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March is for Gardening: The Tuber that Changed the World, Part 2 Few crops have had such a profound impact on the course of human history as the humble potato. The wild potato, Solanum tuberosum, has its origins in the Andes mountains of South America. The Indigenous People who inhabited the Andes of Peru are believed to have been the first to cultivate the plant. The potatoes the Andeans grew had tremendous diversity and they cultivated different varieties at different altitudes. Today, the International Potato Center in Peru works to preserve indigenous varieties of potato. All told they have saved almost 5,000 of indigenous varieties! Wild potato, Solanum tuberosum, originates from the Despite the original multitudes, only a very small Andes of South America number of potato varieties made their way to Europe from South America by way of the marauding Spanish conquistadors. Potatoes are not seeds - new crops are grown by chopping up and planting pieces of last year’s crop. So as the potato took hold in Europe, the resultant crops were all clones, and the potato became the first true monoculture. When the potato blight struck there was nothing to stop it from spreading like wildfire through Ireland and the entire European continent. The saga of the potato in North America is another complex tale. Just as the Indigenous People of the Andes were amazing potato farmers, it turns out many other cultures throughout Central America, Mexico, and the United States were also growing potato for thousands of years. Recent research from the University of Utah has uncovered evidence for the earliest use of potato in North America. Archaeologists discovered potato starch residues from a species of wild potato native to the southwest, Solanum jamesii in the crevices of a 10,900-year-old stone tool in Escalante, Utah! Using the evidence from ancient stone tools, ethnographic literature and modern North American Indigenous farmers, the researchers conclude that several North American Indigenous Tribes, including Apache, Hopi, Kawaik, Navajo, Southern Paiute, Tewa, Zia and Zuni, consumed S. jamesii. Unfortunately, early Europeans who settled the Americas paid little heed to the cultural practices of Indigenous People. It seems somewhere in the 1620s, when the British governor in the Bahamas made a special gift of potato to the governor of Virginia the colonists started paying attention to the spud. From Virginia they spread ever so slowly through the colonies as they were still viewed as the work of the devil. It wasn’t until Thomas Jefferson tasted fried potatoes in France, then served up some fried spuds to some of his distinguished guests at a White House dinner that potatoes began to be seen in a whole new light. Gradually, potatoes took hold as a major crop throughout the late Guano mining in the Cincha Islands, 1700’s and 1800’s. A scientific discovery in 1840, by the German Peru circa 1865; photo from The Guano organic chemist Justus von Liebig, had an enormous impact on Trade, National Museum of American History 1 potato cultivation and all of agriculture in western society. He published a pioneering study that explained how plants depend on nitrogen and discovered that guano, the excrement from birds and bats, was an excellent source of it. Like an Instagram influencer of his day, his idea of adding guano to the soil to increase crop yields went viral. Guano became the new liquid gold and ironically, Peru, the native home of the potato, was one of the only places in the world to get it. The Cincha Islands of Peru had enormous populations of seabirds including the Peruvian booby, the Peruvian pelican and the Peruvian cormorant. In the mid 1800’s, Peru mined and exported about 13 million tons of seabird guano. With the Agricultural Revolution snowballing and farmers all over the world became enraged that Peru had created a monopoly on guano. Many countries considered invading Peru to seize the bird poop. In 1856, the U.S. Congress passed the Guano Islands Act, authorizing Americans to seize any guano deposits they discovered in the world. Over the next half- century, U.S. traders claimed 94 islands, coral heads and atolls. With guano, the modern fertilizer industry was born. Applying fertilizer to soil increased crop yields and high yields of potato allowed even the poorest farmers to produce healthy food at little cost. With increased demand, potatoes were bred to be larger so that they could feed more people. In the late 1800s, the modern-day russet potato was created. From the thousands of varieties of potatoes, the world came to depend on one. Just as Europe had suffered the misery of the potato blight, in the west, the advent of the potato monoculture and dependence on fertilizer made North America ripe for a new biological disaster of its own. Enter the Colorado potato beetle, Leptinotarsa decemlineata. This orange- and-black striped insect