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Chow Chung-yan

As families and friends gather to bid farewell to a turbulent 2025, the unassuming potato will, no matter where you live, almost certainly find its place on the dinner table.
Domesticated nearly 10,000 years ago in Peru, it did not voyage beyond the Americas until the 16th century. Yet no vegetable has played a more significant role in human history and politics than this humble tuber.
Dubbed the calorie king, potatoes produce more calories and nutrients per unit of land than any other major crop. A single acre could feed a family of six to eight for a year. They thrive in diverse, often hostile environments, surviving in marginal lands and poor soils where other crops fail.
Potatoes mature remarkably quickly, yielding a reliable harvest which can then be stored for months simply by burying them.
Unlike wheat, rice or barley, potatoes require no threshing, grinding or complex preparation before consumption, making them the ultimate military ration for commanders perpetually struggling with logistics.

These unique qualities played a pivotal role at the Battle of Ollantaytambo in Peru in 1537, allowing Inca warriors to sustain a large army in rugged terrain and inflict a rare humiliating defeat on the Spanish conquistadors.
The victory could not prevent the eventual conquest of the Americas by technologically superior Europeans, a conquest that resulted in catastrophic enslavement and genocide. But the potency of the unpretentious potato was not lost on the invaders. Soon, European rulers began promoting this superfood to their own people.
It proved a hard sell. The potato, a member of the poisonous nightshade family and unmentioned in the Bible, was regarded with deep suspicion and treated largely as a botanical curiosity.
The Catholic Irish became its first major adopters, albeit under duress. As the first subjects of English colonial imperialism, many Irish families in the 17th century were forced off their most fertile land, which was then used to grow cash crops for export to England.
Confined to tiny, marginal plots, the Irish turned out of necessity to the potato, which thrived on poor soil. By the 1840s, one-third of Ireland’s population relied on a single variety, the Irish Lumper, as their sole food source.
This over-dependence on a high-yield but genetically uniform crop proved tragic. When a potato blight, brought by water mould from the Americas, struck in the 1840s, Ireland was devastated by one of history’s worst famines.
About one million people perished and another million were forced to emigrate, often to face vehement discrimination in the United States. In total, Ireland lost a quarter of its population.
In France, the promotion of potatoes prompted one of history’s great acts of mass persuasion. Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, a French army pharmacist who had been fed them as a prisoner of war, became convinced they could save his country from famine.
To overcome public distrust, Parmentier devised a brilliant stunt, enlisting King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette to secure a guarded plot near Paris to plant potatoes.


The heavy royal guard suggested the crop was valuable and soldiers were instructed to accept bribes, allowing people to “steal” the tubers. The king wore a potato flower in his buttonhole; the queen wore them in her hair. Overnight, potatoes became a fashionable delicacy.
Nevertheless, most of the upper class continued to look down on potato-eaters. Potatoes, grown underground, were considered “food for the poor and animals”, unlike “godly” wheat cultivated under the sun.
While grain was transformed through milling, fermentation and baking into bread – a symbol of culture – potatoes were often eaten as they were, representing to elites the divide between civilisation and barbarism.
Vincent van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters caused an uproar in 1885, criticised even by his friends as “ugly”, at a time when art was expected to dignify high culture and romanticism.
By depicting gritty, honest peasant life, the young artist delivered a powerful social statement. Today, it is considered his first masterpiece.

It ultimately took wars and revolutions to cement the potato’s place as a modern superfood. During both world wars, major powers facing severe resource constraints actively encouraged citizens to grow potatoes.
Britain launched the “Potato Pete” campaign, urging families to turn gardens into potato plots. The United States promoted “Victory Gardens”, while the Soviet Union hailed potatoes as the “second bread”.
These historical lessons are not lost on Chinese planners, ever mindful of the struggle to feed a massive population with limited resources.
In 2015, China launched its own Potato Staple Strategy, which aimed to elevate the crop to a main staple, with the goal of improving yields to more than 30 tonnes per hectare, with half to be used as staples, by 2020.
Beijing offered political support reminiscent of the French royal court, yet the plan has met limited success in the past decade.
Despite becoming the world’s largest producer – China’s annual potato output stood at 90 million tonnes in 2024 – most Chinese still regard the potato as a vegetable, not a staple food, showing how profoundly difficult it is to shift culinary culture.
For a government proud of its long-term planning, the humble potato remains an elusive goal.
No other plant has exerted such an outsize influence on human civilisation as the potato. Today, as we enter a new year fraught with ever greater uncertainties, we would do well to take a lesson from this resilient super vegetable.
May we all be as sturdy, adaptable and sustaining as a potato!


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Be a potato: the lesson of the resilient staple resonates as 2026 approaches

The Potato Eaters, considered Vincent Van Gogh’s first masterpiece, delivers a powerful social statement with its depiction of honest peasant life. Photo: Getty Images

Potatoes thrive in diverse, often hostile environments, surviving in marginal lands and poor soils where other crops fail. Photo: Shutterstock

The historical lessons of the potato were not lost on Chinese planners, who launched China’s own potato staple strategy in 2015. Photo: Getty Images

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Illustration: Henry Wong

Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev is chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. Photo: Getty Images

European Commission leader Ursula von der Leyen and US President Donald Trump shake hands over a US-EU trade deal in July. Photo: Getty Images

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Under the “America First Global Health Strategy”, many  African countries have signed bilateral agreements to receive health financing in exchange for access to biological data and pathogen specimens. Photo: AFP

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Lisebo Lechela, 53, an HIV-positive sex worker, is pictured in Maputsoe, Lesotho, which is among nations to sign a health agreement with the US. Photo: AP

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A decade on, the humble tuber’s public adoption remains an elusive goal for China’s planners and yet it offers a lesson for uncertain times


A decade on, the humble tuber’s public adoption remains an elusive goal for China’s planners and yet it offers a lesson for uncertain times.


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Be a potato: the lesson of the resilient staple resonates as 2026 approaches

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}A decade on, the humble tuber’s public adoption remains an elusive goal for China’s planners and yet it offers a lesson for uncertain times

A decade on, the humble tuber’s public adoption remains an elusive goal for China’s planners and yet it offers a lesson for uncertain times