Potatoes: South America's Gift to the World

Potatoes are a vegetable beloved by all. See how the potato emerged from obscurity into a vital food crop that feeds the world population and came to grace culinary traditions all over the world.

Sources and Bibliography:

[AlejandroFlores-vitl]

"The Potato doesn't care it just adapts" truly the food of humanity

[jonathanwilliams]

The potato is so engrained in European cuisine that fantasy always has the potato as a crop despite other new world vegetables not being featured

[thecaveofthedead]

The food security enjoyed by the Inca was yet another mind-blowing paradigm shift for me. I'd simply assumed that, from the dawn of agriculture to Borlaugh's Green Revolution, famine was a constant in human life. Now I learn that that wasn't the case for some significant chunk of South American history. This channel is really amazing.

[Derlaid]

Hard to imagine the modern world being what it is without New World crops like potatoes, corn, and squash. We owe a lot to the people who spent the centuries domesticating these plants.

[GringoLoco]

Excellent video! In Peru, potatoes are still with a seven -year fallow period, a period which parasitic nematode worms' eggs cannot survive, a practice that dates backs millennia. Another tactic is the planting of "sacrificial perimeter crops" on the edge of the fields, which lured pests like moths away from where they could do damage. Yet another method, introduced following the Conquest, is to wrap seed potatoes in banana leaves when planting which also protects them from worms.

[rdreher]

In Russian, the sweet potato is called батат (batat), which is from that Spanish term "batata." Potatoes though are called картошка (kartoshka) originally a diminutive of картофель (kartofyel') from German "Kartoffel, " which is a corruption of "Tartuffel" from Italian "tartufolo" dim. of "tartufo, " from Latin "terrae tūber." As you may guess "tuber" comes from the second of these two words, and the term "truffle" comes from this expression as well, from a path it took through French instead of Italian.

[KTo]

The adoption of the potato in Europe wasn't helped by the fact that they initially tried eating the leaves and not the tubers.

[TheUncleRuckus]

Not just Potatoes we have to thank South America for there's Tomatoes, Peppers, Green Beans, Lima Beans, Pineapples, Strawberries, Pumpkins, Squash, Avocados and probably more that I'm missing.

[PragandSens]

As a peruvian, i'm proud of the legacy that my people left, my old ancestors, I'm from Ayacucho, he mentions that region in the video~ lets

[ericscooby]

Very cool! I sometimes think the New World doesn't get the credit they deserve from their agriculture and domestic vegetable technology. Truly one of the biggest impacts in existence

[sarahwatts]

Every taxi driver in Peru knows that there are (at least) 4, 000 varieties of Peruvian potatoes. It's a huge part of Peru's national identity.

[TropicalCyclone]

I'm from California but my mom's Bolivian. Often times she tells me that one of the things she misses most from home is Chuño, because she would grow up eating it and my grandma would always make it for dinner. It was awesome finally hearing a video talking about this part of Bolivian culture. Makes me feel happy to see :) Thanks for making this video!

[Biophile]

Botanist here, I've been fascinated by all of the topics about the ancient American peoples that you have made videos on (plus more). This one on the potato was quite good. I had often wondered how people dealt with the cardiac glycosides in wild potatoes. My one quibble is that technically potatoe tubers are a kind of specialized stem. You can tell because of the "eyes" on the surface that are buds to produce new shoots. In contrast Sweet Potatoes are actually true fleshy roots, though they can produce adventitious buds on the roots to make new stems after storage. No new world crop remade the old world as much as the potato and you really brought that out. :)

[FPS-mqgb]

13:50 vivo en Lima y he sembrado algunas plantas de papa en mi huerta usando el sustrato original (arena) y las papas crecieron normalmente. Es una planta muy resistente y adaptable al suelo desértico y clima húmedo de la costa peruana

[rayray]

You should definitely do a video on tomatoes and corn because I feel like those two also impacted the world in a huge way as well

[moss_quartz]

For people who are interested in topics similar to this, there's an excellent book by Bill Laws called "Fifty Plants that Changed the Course of History". It's wonderfully written and illustrated, and tells a bunch of stories like (and including!) this one!

[InssiAjaton]

My grandmother described what a blessing the potato was. The previous mainstay turnip generally was spoiled well before spring, but the potatoes were good all the way to next summer, if stored well. I personally have minimized my use of fries, maybe just twice per month, and potato chips never. But baked potatoes and mashed potatoes I could eat daily.

[TheoEvian]

From a 1848 Czech botanical encyclopedia: "We have uncountable varieties as to their shape, colour and quality. This plant is the biggest boon of the discovery of America for the human kind. Thanks to it it is not possible anymore for general famine to pester human species which have ample descriptions in the chronicles when all our hope was spent on grain, so delicate to the climate and so failing; at such times the ground berries (potatoes) bring great harvests and cause that the unfortunate people from the clutches of famine is saved. (...) They are also used to make alcohol."

It is much more lovely in the archaic sounding 19th century Czech.

[RAJAT]

I'm from India. One of the signature dishes of the ethnic community I belong to is a potato curry called 'Batatya Saung'. Potatoes came to India in the 16th-17th centuries with the Portuguese. Of course, other Indian communities have also enthusiastically adopted it, thus giving rise to iconic dishes like the Mutton Dum Biryani, and the Aloo Pyaaz gravy, not to mention breads like the Aloo Paratha. Believe it or not, potato dishes are even prepared on festival days, as well as fasting days!

[markhughes]

Thank you South America - I can’t say it enough - mashed potato and butter has always been behind my greatest inspirations - such as they are.