Potatoes seen as answer to high cereal costs

Potatoes seen as answer to high cereal costs

By Harvey Morris at the United Nations

Published: March 27 2008 01:54 | Last updated: March 27 2008 01:54

Food scientists are meeting in Cusco, Peru, this week to find ways of boosting world potato production to ease the strain of surging cereal prices on the world’s poorest countries.

Potato production already reached a record high last year as cereal prices rose, partly as a consequence of grain producers – such as the US – switching to bio-fuel crops.

The impact of more expensive cereals has been harshest on developing countries that are dependent on imports.

Grain shortages have led to unrest in parts of Africa and food riots in Egypt, in which at least two people have been killed.

The Cusco conference, which is sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Peruvian-based International Potato Centre, aims to expand the role of a crop that scientists say produces more food on less land than maize, wheat or rice.

Developing countries now account for half the world’s production, which stands at 320m tonnes, and in regions such as Asia potatoes are already substituting for more traditional crops. China is now the world’s largest producer.

The scientists at Cusco, meeting in what the UN has designated the International Year of the Potato, are studying improvements in quality and sustainable farming, the development of strains that require less water and that can resist pests, and the impact of climate change.

Some governments have already begun substituting potatoes for grain as a result of rising cereal prices. In Peru, the native crop has been used this year to replace wheat in bread production for the armed forces, schools and prisons.

In Bangladesh, a bumper crop has led the government to include potatoes in basic rations to the poor.

While potato prices have risen in some parts of the world, tracking the rise of cereals, in some regions there have been gluts in production. In West Bengal, Indian farmers are reported to have attempted suicide after facing ruin because prices fell below costs.

The Cusco conference aims to confront such price uncertainty by supporting better methods of linking developing country producers, who are usually small-scale farmers, to commodity markets.