Modern Potato Industry01

Waupaca Record

February 27, 1908

POTATO INDUSTRY IS A MODERN ONE

Originally Came From Peru and Chili

First Grown in This Country Mostly as a Novelty

The growing of potatoes as an article for food is comparatively a modern industry. Sir Walter Raleigh has been given the credit of introducing the potato from Virginia to Europe in 1565 but the honor really belongs to Sir John Hawkins, because it’s a fact that Sir Walter never visited Virginia. The potato in a native state was distributed from its home in Peru and chili by Spanish explorers who introduced it into some of the Gulf states, notably, Florida, and from there it came to the English settlement. They were grown as a novelty for a time and later as a food for stock, but it was not until the eighteenth century that the potato was in demand as an article for the kitchen and dining table.

About the middle of the seventeenth century, the potato, on account of its great food producing qualities, was sent to Ireland by the British Royal Society as a safeguard against famine amongst the people of that country. One hundred years later it was returned to New England from Ireland and has gradually become a staple food in all civilized portions of the world. The Irish potato adapts itself to a great variety of climates and soils. While it is a native of the tropics, it is successfully grown as far north as the 60^th parallel of latitude in Sweden.

There was a time in the history of the potato when a destructive rot almost ruined the crop and, as a result, famine followed in Ireland and great suffering in other sections where it was the staple food for the poorer classes. The world is indebted to an old preacher in New York, by the name of Goodrich, who from its native home in South America would restore the potato to its former disease-resisting qualities, and the place it had filled as a cheap, substantial food for the world. Aided by the state, he visited Chili and Peru, where he secured a supply of hardy, vigorous, native seedlings from which all of the most productive and valuable varieties now grown, are direct descendents. Potatoes are grown from cuttings of a root, rather than seed, hence, the tendency to run out unless great care is exercised in selecting planting stock and properly storing the same for seed purposes. Growers are now aware of this fact and act accordingly.

Last year the world produced more than five billions of bushels of potatoes – figures so large that the average grower cannot comprehend them. The United States grows from two hundred and fifty to three hundred million bushels each year. Germany takes the cake as the potato producing country of the world, as her average annual crop of the tubers amounts to more than one and one-half billions of bushels. The little country of Poland, in Europe, grows more potatoes than all of the United States. The old country growers do not eat all of their potatoes but large quantities are used in the manufacture of alcohol, starch, etc. – Northwestern Agriculturist.