How the potato made the world

Thanks to SeatGeek for sponsoring! Use code ADAM for $20 off your first SeatGeek order.seatgeek.onelink.me/RrnK/RAGUSEA
"The Potato's Contribution to Population and Urbanization: Evidence from an Historical Experiment," Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, 2011: www.nber.org/papers/w15157
"A societal history of potato knowledge in Sweden
c. 1650-1800," Erik Bodensten, 2020: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/...
"Soldier, soldier, what made you grow so tall? A study of height, health, and nutrition in Sweden, 1720-1881," L.G. Sandberg and R.H. Steckel, 1980: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...

[@gavinyeomans]

One fact about the Irish potato famine that people often forget to mention is that Ireland was still producing enough food to feed its entire population during the famine, but British officials forced the citizens to export most of their crop yields to Great Britain in order to feed the people there. It was a predominately man-made famine.

[@mvpandrew93]

*Ireland never forgets. Tried taking our language too*

[@workingclasscook870]

This comment should be pinned.

[@chettlar212]

​@@workingclasscook870I agree. Incredibly important. The rabbit trail about this is crazy

[@Indy__isnt_it]

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCort is a true story of a boy growing up in the worst of conditions. Excellent account of his young life. (Part 2 'Tis)

[@sarahwatts7152]

Plus when food aid did come, they sent cornmeal, which the Irish had never really used before (and which doesn't have as much nutrition in the absence of nixtamalization)

[@SwitchFeathers]

My favorite story about potatoe farming is when Frederick II of Prussia really wanted to get his people to start planting and eating them (for all the reasons listed in this video, he knew they would be a great crop). At first the Prussians didn't want anything to do with potatoes, but ol Freddy Two figured out that if he planted a bunch of potatoes on "royal gardens" and posted guards around them at all times, it would make the potatoes _seem_ more valuable and special. He even made sure to instruct the guards to be lazy and let anybody they caught stealing potatoes go with a simple warning, and spread word of how easy it was to steal these fantastic new "royal potatoes". It worked brilliantly, and within a few years Prussia was using potatoes as a primary food crop.

[@puellanivis]

Jetzt essen wir mehr Kartoffel als auch Schwein!

[@wwoods66]

Maybe. "[French potato enthusiast Antoine-Augustin Parmentier] gave bouquets of potato blossoms to the king and queen, and surrounded his potato patch at Sablons with armed guards during the day to suggest valuable goods, withdrawing them at night so people could steal the potatoes (the same story exists in Germany about Frederick the Great)." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine-Augustin_Parmentier

[@puellanivis]

@@wwoods66 de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartoffelbefehl Considering Friedrich II of Prussia also has his gravestone decorated by visitors with potatoes to this day?

[@PinHeadSupliciumwtf]

​@@wwoods66the first (known) potato order issued by Friedrich was in 1746 when Parmentier was 9 years old.

[@RamadaArtist]

@@puellanivis I mean, historical figures often get associated with apocryphal stories, even during their own lifetimes.

[@brianm7287]

In China, it wasn't the potato, it was the sweet potato. The cool thing about potatoes and sweet potatoes is not only how nutritious, hardy, and easy they are, it's that they don't compete with grains. They grow in areas where grains don't, so it expands available farmland.

[@DJDextek]

From the Americas to Europe's embrace, Potatoes changed landscapes and gave us a taste, Of nutrition and growth, of history's might, A humble tuber's journey, shining bright.

[@salahad-dinyusufibnayyub7754]

Same as other Asia countries like Vietnam, Japan, Korea, etc... Sweet potatoes was more common than potatoes and even until now the sweet potatoes yield also higher than potatoes in East Asia

[@pedrodutra4088]

One thing about potatoes: they from the Andes, native from South America. So when you talk about how potatoes saved your country from famine or a national dish is made of them, remember that indigenous people are the ones responsible for that.

[@MVPhurricane]

@@pedrodutra4088 nah it's probably the potatoes that are responsible for that

[@pedrodutra4088]

Yeah no because it was introduced too europeans by the natives. otherwise they wouldn't be eating it. so @@MVPhurricane

[@Snailman3516]

What's fascinating about potatoes is that the andean people, the original cultivators of potatoes, made a huge number of varietals for growing at different altitudes since they grew them in terraced mountains.

[@somehow_not_helpfulATcrap]

And they kind of freeze dry them in cold dry night to keep them for longer, a decade is possible if properly kept. Its called a Chuño then and what helped the Inca Empire stretch 2500 miles.

[@fuckinghell1501]

I need to throw a dinner party for 6 people who are vegetarian. Can you suggest a 3-course menu with a chocolate dessert?

