Can Potatoes Feed the World?

The potato (Solanum tuberosum) is the world's fourth most important food crop after maize, rice and wheat with 374 million tonnes fresh-weight of tubers produced in 2021, with 52.6% from Asia, 27.0% from Europe, 7.6% from Africa, 6.7% from North America, 5.6% from Latin America and 0.5% from Australia and New Zealand. As a major food crop, the potato has an important role to play in the United Nations "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development", which started on 1 January 2016. The second of the seventeen goals (SDG2) is to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. By 2030, the aim of the agenda is to 'ensure access by all people, in particular the poor and people in vulnerable situations, including infants, to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round'. However, a greater sense of urgency is required to achieve this goal. There is also a need to look beyond 2030 to 2050, when the United Nations predicts a world population of 9.7 billion, compared with 8 billion in 2022, and a warmer climate and loss of biodiversity that will make life more difficult for humankind.

The book explores how potatoes can contribute to SDG2 by increasing potato production and improving the nutritional value of potatoes, in particular to alleviate micronutrient deficiencies ('hidden hunger'), having first explained how potatoes became a major food crop and the lessons to be learnt from the crop failures and resulting famine in Ireland over the period 1845 to 1849. The question "Can potatoes feed the world?" is used to give a novel perspective for a broad audience on the biology and history of the potato crop and its potential to provide food security. It is a scientific and technological question set in a political, economic and societal context.