Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
food within a few years after its introduction
(Salaman, 1949). Yet a vision of potato as a fam-
ine preventer did not emerge.
In the Piedmont region of northern Italy,
under French control in the late 1170s, came re-
ports of a Protestant group called the Walden-
sians. The Waldensians were strict adherents to
their faith and openly critical of Roman Catholics.
Their existence was threatened at various times
with extremely violent suppression. Depicted as
satanic heretics, they were burned at the stake,
forced to flee their homeland, and eventually spread
across Europe.
Serendipitously, they had become potato
farmers. The potato was more productive than
alternative crops and able to support more people
on less land than other grains or roots of the time.
With each action against them, the Waldensians
spread north, seeking the protection of Protestant
enclaves as Europe became one large battlefield
(Oliemans, 1988).
In a short time, the potato became a major
source of sustenance for the Waldensians as they
fled north along the Swiss border into France
with their potatoes. Potatoes had an additional
benefit of escaping taxation, since taxation based
on agricultural production was levied at the grain
mill. Potatoes did not require milling and thus
were not taxed. Waldensians moved into the wel-
coming Protestant areas of France and Germany,
and also the Netherlands (Reader, 2008).
A description of potato was included in
Gerard's
Herbal
in 1597, which correctly named
its origin as Perú (Gerard, 1631). At roughly the
same time, the Swiss botanist, Gaspard Bauhin,
described the potato in the following passage:
Spanish and by others Pappas of the Indies. We
have further learned that this plant is known
under the name of Tartouffoli, doubtless
because of its tuberous root, seeing that this the
name by which one speaks of Truffles in Italy
where one eats these fruits in a similar fashion
to truffles.
(Bauhin, 1596)
It is apparent this observer was unaware
that the plant was a major food crop underpin-
ning the civilization of the Native Peoples of the
Andes. This was as a result of the secrecy main-
tained around all information coming back from
the New World.
Frederick the Great, the young ruler of
Prussia in the 1780s, spent considerable time in
the Netherlands, studying naval architecture. He
came upon the newly arrived potato and sent
batches back to Prussia (Salaman, 1949). A French
nobleman, A.A. Parmentier, having eaten pota-
toes while a prisoner of war, promoted its adop-
tion by famously leaving a royal potato planting
unguarded at night so that the locals could be
introduced to it by stealing it (Parmentier, 1781).
Parmentier recognized the stabilizing effect the
potato could have on food supply, even when
failure of grain crops could lead to famine. The
stage was set for an explosion of potato farming
and the ability to feed the masses in an agricultural
changeover, accompanied by religious revolu-
tion and persecution. Far from remaining a botan-
ical curiosity, the potato was becoming the food of
the poor.
Even more intriguing was that where the
soil and climate were appropriate for potato cul-
ture, a startling increase in population occurred
in the rural areas and adjacent cities. After the
introduction of the potato to the diet of the
French Army, records show that the average
height of soldiers increased by one-half of an
inch (Nunn and Qian, 2011).
In Swiss, the potato was called “erdäpfel”,
while in Italian it was called truffle, or “tartouffli”.
In France, it became known as “pomme de terre”,
and in the Netherlands “aardappel”, earth fruit
and earth apple, respectively. In German and
Russian, it was called “kartoffel”, a possible
sound-alike of “tartouffli”. In Spain, it was called
“patata”, again, a sound-alike of the already
adopted “batata” or sweet potato. In Great Britain,
the word “potato” was used for both potato and
sweet potato during a confusing introduction
The root is of an irregular round shape, it is
either brown or reddish-black, and one digs
them up in the winter lest they should rot, so full
are they of juice. One put them in the earth once
more in spring: should it happen that one leaves
them in the sun, in the springtime they will
sprout of themselves. Further at the base of the
stem close to the roots there spring long fibrous
radicles on which are borne the very small
round roots. The root itself generally rots when
the plant is fully developed. We have judged it
our duty to call this plant Solanum by reason of
the resemblance of its leaves with that of
tomato, and its flowers with those of the
Aubergine, its seed with that of Solanums and
because of its strong odor which is common to
these latter. It is called by some the Pappas of the