[@hxhdfjifzirstc894]

@@fuckinghell1501 Order a few vegetarian pizzas and make some instant chocolate pudding. Job done.

[@krono5el]

oh no did the europeans destroy them all like they did with all the other different types of Maize?

[@Ru77ian]

@@fuckinghell1501find a better group to host a dinner party for

[@ohoiko]

I grew up in Northwestern Ukraine, relatively close to the Belarus (which is also stereotypically known as potato country), and I think 60-70% of my childhood ration was some sort of potato meals. Almost every family in our town had "gorod" - small patch of farmland 0.3 to 1 acre near their house or outside the urban area. "Chernozem" or black soil here is a very fertile soil, and even small amount of land yielded very high harvest of potatoes and was enough to feed a family of 5 in my case. Ukraine is known for its wheat and that's good for commercial production scale, when you need to mill it, create a dough and create bread. But for families the ability to pick your potatoes from the ground, wash it and just cook it is like a convenient endless food source.

[@legoushque3334]

you missed an "o" in your "ogorod"

[@ohoiko]

@@legoushque3334 In ukrainian language it's "gorod"🙂

[@legoushque3334]

Really? My bad. I think I've heard ukrainian people refer to city/town as "gorod" and to backyard farm piece as "ogorod" while talking in ukrainian. I guess it was surzhik then. I hope that someday the war would be over. If not for Ptn's ambitions it would've never started @@ohoiko

[@c.maygarcia7152]

The potato is Peru's gift to the world... along with tomatoes, peanuts, sweet potato, quinoa, and many more. When I traveled there last year, I was amazed by the sheer variety of potatoes they had (about 4000 different types). No wonder they include it in almost every meal.

[@petterbossum4716]

Norwegian here. As potatoes were introduced there was something called "potato priests". Priests who had learned about the value of the potato for feeding the people. Some of them spent a lot of time preaching about the potato from the pulpit, as the priest was one of the few educated people around. Thus potato priests.

[@sophiaweng6685]

The potato did have a population effect in East Asia! Particularly China, where a lot of population growth happened in the mountainous regions of Fujian province because the Hakka people (a minority group in China) were pushed out of areas where rice was viable in the late 1600s and turned to growing the newly introduced sweet potatoes and potatoes instead of rice. (from the book Pacific Journeys, chapter "lovesick grass, foreign tubers, and jade rice").

[@HarithBK]

there is a older saying from my part of sweden when you ask "what's for dinner?" you respond with "food and potatoes" this is due to the fact farmers had potatoes with every meal no matter what. i remember as a kid we were invited to my great grandmas sister and that side of the family was making meat sauce and spaghetti and my great grandmas sister wanted to boil some potatoes. it didn't matter if there was pasta you had the meal you were eating and along with that you had potatoes. to me it says a lot about how key the calories potatoes provide was to grow population.

[@sebastianboredal7486]

When i was little we had my grandparents over for pizza, which they had never had before. They got completely bewildered by the lack of potatoes on the table. "Mat och potäter" indeed.

[@infamoussphere7228]

my wife's relatives in Finnish Lapland apparently considered no meal complete unless it included potatoes. Even if it had bread/rice/pasta etc. No potatoes - no meal.

[@guymontag2948]

The first potatoes I grew were from grocery store potatoes. They were soft and wrinkly enough to be inedible but it was the right time of year, so I buried them, leading to 3 very productive generations of potatoes until I no longer had a garden. They weren't even my potatoes. My mom gave me the food out of her fridge when she went on a trip, which is how they ended up getting forgotten about for that long. Happy accident.

[@applegal3058]

Haha, nothing better than free potatoes that keep on giving! I planted store-bought potatoes this spring too. The plants are big and I can't wait until they die back and I can dig up my reward! Only problem is, store-bought potatoes aren't guaranteed to be disease free, like seed potatoes. I'm not so concerned, since if by chance I get issues, I just won't plant potatoes in that plot for a few years. My store-bought potatoes were probably last-year's harvest, since they almost immediately started to sprout after I bought them. We can't plant here in Newfoundland until late May, early June due to frost and snow risks.

[@mbedj1974]

There are no mistakes, only happy little accidents

[@BatCaveOz]

Your Mom keeps potatoes in the fridge?

[@applegal3058]

@@mbedj1974 love Bob Ross! He's an absolute gem 💎

[@Theorimlig]

@@BatCaveOz I'd consider that normal. They do last longer and are less prone to sprouting if kept a long time. The only downside is that they're cold when you peel them.

