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Manitoba Agriculture, Food and Rural Initiatives

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Potatoes

History

Unlike many of the foods we eat today the potato is a new world food from the South American Andes that traveled back to Europe in 1540 with the Spanish conquistadors. Andean farmers had cultivated the potato for food from the pre-Columbian age, 7,000 years earlier; often at altitudes of over 10,000 feet. The potato was worshipped, included in burials, stored in hiding places in case of war or famine and dried to be carried on long journeys.

The potato was not immediately popular in Europe perhaps because there were so many other food and grain options. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced potatoes into Ireland in 1589 and by the1800’s potatoes provided over 80% of the calories in the human diet and the feed for livestock that provided meat, milk and eggs. Disaster struck in 1840 when a succession of blights  struck the potatoes causing the great famine in Ireland of 1845-49 that saw 1 million die of starvation and 1 ½ million Irish emigrate to Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

Meanwhile in France a French military chemist and botanist who had survived on a diet of potatoes as a prisoner of the Prussians approached King Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette persuading the king of the potatoes value he was given a useless field for his experiment. He arranged to have guards set up to protect the crop and the populace believed these plants to be very valuable. When he removed the guards the peasants stole the potatoes and start growing them in their own gardens. A more successful strategy than used with the Russian peasants who had to be forced to grow and eat them by soldiers. Marie Antoinette even further popularized the potato wearing of potato flowers in her hair.

Potatoes were brought to North America by the settlers and grown in home gardens. Manitoba commercial potato production started 1908 but didn’t expand substantially until the 1960’s when producers were looking for alternative crops.

Importance

The potato is considered the 4th most important crop in the world after wheat, rice and maize (corn).Today Manitoba is the second largest potato producing province in Canada after Prince Edward Island.

Over 100 Manitoba producers grow potatoes under contract to supply processors, 26 producers grow potatoes for the fresh table market and 22 producers grow seed potatoes.

Over 27 varieties of potatoes are grown in the province. The table varieties are mainly reds, yellow fleshed varieties like Yukon Gold and russets; the potatoes for processing are mainly Russet Burbank and Shepody.

The popularity of potato chips and french fires has resulted in multimillion dollar expansions of Manitoba Potato processing plants in Portage and Carberry Manitoba has 4 major potato processors with 5 processing facilities.  The 3 frozen French fry factories produce slightly less than half the national french fry production. In addition to French fries, potato products like hash brown patties, dollar fries, wedge fries, hash browns and tater gems are produced.

Potato starch is also produced using by-products of the processing industry. Potato starch is used in the production of adhesives and food grade potato starch is used in food processing.

The four major potato processor’s 5 locations in Manitoba are;

Exports

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