-SA 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Howard F. Schwartz, Colorado State University, United States, "Late blight on potato leaf 2", CC BY 3.0 us, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Chuck Moravec, "Chinchero Chunos 1", CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Chuck Moravec, "Chinchero Quechua Woman Chunos 2", CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Unknown author, "Illustration of Potato of Virginia", CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Karen Mardahl, "Sanssoucis (6976381844)", CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | N509FZ, "French fries with sour cream and onion flavour, Jumbo size from Potato Corner (20240604140030)", CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Public domain or CC0: Robert Warthmüller, Nicolas Delaunay after Johann Heinrich Ramberg, François Dumont, J. Thompson, Basilius Besler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen (1887), Daniel MacDonald, Henry Edward Doyle, Frederick James Smyth, James Mahony, Illustrated London News, The Pictorial Times, Felipe Huaman Puma de Ayala, Tichnor Brothers, Anton Graff, Edwin Hayes, Robert French, Gustave Doré, Philip James de Loutherbourg, William Wyld, Rijksmuseum, Albrecht Dürer, Ordercrazy, MarkBuckawicki, Hiram Bingham III, Vilmorin-Andrieux (1883), Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911); the 1773 Examen chymique title page and 1588 Clusius watercolour (unknown).
#PlantHistory #EveryPlantHasAPast #Potato
Why a King Had to Force People to Eat Potatoes 🥔
Do It Yourself - Backyard Projects
84 views
Frederick the Great pushed potatoes on his people with a royal order in 1756 and, so the story goes, with soldiers to make sure they planted them.
How did the potato go from the Andes to feeding the world, and what does the Irish famine teach about growing only one variety?
The potato was first domesticated in the Andes, near Lake Titicaca, around eight thousand years ago. Andean farmers still grow at least four thousand native varieties, and kept harvests through mountain winters with chuno: potatoes frozen at night, thawed in the sun and trampled, which keeps for years.
Spanish conquistadors reached the Andes in the 1530s, and by the 1570s potatoes were being eaten in Spain. Europe was not impressed. Critics said it was not in the Bible, grew in the dark, belonged to the nightshade family, and some even believed it caused leprosy. Governments tried to change habits, from Frederick's orders to the legend of Parmentier's guarded field in France.
What won Europe over was probably not a king's order. It was hunger and war, because armies could trample wheat but not easily carry off what was in the ground. Where it took hold, harvests became more reliable and populations grew. Economists Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian estimate, most conservatively, that the potato explains roughly a quarter of Old World population and city growth between 1700 and 1900.
Ireland depended on it most. Before the famine, around a third of the population lived almost entirely on potatoes, and in the poorest western counties mostly one variety, the Lumper. In 1845 late blight arrived, most likely from the Americas. An estimated third of the crop was lost in 1845 and about three quarters in 1846. Around one million people died, at least a million more emigrated, and Ireland lost about a fifth of its people in ten years. Food was still exported in the worst years, and many historians believe policy decided how many starved.
The lesson is that one variety is dangerous. The Russet Burbank has covered roughly forty percent of American potato fields for decades. Late blight is still out there: European growers spray more than ten times a season. Variety survives in the Andean fields, in gene banks and with growers of heirlooms, for a species that more than a billion people eat.
Chapters:
0:00 The King, the Order and the Soldier Legend
0:31 Where the Potato Began
1:03 Chuno, the Potato That Keeps for Years
1:23 The Gold Hunters Find Something Else
2:04 Kings, Pharmacists and a Polished Story
3:03 One Vegetable, a Quarter of the Growth
3:42 The Country That Lived on One Potato
4:10 Black Leaves and a Million Dead
5:05 The Lesson of One Variety
5:37 A Backup Copy in Your Garden
Sources: Spooner et al. 2005 (PNAS); International Potato Center (CIP); Hawkes and Francisco-Ortega; Rebecca Earle, Feeding the People (Cambridge UP); Nunn and Qian (QJE, 2011); Cormac O Grada and Christine Kinealy; Yoshida et al. 2013 (eLife); FAO.
Archival images: Unknown author, "Antoine Auguste Parmentier. Etching.", CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Diego Delso, "Amanecer en el lago Titicaca, Puno, Perú, 2015-08-01, DD 01", CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Samuel austin, "Solanum tuberosum esculentum.", CC BY-SA 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Howard F. Schwartz, Colorado State University, United States, "Late blight on potato leaf 2", CC BY 3.0 us, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Chuck Moravec, "Chinchero Chunos 1", CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Chuck Moravec, "Chinchero Quechua Woman Chunos 2", CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Unknown author, "Illustration of Potato of Virginia", CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Karen Mardahl, "Sanssoucis (6976381844)", CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | N509FZ, "French fries with sour cream and onion flavour, Jumbo size from Potato Corner (20240604140030)", CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons | Public domain or CC0: Robert Warthmüller, Nicolas Delaunay after Johann Heinrich Ramberg, François Dumont, J. Thompson, Basilius Besler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen (1887), Daniel MacDonald, Henry Edward Doyle, Frederick James Smyth, James Mahony, Illustrated London News, The Pictorial Times, Felipe Huaman Puma de Ayala, Tichnor Brothers, Anton Graff, Edwin Hayes, Robert French, Gustave Doré, Philip James de Loutherbourg, William Wyld, Rijksmuseum, Albrecht Dürer, Ordercrazy, MarkBuckawicki, Hiram Bingham III, Vilmorin-Andrieux (1883), Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911); the 1773 Examen chymique title page and 1588 Clusius watercolour (unknown).
#PlantHistory #EveryPlantHasAPast #Potato