Potato Farmer - Role in World Food Supply

Role in World Food Supply

Top Potato Producers
in 2011
(million metric tons)
People's Republic of China 88.4
India 42.3
Russia 32.7
Ukraine 24.2
United States 19.4
Germany 11.8
Bangladesh 8.3
Poland 8.2
France 8.0
Belarus 7.7
World Total 374.4

The United Nations FAO reports that the world production of potatoes in 2010 was about 324 million tonnes. Just over two thirds of the global production is eaten directly by humans with the rest being fed to animals or used to produce starch. This means that the annual diet of an average global citizen in the first decade of the 21st century included about 33 kg (or 73 lb) of potato. However, the local importance of potato is extremely variable and rapidly changing. It remains an essential crop in Europe (especially eastern and central Europe), where per capita production is still the highest in the world, but the most rapid expansion over the past few decades has occurred in southern and eastern Asia. China is now the world's largest potato-producing country, and nearly a third of the world's potatoes are harvested in China and India. The geographic shift of potato production has been away from wealthier countries toward lower-income areas of the world, although the degree of this trend is ambiguous.

In 2008, several international organizations highlighted the potato's role in world food production, in the face of developing economic problems. They cited its potential derived from its status as a cheap and plentiful crop that grows in a wide variety of climates and locales. Due to perishability, only about 5% of the world's potato crop is traded internationally; its minimal presence in world financial markets contributed to its stable pricing during the 2007–2008 world food price crisis. Thus, the United Nations officially declared 2008 as the International Year of the Potato, to raise its profile in developing nations, calling the crop a "hidden treasure". This followed the International Rice Year in 2004.

Read more about this topic:  Potato Farmer

Famous quotes containing the words role in, role, world, food and/or supply:

    Certainly parents play a crucial role in the lives of individuals who are intellectually gifted or creatively talented. But this role is not one of active instruction, of teaching children skills,... rather, it is support and encouragement parents give children and the intellectual climate that they create in the home which seem to be the critical factors.
    David Elkind (20th century)

    Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.
    Grace Baruch (20th century)

    Make-believe is the avenue to much of the young child’s early understanding. He sorts out impressions and tries out ideas that are foundational to his later realistic comprehension. This private world sometimes is a quiet, solitary
    world. More often it is a noisy, busy, crowded place where language grows, and social skills develop, and where perseverance and attention-span expand.
    James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)

    At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
    Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
    The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
    Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
    —T.S. (Thomas Stearns)

    The job of the press is to encourage debate, not to supply the public with information.
    Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)