is not from Colorado at all, but originally hailed from southern and central Mexico. In its native habitat its diet consisted of a spiny relative of potato called buffalo bur. Buffalo bur made its way north and into U.S. when Spaniards brought horses and cows to the Americas. Buffalo bur seeds hitchhiked on horse manes and cow ears and the beetle followed in their hoofprints. In the early 1860s the beetle met up with the cultivated potato near the Missouri River and thus began their deadly relationship. Potato beetles rapidly reproduced and spread unchecked in incredible hoards. By the time the beetles reached the East Coast, potato farmers tried everything they could think of to rid themselves of the invading pests. One desperate farmer threw a can of emerald green paint on his crop and the result was miraculous. It killed the beetles! The paint was called Paris Green and its insect slaying secret ingredient was a blend of arsenic and copper. Word of the miracle spread, and farmers bought up tons of Paris Green. They diluted the paint with flour and dusted it on their potatoes or they mixed it with water and sprayed their fields. To potato farmers, Paris Green was a gift of miraculous magnitude. To chemists, it was revelation that would lead to stronger pesticides. With Paris Green, the modern pesticide industry was born. 2 Guano and Paris Green were just the beginning. By the early 1900’s, the beetles were showing signs of immunity to Paris Green, so new pesticides were needed. Year after year, farmers were placated by the burgeoning pesticide industry which kept coming up with new arsenic compounds to kill bugs. After World War II an entirely new and much more deadly pesticide was invented. The chemical industry’s new miracle solution was DDT. Farmers sprayed DDT and rejoiced as insects vanished from their fields. The celebration didn’t last long; within a few years the beetles stopped dying. Year after year, potato growers relied on new poison after poison. By the mid-1980s, any new pesticide in the United States was good for about a single season of planting. Today some farmers treat their potato crops a dozen or more times each season with an ever-changing merry-go-round of pesticides, but no matter what synthetic chemical is created eventually the pests adapt and survive. What is wrong with this picture? Turns out there was nothing green about the Green Revolution. Rachel Carson sounded the alarm with her Silent Spring back in the 1960’s and society heeded her warnings to a degree. DDT was banned, but it didn’t change the way we farm. No wonder millions of people and farmers say, “Enough, get us off this toxic treadmill!” If the planet is to survive, society must adopt sustainable systems of farming or we will perish. When it comes to potatoes, its way past time to revisit the ancient knowledge of the mountain farmers in the Andes of South America. Time to rediscover those 5000 varieties of spuds in the International Potato Center and reintroduce biodiversity and sustainability to the world of industrial potato farming. We can all make personal commitments to getting off the toxic treadmill by changing our lifestyles, buying sustainably grown food and growing our own gardens in a planet loving way. Duke Farms is a place where we can learn all about how to do that, so come explore and learn to grow gently at Duke Farms! Activity: Grow Your Own Organic Potatoes Growing your own organic potatoes in your garden can b e a very rewarding pastime. There are many resources about how to get started. Here is a great overview. The Duke Farms Community Garden blog is a great resource for growing potatoes. Additional Resources • The Andean Initiative is a regional innovation platform designed to preserve the Andes’s unique agrobiodiversity, promote healthy diets, and build a climate resilient future. To do so, Andean Initiative seeks to foster the sustainable use of agrobiodiversity to promote development based on unique local resources, climate change action—including mitigation and adaptation in extreme environments and healthy diets to reshape the region’s food system, based on the triple-P approach: Plants, Planet, People. • Biodiversity for Future Programs -Rapidly rising populations and urbanization particularly in developing countries, are straining the world’s, capacity to feed its peoples. Productive farmlands, natural habits and plant diversity—essential for doubling the production of nutritious food—are being degraded. The unpredictable impacts of natural disasters, environmental threats and a changing climate further threaten global food security. Land traditionally suitable for potato and sweet potato cultivation is becoming less predominant due to insect and disease 3 pressures from warming climates, as cultivation is forced to move to elevations where centuries- old varieties and farming practices may no longer be tenable.

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