Here it is, almost the middle of
November in the Year of the Potato and I’ve yet to pay tribute to this
ubiquitous tuber. So please allow me, the original half-Polish quarter-Irish
mad potato junkie from Edmonton, to redeem myself.
Granted, it’s not quite the same as
the Chinese lunar years devoted to the pig, the rabbit, the monkey and the rest
of the menagerie, although this might be a concept worth pursuing. (I can
picture it now — the post office issuing commemorative stamps and everyone
divining their inner nature depending on which of the vegetative lunar years
they are born in: Year of the Turnip; Year of the Sweet Onion, or the Crookneck
Squash…)
No, in case you’ve been asleep all
year, this is the
International
Year of
the Potato, as declared by the UN. And it’s funny how adding the word
“International” elevates the concept from mockery to mighty serious. Heck, the
little ol’ potato even has its own trendy website now, dubbed “Hidden Treasure”
(www.potato2008.org).
Maybe it’s the UN designation or
maybe it’s the fact that the potato has finally come into its own as a food
item worth paying attention to, but it’s being elevated to something of an
edible celebrity.
“The potato is getting a little
respect,” says Bruce Miller, co-owner of Across the Creek Organics in
Pemberton. “And so are the farmers growing them.”
Around the Millers’ place, a mere
800,000 pounds of certified organic potatoes are nestled in the root cellar
right now. That’s more or less the annual harvest from the 500-acre farm that
has been in his family since 1895. Three generations, all of them growing
potatoes.
Pemberton, of course, is rooted in
potato history and culture, pun intended. It was the first area in the world to
grow virus-free commercial seed potatoes, mainly due to its once relatively
isolated location — the tentacle of Highway 99 reached it only in 1975.
But, thankfully, some 10 years ago,
Bruce and his family decided to move into organic, and what I call cream of the
crop potatoes for eating rather than seeding.
Now at better food stores across the
south coast you can find a bag of the Millers’ certified organic German butter
potatoes or russets or Russian blues (check out the antioxidant levels in those
purple babies) with their cute little “peas gowing a pod” logo that always
makes me smile.
I cradle that bag of patooties in my
arms like a baby to get it home, anticipating some pretty precious potato
moments ahead (a nice, firm German butter potato on a cool autumn night melts
in your mouth, well, just like butter).
It strikes me as pretty ironic that
“sophisticated” North American diners are finally getting into potato varieties
that have been around hundreds or even thousands of years. Farmers in Peru,
from whence the potato cometh, have been cultivating some pretty wild-looking
varieties — try more than 4,000 of them — for more than 8,000 years.
A friend of ours in Prince George has
been into growing his own potatoes big time and shared some early, as in
historically early “proto-potatoes” with us. You could barely imagine these
were potatoes. Tiny, pink, finger-like and dense but wet in texture, they were
actually kind of weird by my Albertan books.
But tiny and weird or luxurious and
buttery, potatoes remain a pretty impressive food source. Not that anyone
anticipated the global economic meltdown or the rising food prices we saw
earlier this year, but someone at the UN must have been prescient, for even
with all these factors in play, potatoes remain one of the least expensive,
nutritious foods in marketplaces around the world.
They are the number four food crop
after rice, wheat and maize; they’re high in vitamin C, protein and nutrients,
and low in fat; and they are great for fighting poverty in urban settings
because your can grow them even on a tiny plot of land.
All in all, Mr. Potato stands as a
tasty part of diets round the world and a great tool for meeting one of the
UN’s millennial development goals: reducing by half the number of people living
in extreme poverty and hunger around the world.
IT’S A FACT
The United Nations has been
designating certain years as “International” years since 1959 to draw attention
to major issues and encourage international action on them. To separate the
really important issues from your everyday riff-raff, not every year is an
“International” year of something or other.
Here’s a sampling of some of the
“International” themes the UN has chosen over time, displaying quite a range of
topics and gravitas:
1959-60: World Refugee Year
1967 International World Tourism Year
1975 International Women’s Year
1978 International Anti-Apartheid
Year
1983 World Communications Year
1986 International Year of Peace
1995 United Nations Year for
Tolerance
1998
International Year
of the Ocean
2001 took the cake, though, for the
theme year with the longest name: International Year of Mobilization against
Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. I can’t
blame you for not recalling it — no media outlet in its right mind could
feature it because the name took up half the article.
While the International Year of
Potato theme has caught on like (potato) hotcakes this year, it’s not the only
UN theme. 2008 is also International Year of Planet Earth, International Year
of Sanitation and International Year of Languages. What a year!
Not to be alarmist or anything about
the state of our world, but the UN’s “International” year designations have
been occurring at a greater and greater frequency as we approached the
millennium.
In fact, every year since the year
2000 has seen multiple themes to take international action on, but 2008 is the
first time that
four
themes have been
chosen for a single year.
So much to pay attention to in terms
of world development, so little time to do it.
Glenda Bartosh is an award-wining
freelance writer who urges you to celebrate International Year of the Potato
and farmers like the Millers by buying a bag or three of Across the Creek
certified organic potatoes.