[@secondengineer9814]

Ah yes, Swedish administrative data. The jewel of all sociological research

[@flamingpi2245]

the potato blight wasn't all because the irish were too shortsighted to forsee a blight. English land barons and nobility stole crops, stole acres of fertile land for beef production, and overall drained ireland. They had to resort to potatoes because the english were taking literally everything else

[@dissimilar5]

The potato blight actually went through large swaths of Europe at the time, but Ireland was the only one that experienced a famine. Due to the system of sharecropping, the export of food out of Ireland during the blight, and many other factors, some historians actually consider the Great Famine to be an attempted genocide.

[@Adderkleet]

At no point does Adam call (or imply) that we were short-sighted. He calls it "a bad idea" which is was - but poverty and destitution will result in bad ideas being the only option for survival.

[@janetmackinnon3411]

@@dissimilar5Scotland suffered as well

[@krankarvolund7771]

@@Adderkleet The problem with calling it a bad idea, is that it imply they chose to do it. They didn't chose to do it, they were forced to do it ^^'

[@channelname4331]

@@janetmackinnon3411 not as much as ireland. England actually helped yall

[@sunnyoo4]

Speaking of the potato's impact in East Asia: North Korean propaganda, starting in the mid-late '90s due to widespread famine, began to advocate planting and eating potatoes (a non-traditional dish in Korea) due to the very same benefits that Adam talks about. There is even a propaganda song called "Potato Pride" (감자자랑) to convince citizens to grow and eat potatoes. The country has been facing food pressures due to Covid and a spate of natural disasters that have destroyed crops, so observers have again seen an increase in potato propaganda.

[@boulderbash19700209]

Propaganda from Chief Potatohead Kim. 😅

[@aaronb1195]

Once, I talked to a farmer who grew potatoes in the Columbia basin in Washington. Apparently, different diseases are so prevalent there that he can only grow potatoes on the same land once every 6 or 7 years. Potatoes were by far his most profitable crop, but rotating them any more frequently than that and he would lose too much to disease. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it's the same on the Snake River Plain in Idaho, which is basically adjacent and has a similar climate.

[@cinemaocd1752]

I loved this title so much. There was a book written in the 90s called Indian Givers that was about under recognized contributions by Native Americans and they talked about how Machu Piccu was probably an ag station that was used to breed a huge variety of potatoes. The empire had a huge variety of territory it needed to feed and the potato could be bred to work in all of it. The potato was brought to Europe, where at first it was used to feed animals like many other root crops. I think that's why potatoes are associated with poverty in Europe in the 19th century. I lived in Ireland for a winter and my housemates would easily eat a 5 pound bag in a single meal between like three people. They still love their spuds there. It helped that governement kicked in with a butter allowance for anyone on the dole. You could go to the post office and pick up a couple pounds of fresh irish butter. I really loved that potato heavy diet and I lost so much weight (probably because our house didn't have central heating and I burned a lot of calories keeping warm) despite all the carbs.

[@calvinouellette4545]

Anyone on the dole?

[@amberallen7809]

​@@calvinouellette4545unemployment

[@sid6645]

Thats a fascinating story!

[@lmpeters]

I've heard that lots of older Irish homes are still poorly insulated and heated with a single peat-burning hearth, so it would make sense that they'd burn lots of extra calories just to stay warm.

[@Default78334]

Speaking of the Irish: potatoes, dairy, and a green (maybe kale or cabbage) and you have all the ingredients to make colcannon which was a good portion of the diet of Irish peasants. Edit: also the surname "Qian" is a single syllable and the "Qi" is pronounced more like a "Ch".

[@fluidthought42]

Ah, so it's pronounced like "Chan", understood.

[@Veepee92]

​@fluidthought42 If "Chan" is a surname, in which case it's a Cantonese surname, then roughly yes. Not exactly one-to-one, but close enough. The matching Mandarin surname "Chen" - both are 陈 - is pronounced quite differently.

[@olop-ln7ot]

@@fluidthought42 It's a bit more like chian

[@TreebeardTheEnt]

Diphthong

[@Default78334]

The "a" in Qian is pronounced that the "a" in "rat" or "bat", while the "a" in Chan is pronounced like the a in "wall" or "call" (at least as those words are pronounced in most American topolects).

[@MajoraZ]

I really wish there was at least some mention of the Potatoes usage by the Andean civilizations that originally domesticated it here. I get that the video's main thesis is the impact the Potato had on global population growth outside of the Americas, but so often people consider the Precolumbian Americas an afterthought or not an important part of history in it's own right, and just as the potato enabled increasing urbanization in Eurasia, it enabled the growth of urban city-states and empires in South America too. Not just the Inca, but dozens of major civilizations before them, like Chavin and Moche states, the Wari Empire and kingdom of Tiwanku, the Sican civilization and Chimor Kingdom, etc.

