Humble spud at root of UN celebration

WELCOME to 2008: a time to re-evaluate menus and reorganise vegetable shops.

Clear out storage cupboards and cast aside the newfangled fetishes for basmati rice, organic-egg pasta and direct-from-the-desert couscous.

For the next 12 months the UN has decreed we are to steer our culinary ramblings back to our roots — and more precisely, root vegetables.

2008 is international year of the noble, versatile and much-travelled potato.

The imported tuber, responsible for many a feast but one all-too-costly famine, has been afforded a status the UN recently bestowed on the family, older people, mountains and micro-credit.

From January 1 the 192-country organisation began celebrating its 62nd year by paying homage to the Golden Wonders, Queens, King Edwards and Kerr’s Pinks of this world.

And, although completely unrelated, the spud is graciously sharing the 2008 spotlight with the wonders of sanitation.

While the Year of Rice (2004) and Freshwater (2003) may have passed us by, our historical ties with potatoes mean we will be playing an active part in its celebration throughout 2008.

Yesterday the Department of Agriculture and Food said Junior Minister Trevor Sargent has secured financial support for the spud.

He pledged €100,000 to help fund activities run by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation to focus research on what the department described as the “third most important food crop in the world”.

Mr Sargent said he hoped the year would lift the status of potatoes and help ensure food security for the world’s poorest people.

The idea behind the International Year of the Potato came from Peru where the roots of potato lie deep in the antiquity of the Andes.

Peru is home to the International Centre for the Potato which will host a major conference on the spud in March.

The president of the UN General Assembly, Dr Srgjan Kermin, has said the proposal was backed because it would promote the need for sustainable food sources.

Speaking at the October launch of the potato’s year in the sun James Godfrey, chairman of the board of trustees of the CIP said the social significance of the vegetable deserved recognition.

“Of course many people recall the potato blight epidemic that... caused widespread starvation and migration of so many people from Ireland.

“Since then we have selected and bred [blight] resistance into modern varieties, but it was a lesson learnt of the fragility of food supplies.

“What many people do not realise, and why it is so important that the UN has declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato, is to recognise the significance of potatoes and the great contribution potatoes have played in feeding the growing world population and in the social and cultural heritage to many communities,” said Mr Godfrey.

Ireland has already provided €520,000 in funding to the CIP through Irish aid.

www.cipotato.org