Meeting Future Food Needs: the Potential Role of Potato in South Asia

Abstract

It is cereals that are relied on to meet the food needs of the majority of the world's people. And for very good reasons: they are relatively easy to grow and harvest, and convenient to handle, store and cook. They also have high nutritional values. The development and spread of high-yielding wheat, rice and maize varieties in the 1960s and 70s — at a time when prospects of widespread famine loomed large in the minds of policymakers — increased the importance of cereals. It also postponed by about half a century the threat of the Malthusian catastrophe. But to what extent can we continue to hope for increases in cereal yields to help meet the increasing food demand of our spiralling population, especially when we seem to be running out of additional land to bring under cultivation? Perhaps instead of continuing to put all our eggs in one basket, we should consider examining the role of other food crops as well. In South Asia, potato appears to be a promising crop to consider. It yields 2–3 times more than cereals, and also provides more energy and protein per hectare.