[@jasonreed7522]

The crops domesticated by the precolumbian Americans are some of the best we have today. Potatoes are insane in terms of calories per acre harvested, and they have way more micros than they normally get credit for. Potatoes and Maize can be stored for very long time periods without issue. The Andeans even developed a way to freezedry their taters and store them in bunkers indefinitely, which provided unrivaled food storage & security. (Unfortunately for them, the conquistadors used these stores to feed their invading armies) And to top it off most people would agree that Potatoes, Maize, Tomatoes, Chocolate, ect are absolutely delicious and its hard to imagine our favorite foods without these crops. (Admittedly the US gov heavily subsidizes corn farming so its in a lot of processed foods, even if only as corn syrup for sugar)

[@krankarvolund7771]

@@jasonreed7522 Some More News just made a video about american food system, the first third is about corn, and my God is it everywhere. Like if you count corn syrup as food, 5% of the maize produced in the USA are used for food. The rest is used for all sorts of things, from plastic, to gas, fibers, etc... The US are mad with corn XD But yeah, the Americas had the best plants, and Eurasia had the best animals pre-discovery ^^

[@KarlosEPM]

The same thing happens with chocolate, avocado, tomatoes, peppers, pineapples... It still is a Eurocentric world, love it or hate it.

[@danielblank9917]

@@KarlosEPM And COFFEE

[@KarlosEPM]

@@danielblank9917 Although coffee is currently a big part of LatAms exports, it originated in the arabic peninsula if I'm not mistaken. _Yerba mate_ is originally from South America though, and is often overlooked by the rest of the world as a powerful stimulant. Germans do love it though.

[@dogvom]

3:11 I think it's interesting that the area in South America most suited to potato farming is _not_ the part of the continent where they were first cultivated, that is, the Peruvian Andes! And according to this map, Idaho is not prime potato territory at all, yet that's pretty well all they're known for!

[@RemnantCult]

Your integration of food science and food history makes for great videos.

[@Beryllahawk]

Fun fact!! Here in the American Southeast, you're supposed to plant potatoes on Valentine's Day! (Along with MANY other things, including tomatoes if you're starting from seed.) And even in urban back yards they will grow just fine, because they just about don't give a damn what your soil is like so long as they have adequate drainage. A fantastic food plant, along with squash and green beans. (Corn is a maybe, tomatoes are finicky in my experience.) Potatoes are amazing.

[@BatCaveOz]

The Irish proved that one could live an entire lifetime on a diet consisting of potatoes and milk (and little else). A popular Irish cattle breed was the Dexter, a miniature cow used primarily for milk, that suited the small plots available to the Irish at the time.

[@somehow_not_helpfulATcrap]

Potatoes and butter. Milk doesn't last very long and you'd find it hard to get a cow to produce milk if the weathers too cold or they've too little feed but with butter you get the fats and nutrients you'd need to make the potato work though an Irish winter (November / December until February/March depending on your location), winter here is usually quite mild but it can get wet, too wet to allow a 800~1200 pound animal wander around a soaking wet field. It would have also probably been heavily salted butter too.

[@nopenonein]

I read a article on what is the single food you can survive on indefinitely. Well it started with potatoes but that was missing a few essential nutrients. So Barley and a little bit of Kale solved those deficiencies. I heard that, that is the ancient Scottish diet?

[@zetrolll]

Surprising how little mention of Peru there's on the video despite the fact that potatoes were domesticated in the peruvian Andes and here we have the largest variety of potatoes in the world.

[@pandora881]

It’s unfortunately very typical.

[@nopenonein]

Adam only relies on the Internet and the US for his research.

[@nicholasbrown5572]

He's covered it in an episode of his podcast. He probably just didn't want to cover the same story twice

[@KarlosEPM]

​​@@nicholasbrown5572Could you tell me which # of podcast? Honestly, they are too long for me to watch regularly.

[@nicholasbrown5572]

@@KarlosEPM I believe it's episode 29, but I don't have the time right now to give it a relisten to double check

[@PotatoMcWhiskey]

Thank you for your recognition Adam, the hive mind will spare you for your service.

[@captainbigos9267]

Potatoes are the king of vegetables. So many things you can make with them. Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew.... Chips, fries, wedges, fritters, vodka, baked, jacket, roast, hashbrowns, bury in hot coals just off the top of my head. So many possibilities.

[@neutralnarwhal8184]

I feel like you're kind of underselling how much of a role Britain itself played in the famine in Ireland... In some ways similar to the role they played in the famine in India.

[@jasonreed7522]

Britain is solely responsible for the famine, Ireland was a net food exporter during the famine, its just most of Ireland's arable land was dedicated to cash crops & animals to sell to the British, and all the remaining land had to be the world's best food crop: 1 potato cultivar.

