Potatoes and chips
Kamal Lodaya, The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai

If I asked you to name a few vegetables, the chances are that you would name potataoes and tomatoes. Yet both of them were not in India 500 years ago. The first Mughal emperor Babar loved gardens, fruits, plants and vegetables. He would never have heard of potatoes or tomatoes. On the other hand, brinjals are from the same botanical family, and have been known in China and India since prehistoric times.
Potatoes come from the Inca empire of Peru and Bolivia. They came to Europe in the late 16th century after the Spanish conquered those parts of South America.  The Spaniards were enamoured of the gold of the Incas. They would never have realized that the potatoes they brought would turn out to be more valuable to people all over the world than all the gold they looted.
The South Americans had been cultivating potatoes for thousands of years, and grew nearly three thousand varieties of potato: purple potatoes, red potatoes, yellow potatoes, brown potatoes, sweet and bitter, starchy and buttery. In the 15th and 16th centuries they were among the most sophisticated farmers in the world. Since the Andes mountains offer different variations of altitude, sun and rain, they had varieties of potatoes which grew in all these different environments. From outside the farms they brought in wild potatoes which grew as weeds and were tough enough to survive, and crossed them with the ones in the farms. The diversity of the potato genome is an extraordinary gift to the rest of the world.
These plants grew when they came to the very different climate of Europe, and grew on less land than other crops. (Today the largest harvest of potatoes is in China and India.) Since they had been grown by the "uncivilized" people of South America, Europeans looked down upon them and would not have these "wild roots" on their dinner tables.
It was in Ireland that the potato took root, because wheat and other "civilized" cereals were difficult to grow there, and the prime agricultural land there had been taken away from the Irish by their English conquerors. A few acres of poor-quality land could produce enough potatoes to feed a large family and their domesticated animals. Potatoes have large quantities of minerals and vitamins B and C, and with some milk one could get vitamin A, making a nutritious diet. In fact the disease of scurvy (caused by lack of vitamin C in the diet) was eliminated in Europe by the potato. Potatoes were also easy to cook, you could boil them in a pot of water or roast them on a fire.
Still the English and other Europeans looked down upon this humble vegetable.  Both Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Germany had to force their farmers to plant potato crops. Marie Antoinette, queen of France, wore potato flowers in her hair in a bid to make the vegetable more fashionable. These three countries did away with malnutrition but the English were yet to give in.
In 1794 the wheat harvest in Britain failed and the price of white bread became very high. Many Englishmen argued for the introduction of the potato as a second staple crop after wheat. Others argued against it, pointing out that within less than a century the population of Ireland had jumped from 30 lakhs to 80 lakhs. Economists like Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo said that the potato did away with constraints which kept the population in check. It allowed the Irish to become "indolent" and "turbulent". Ricardo pointed out that grains such as wheat could be stored against storms and droughts, and be traded as a commodity. The potato offered no such security.
It is not that the economists were entirely wrong. In 1845, a fungus-like plant (an {oomycete} or "egg fungus") called {Phytopthora infestans} arrived in Europe. Its spores were spread by the wind. It would appear in a field almost overnight. In a few days a green field would turn black and smelling of rotten potatoes. Since its people relied heavily on potatoes, Ireland was the worst hit. Nearly 10 lakh people died of starvation. Many went blind or insane because of lack of vitamins. Diseases followed the famine.
What went wrong? Unlike the Incas, the Irish crop depended almost entirely on one variety of potato, called the {Irish lumper}. Potatoes are grown by grafting of buds, so they are clones, which meant that the entire crop had no resistance to the pest.
It was finally the South Americans who came to the rescue. The potato variety {Garnet Chile} grown there was found to be resistant to the fungus. The "uncivilized" Peruvians with their "disorderly" fields scattered through the Andes mountains had shown the Europeans the importance of diversity in a staple crop.
Now if I ask you for your favourite snacks, chances are that potato chips will figure among them. In India we use "potato chips" both for the soft ones which are served hot, and the crisp ones which are not heated up.  In Britain the first ones are called "chips" (fish and chips being a favourite dish) and the second ones are called "crisps". In the United States, the softer ones are "French fries" (sometimes "finger chips") and it is the crisp ones which are called "chips".
Finger chips appeared in Belgium and France in the 18th century, where they are known as "frites" ("fries" in French).  The crisps originated in the 19th century. One popular story is that a hotel cook called George Crum invented them to please an unhappy customer. From the 20th century crisps began to be mass-produced and sold in tins and later in plastic packets.
Like most people, you may also like potato chips. But do you like them cooked in a particular way, or as sold by a particular company?
A global company like Macdonald's has perfected the design of chips which have a particular kind of colour, length, thinness and crispness. Getting chips to turn out this way requires a particular variety of potato. In the case of Macdonald's it is a variety called the {Russet Burbank}. Since the sale of chips is a huge business for Macdonald's, as also for other companies, they have to have huge crops of specific potato varieties. To avoid pests getting at these monoculture crops they have to use a fair amount of pesticides.
So you see that even such a simple habit as having a favourite potato chip snack, when it is shared by lakhs of people all over the world, may lead to decisions which affect the environment, in ways which the eater may never have thought of.

Adapted from
{The Botany of Desire}
by
{Michael Pollan}