Colorful Potatoes

The potato was domesticated by the ancient Incans between seven and ten thousand years ago, and the starchy food crop was a key food source throughout Latin America for millennia. There are more than 5,000 different colorful varieties of potato, and several wide species can still be found throughout the Andes mountains in Peru, Chile, and Bolivia. The Spanish introduced the potato to Europe and Spanish colonies, including Florida, in the 16th century, where it grew in popularity and eventually spread to Asia. By the 18th century, many European food economies relied on potato production. Unlike farmers in Latin America, however, European farmers relied on only a few species, and this made the crop particularly vulnerable to diseases. A potato blight spread throughout Ireland and the Scottish highlands in the 19th century, where more than a million people died of starvation and millions more fled to the Americas. The potato remains a staple food throughout the world, reigning as the fourth largest global food crop behind corn, wheat, and rice. While many indigenous communities in Latin America continue to produce a wide variety of different species of potato, nearly 99% of global production is based on only a few varieties that descend from a single species. Yet indigenous farmers and home gardeners continue to grow a variety of colorful potatoes today.