[@Zyme86]

The potato didn't really go east, but the Sweet Potato sure as heck did. I wonder if that crop's effects were similar to potatoes in regions it became favorited.

[@NCRonrad]

Short answer, yes (and potatoes are imperative with Indian food)

[@Zarathinius]

A bitter fact of the potato blight is that the Irish tenant farmers definitely knew how and did grow lots of different crops, including other potato varietals. Because their British landlords kept sub-dividing their holdings and renting smaller and smaller plots to the Irish subjects, the Irish peasants had to grow the most nutritious potato they could on the worst parts of their land. Any land that was good enough for less hardy crops had to be planted to pay the rent. If the colonizing British had been willing to ease off on their rent extraction a bit, a lot of death could have been prevented. It's far too much history for a short weekly video about spuds, but worth reading about for anyone who (like me) got a minimalist American public school version of the history.

[@jasonreed7522]

American education system: the Irish only planted taters and then had a famine cause of a blight _implies that they were idiots_. Reality: Ireland was a food exporter during the famine and was growing enough to feed its population, the British were just colonial assholes creating an artificial famine. I get that the system has a limited timeframe in which to convey information, but its not like presenting the story properly would even take any additional time/resources. (Alternatively we could not spend each year covering all of history again in slightly greater depth and dedicate more time on each major region & time period, trusting that kids will remember the war of 1812 happened if they don't learn about it every single year)

[@Zarathinius]

@@jasonreed7522 Totally agree, one lecture explaining the reality of Irish agriculture and rent extraction by British colonizers would be a lot more valuable than some of the stuff we learned.

[@PossiblyAnIrishGuy]

An Irish dilemma from an Irish guy "Do I eat the potato now or do I leave it to ferment and drink it as poitín (potato moonshine essentially) later?"

[@parispc]

Nothing hits like a hearty baked potato on a cold evening. Definitely my favorite starch pairing with meats and veggies.

[@Maplenr]

Oddly one of my favorite videos you've ever done. I love weird, quirky topics like this

[@michael2636]

4:06 this is why i absolutely hate ticket retailers. $89 in fees is over 30% of the advertised ticket price of $281

[@Craxin01]

My favorite bit of Swedish cooking is potatiskorv, or potato sausage. It's ground pork and potato with spices stuffed into a natural casing and boiled. You scrape the insides out of the casing and eat. Also, considering growing supermarket potatoes, I did that once entirely by accident. I had a pit I'd put kitchen scraps in for mulching and got a volunteer crop out of potato skins I buried.

[@thecrazyinsanity]

swedish food is fake

[@ladyofthemasque]

The thing most people still don't know about the Irish Potato Famine is that Ireland had LOTS of food growing all over the island. They were SURROUNDED by it. The problem was, the English had invaded & colonized Ireland, taking over virtually all the land. That meant the Irish still living there were turned into tenant farmers, and almost all the crops grown were shipped to England. One of the few agricultural products the Irish were allowed to grow AND EAT was the potato. Unfortunately, in many cases, the tenant farmers weren't allowed to rotate their potato crops onto "better soil"...which meant that, year after year, the enemies of potatoes (pests, diseases, soil depletion) mounted higher and higher, until the potato blight struck...and struck...and struck. SURROUNDED BY FOOD, the Irish were being forced to starved to death, because it was considered a heavily punishable CRIME by their English landowners for them to EAT the vast majority of the food they were growing. This is just one of many, many atrocities in history that we aren't taught...because it makes certain groups of white folks "look bad." (Hint: they WERE bad! And yes, I'm lily-white myself, but I can acknowledge when bad things were done, & are still being done.) ...Remember, if you want to do gardening, different plants take different nutrients from the soil, and give back certain other different nutrients. Crop rotation serves two main purposes: It allows the soil to replenish, and it *weakens* various pests & diseases, because their favorite food gets moved far away so they starve. Ideally you shouldn't plant the same crop in the same location year after year, or even within 2 years. Wait at least 3 years, ideally 4+ years. You should also alternate root crops, legumes & pulses, grains, pollinator crops, leafy greens, other nitrogen-fixer crops (such as clover), and so forth. Mulching is also very important, as it allows those dead plants to decay and return their remaining nutrients to the soil. Companion planting is also a great idea (think the Three Sisters of corn, beans, and squashes), and planting pollinator "crops" (ooh, pretty flowers!) that bloom at *different* times of the year also helps immensely, as that helps sustain pollinator populations.

[@l.p.7585]

As an academic and journalist Adam, i would like to see you have a go at explaining famine to the modern person. The modern understanding of famine is built on imagery of medieval peasants with barren dry fields, but the world has never been too small for economic policy to help solve local shortages, and history is full of accounts where famines were caused by trade, taxation, labour, and migration policy, without being related to crop yields at all.

