Potatoes: Asia's new rice
With rice and wheat production increasingly tough in the region, as water shortages, low-lying land, and climate change hurt output, there needs to be an alternative to Asia's cereal-based diets. Peru-headquartered CIP has developed a new variety of
Asia faces a tremendous challenge: Feeding its rice-loving 4.3 billion people, two-thirds of the world’s population. The solution may just be the carbohydrate beloved of the West, potatoes.
Many Asian countries either lack water or are in low-lying lands, which makes them vulnerable to the extremes of climate change. Over-intensification from mono cropping, including poor irrigation practices, has compromised the quality of arable land. Frequent droughts and flooding have increased salinity, degrading soil quality further. Population growth over the next few decades will continue to be concentrated in cities, and precious farmland will increasingly be lost to roads and buildings.
Asian economies and farming systems are inextricably bound to a small number of cereals, as are Asian diets: more than 500 million of the absolute poor depend on rice. That puts consumers in the region at the mercy of international markets, where rice, wheat, and other grains are traded and subject to market fluctuations, which have caused the price of food to spike dramatically in recent years. They are also at the mercy of weather. Rice needs plenty of water, while potatoes, at least the new varieties being developed by the International Potato Centre, need less.
The poor in the region tend to be vulnerable to weak nutrition levels, because their diet isn't diversified and the cereals they consume, such as rice, are low in certain essential micro-nutrients such as zinc and iron. In fact, Asia has the highest concentration of poverty worldwide, and high malnutrition rates among women and children under five are responsible for high levels of infant and maternal morbidity and mortality in addition to stunting cognitive intelligence.
A crop that could help matters is the potato. Several Asian countries are already diversifying their farming systems, while making the intensification of existing systems more sustainable. This is helping to improve their economies and ease the strain of food price inflation.
Apart from being a rich source of micronutrients, early-maturing agile potato varieties that can be harvested after 70to 90days can resist heat and viruses. If processed to a high standard, these potatoes are a profitable and nutritious complement to low-income cereals in sub-tropical lowlands and the highlands of South China, North Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, and the plains of Nepal and East Pakistan.
In Central Asia,which has experienced the highest rise globally in temperature due to climate change, potatoes can be a valid alternative as a crop to fallow between two consecutive wheat crops or between wheat and cotton. There are varieties of potatoes that can be cultivated in subtropical, temperate, and highland environments to help low-income consumers cushion the impact of food price inflation and achieve higher incomes from on-farm and added value options.
These potato varieties, as opposed to indigenous varieties, provide flexible planting and harvesting times without putting undue pressure on dwindling land and water resources. In addition, in a continent highly vulnerable to natural disasters, potatoes, which are grown underground, are less vulnerable. They are more resilient than cereal crops and cattle to drought, flooding and cyclonic activity and so growing them can provide both an immediate rich food source for poor populations as well as an income source.
The International Potato Centre (CIP), headquartered in Peru, is a not-for-profit organisation, part of the CGIAR group of agricultural research institutions. CIP’s strategic objectives include promoting early-maturing potatoes.
However, good quality seed or resilient varieties are in short supply in Asia, whichgreatly limits potato production in the region. CIP works with local, regional, and national partnerships to overcome this bottleneck, developingvarieties with short growing seasons of 70-80 days in subtropical climates and 90-100 days in temperate ones. CIP and its partners make available early-maturing varieties with traits for resistance to biotic and abiotic stress.
CIP assists its partners to build capacity and scale up the use of research products for accelerated breeding, improved seed delivery, diversification of value chains, and ecological management practices including Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and especially more efficient use of precious water resources, as potatoes can be adapted to resist drought. Collaborative research on the early-maturing potato will explore sustainable cultivation practices and the environmental impact of introducing the potato in Asian cereal-based cropping systems. CIP is already involved in trials in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, India and Bangladesh.
CIP will establish strategic alliances with public, private sector and civil society to expand production of the early-maturing potatoes. Tradeoff analysis in terms of labour, nutrients, water, and other input use will be measured to assess the beneficial impact of potato-related interventions on the four key elements of food security: food availability, accessibility, utilization, and vulnerability. Agricultural research institutes, universities, and government and nongovernmental organizations are essential for developing and adapting technologies for smallholder farmers, especially poor and female agricultural workers.
There are opportunities to develop and deliver intensive training for those farmers who need greater awareness and skills of processing requirements through improved technology options that support agricultural diversification and strengthened rural institutions engaged in market value chains. For further information see http://cipotato.org/agile-potato-for-asia/
POPULATION GROWTH OVER THE NEXT FEW DECADES WILL CONTINUE TO BE CONCENTRATED IN CITIES, AND PRECIOUS FARM LAND WILL INCREASINGLY BE LOST TO ROADS AND BUILDINGS