[@cuttwice3905]

The best thing about buying seed potatoes is that you can pick varieties you have never enjoyed before. So many kinds, so little time. I have turned into my local sibling's allium, potato, etc. source because I like growing root crops. The also get dried and canned and pickled veggies with an occasional dried or preserved fruit. As hobbies go it is inexpensive.

[@JohnHausser]

“We must take our potatoes both big and small, and likewise we must accept everyone equally” - 🇮🇪 proverb

[@liamblood5239]

And yet Ireland is slowly becoming more and more unwelcoming to others. It's sad to see but the things you hear and see while just walking around is awful. Let alone the tales I hear from those not from Ireland who live here.

[@hxhdfjifzirstc894]

You actually should not 'accept' bad people equally, or your society will devolve into evil. Look at all of the crime in blue cities, for example.

[@rohan1_]

The most common newborn boys name in Cork last year was Mohammed but sure the Irish are sooo unwelcoming.@@liamblood5239

[@MaximusChivus]

​@@hxhdfjifzirstc894 Ah yes, like how Austin has such a high crime rate compared to Houston. There's more factors than red good blue bad, like wealth issues and population density. There's even more factors than that but I don't have an eternity to comment.

[@MaximusChivus]

​@@hxhdfjifzirstc894 Also, weird choice to equate notably uninfected and perfectly edible potatoes of different sizes to mean "we should accept all criminals" rather than accepting people of all shapes and sizes

[@fortissimolaud]

“The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine.”

[@molseren]

"The Tale of the Wonderful Potato" is a must see in danish primary school culinary class!

[@orchinus8165]

Very true

[@hithere5553]

While I know sweet potatoes aren’t related to potatoes I can’t recommend them enough for raised bed gardeners. They are SHOCKINGLY prolific here on the east coast and don’t require really any maintenance other than the occasional watering, and you can fill an entire bed with one sweet potato with slips.

[@iooooooo1]

I really appreciate that you cited sources in the description, thanks.

[@hgv85]

You should consider doing a follow-up video on the variety of root vegetables that are native to the Americas. Most North Americans would only recognize a few.

[@KarlosEPM]

Therefore, most north americans will not watch. This channel is a financial enterprise after all. Such a video is unlikely to appear in this channel.

[@krono5el]

@@KarlosEPM Most europeans in the Americas dont even know potatoes and tomatoes are Indigenous to the Americas.

[@hgv85]

@@KarlosEPM I can see why you would think that. I know several people my parents’ age who don’t like to travel or try new restaurants because they don’t like new or unknown things. They want to go to the MacDonalds a few blocks from their house and that’s it. However, I think the kind of people who are likely to watch this channel are not like that. I think they are, instead, interested in learning about new things. So I think the topic would be a good candidate for this channel. That said, you’re right that it will probably never happen. I just disagree on *why* it won’t happen.

[@SupersonicAardvark]

Love the humming of the cicadas as part of the audio. Gave a dollop of good vibes on top of all the potato facts.

[@davidmusserYouTube]

Classic Adam video!! Keep ‘em coming

[@mattwilson8298]

I live in Tennessee too. The cicadas are so loud. Kudos to you for shooting a video outside, at this time of year, with audio i can actually hear.

[@michaeldufresne9428]

I have recently been looking into potato growing recently and one thing I have seen multiple times is that you shouldn't wash off the potatoes if you are going to store them. It removes some type of protective covering on them causing them not to store as well as. Found it out it appears to be true with the first batch I grew.

[@dfhgjhg]

Same is true for everything, like squash and pumpkin. seems even rain washes it away, collected some in the rain and its losing the firmness in few days.

[@jandillingh]

as a fellow gardener, my complements, on the quality of your soil Adam. it looks really excellent.

[@jots083]

Potatoes, Onions, and garlic. the three easiest food products to grow at home and they can be cooked into or with just about anything!

[@Furluge]

I am reminded of a fantasy series where a character is in a Medieval fantasy setting but gains access to a magic library and they're able to read books from other worlds and this leads them to trying to advance the world they are in. First thing they introduced? Potatoes. You can't really do a whole lot of advancement until the food supply is stable. It also help drop the incentives for war.

[@Mojova1]

It is funny how today the best tasting potatoes in the world are the new potatoes from Sweden and Finland, because of the almost constant sunlight during the summer. Adam, if you ever have a chance to taste a new potato from Sweden or Finland please try it.

[@janlaan9602]

Well you can live off just potatoes for longer then most people expect, Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, a French soldier who was taken as a POW and fed only potatoes during his captivity, and survived. Feeling like he should have died, he made it his life’s mission to convince the world of the nutritional value of potatoes, and his tomb in France is decorated with potatoes as a tribute. Also when mentioning the Irish potato famine please never leave out that the English CHOSE to let them starve and withhold food. It was a genocide.

[@cindyhammond5573]

Love the subtle bibliography - and the mosquito bite-LOL

[@Corazair]

Funny timing to talk about the fact that potatoes grow underground considering the rare tornado landing just a couple days ago. Might be closer to home for me since I've about a mile away from Lovell Crossing though.

[@doubla871]

I always love your ad transitions lol

[@gaboversta2.423]

1:24 "but you can live on mostly potatoes" Good, that's what I've been doing this past year, so easy to cook. (I'll admit that there is also some self made bread in my kitchen… )

[@LaineyBug2020]

On every potato stock, you can graft a nightshade plant to and grow in the same spot. Nightshades are a very diverse and nutrient dense family of plants from tomatoes to sweet peppers to eggplants to gooseberries.

[@purple-flowers]

Nightshade stew is cool! You can make a whole stew out of just nightshade plants. Also tobacco is a nightshade

[@MariaMartinez-researcher]

Pomato.

[@ivy_47]

@@purple-flowers That's a certified CodysLab classic.

[@Theorimlig]

Not gooseberries, but "cape gooseberries" (Physalis species, also called groundcherries). The original gooseberries are from an unrelated bush.

[@cerealfish9037]

Gooseberries aren’t nightshades, they’re related to currants

[@dukelornek]

Not the first time I have heard this but still good. I'd love to hear more indepth version of this.

[@Oz_Headwinged]

I just started cooking gymnasium in Sweden and I need to go through the history of the potato, thought you'd have some good info and I was right. Not only that but it was just lucky that you talked about my country too, great video. I'll use it as one of my sources.

[@davidhenriquegravanita2658]

Very much here for econ history adam ragusea. keep it up!

[@alard8503]

Potatoes are just really fun to learn about, there is so much to them.

[@noahway13]

I think the potato did not catch on because salt was scarce for the common folk. Once salt became available, the potato sky-rocketed. Potatoes need a ton of salt. They say if you over-salt while cooking, add potatoes if applicable.

[@pedrodutra4088]

One thing about potatoes: they from the Andes, native from South America. So when you talk about how potatoes saved your country from famine or a national dish is made of them, remember that indigenous people are responsible for that.

[@Mote.]

I love your videos so much. Amazing information

[@lynb87]

Great video! I think you could make a longer one. Somehow i didn't know they're a complete protein.

[@yuiro1419]

Great Video about food history! also great sponsor plug!

[@microwaveoven2]

Bro, your video's have taught me so much, I mean I already knew all this stuff anyway.

[@jades3654]

Im growing potatoes for the first time tis year! This video is so well timed!

[@hugoa.c.1566]

I Love a quick interesting video like this every once in a while

[@barryhaley7430]

This guy produces great content! I always enjoy!

[@cn15557]

It's always delightful to see how Adam will work his sponsor segue into the video 😂

[@TumblinWeeds]

5:14 the highlighter was so squiggly my brain dissociated from the crime scene 😂😂

[@jeannamcgregor9967]

I'm doing an experiment here in NorCal and always keeping 8 grow bags planted in succession with potatoes (if they sprout in storage they get planted). We don't get a hard frost here and maybe I'll never have to buy potatoes again. 🤞

[@Tokorai]

The idea that potatoes were hated throughout history blows my mind. I get why, because of the whole nightshade thing and bad PR, and if you don't have any fat I guess they're not as good, but man, I'd take potatoes in any form over bread any day of the week.

[@krono5el]

also those filthy godless savages that created the potato's, tomatoes, maize, cacao, vanilla, sports, and rubber, had something to do with it. europeans hated those savages potatoes and tomatoes for a long while.

[@irvingdog01]

Wasn’t Ireland forced by England to grow a specific strain of potato somehow, and this lead to a blight that easily ran down this specific crop?

[@CrazyPotato44]

As others have said, the root cause of the Great Famine in Ireland wasn't just down to "those silly Irish didn't think about diseases ruining their only monocrop." That narrative was created by the English to hide their involvement in the crisis. Ireland grew tons of different crops, and was a major food exporter, even during the famine. It's just that the native Irish basically had all their land stolen and given to English noblemen, and were at the mercy of greedy landlords, many of whom had ties to MPs or were MPs themselves. The landlords set extortionate rents that meant the Irish peasants could only keep a small fraction of the produce they grew, the rest was exported to England. The small amount of the crops they could keep had to feed the family, and, as mentioned in the video, the nutritional powers of the potato were the only thing that could keep them fed. When the potato crop failed, the English didn't reduce rent, they just kept taking everything, and left the Irish with nothing.

[@crustybs46]

I'd love to have an episode on different storage methods back in the day of all the different veggies that we eat today

[@0000willhill]

Adam you`re so good at explaining things!

[@Rob9]

Swedish Grandpas in 1700: "Back in my day we didn't HAVE potatoes"

[@41rmartin]

Adam is my favourite channel, but yeah. Blight isn't the only reason the Irish had their problems. The English were more interested in profits than keeping working class Irish people alive and that's the main reason why the famine happened.

[@graefx]

I've been watching a lot about forest gardening and methods to maximize food production using vertical space and some sort of potato or tuber as ground cover is near ubiquitous. Some varieties you can even eat the leaves like sweet potatoes. Between potatoes and mushrooms you can have a complete amino acid complex and all the calories you need. Potatoes only become an issue from frying and all the other stuff we put on them

[@alexhurst3986]

I love your videos, but this is my fav. Not because of the potatoes, but the cicada's in the background. That sound reminds me of home.

[@melaniey.5596]

The reason potatoes are such a high yielding nutrient rich crop, take only 3 months to harvest, and resist harsh conditions like freezing weather and droughts, it’s because they were the results of centuries of agricultural engineering. Pre-Incan and Inca civilizations have been domesticating and improving the potato (and other crops) since more than 10 000 years to acquire those advantageous characteristics. That’s also why you will find like 1000 varieties of potatoes in Peru and Bolivia, and A LOT of things to do with a potato and ways to preserve potatoes.

[@RottingYoda]

Also worth noting that potatoes taste far far far better in Ireland. The heavy damp AF clay soil produces very 'floury' 'spuds.

[@joshgalka9414]

Great video, Adam!

[@Great_Olaf5]

6:11 Rice gas the advantage that, in certain climates, you can get two harvests a year out of it, so it might not be as productive per harvest, but it might be as or more productive per year.

[@YounesLayachi]

If potato is at least 3 times more productive than rice, then it wins. Also factor in the cost of water, which is not infinite and can be used for something else

[@jasonreed7522]

​@@YounesLayachibut also potatoes and rice don't grow in the same environments. Rice is fundamentally a swamp grass that needs to be flooded and is often cultivated in already marshy areas. The potato is a hardy mountain nightshade which rot in poorly drained soils. They also like cool summers, something south easy asia is famous for. It isn't even an issue of which one provides more calories per year for the same field size & input effort. Potatoes and rice simply prefer to grow in different environments which is why the potato was never going to displace rice. They are instead complementary crops where the lowland villages can grow rice and the highland villages can grow potatoes and then trade with eachother for maximum food security.

[@YounesLayachi]

@@jasonreed7522 those flooded rice fields aren't natural. A lot of effort and water and land goes into the flooding of those fields. Meanwhile potatoes can grow in a lot of places without destroying the landscape. So if we just compare them where they can naturally grow, potatoes have the upper hand

[@brokenglassshimmerlikestar3407]

I kept thinking about Matt Damon growing potatos on Mars. Low labour, high yield, relatively balanced nutrition contents. But he had to ration his and at the end he was very thin

[@krabkit]

several years back we had a bag or 2 of fingerling potatoes that got spilled in the back yard but failed to be cleaned up because worst case, more potatoes. we kept the yard reasonably well kept so i figured they had died, if they had done anything at all. recently we were moving house and the yard was left to grow for the most part and i noticed that we had nightshades in a far wider section than the original spill. i did not get a chance to dig any of them up before we left, but i cant think of anything else they would have been.

[@DrDjones]

Gosh, so much water used to wash them around 1 min. Thanks for the informational video. I look forward to planting some potatoes myself.

[@deefdragon]

I've liyerally done the math for a college project, and some yams can literally produce enough calories in like 2-3 m3 too feed a single person. (assuming good vertical farming). you could literally have all your calories "in your appartment"

[@YounesLayachi]

m3 ? Did you mean m^2 ?

[@MrTupimus]

@@YounesLayachi Assuming modern farming practice and the mentioned vertical farming it truly is by volume, unlike the traditional soil farming which is only considered by viable area

[@krono5el]

the Americas were ahead of the game when it came to agriculture and feeding the women and children, then the church arrived and now there is nothing but poverty all over the Americas.

[@YounesLayachi]

@@krono5el where did the resources go ? In the pockets of greedy capitalists

[@voltaireon]

Your ad transitions get me every time. ☠️

[@Vuhhin]

I love these types of Video!!!!

[@NorthzYT]

On the topic of potato cellars, potatos will release toxic fumes when decomposing which can kill adults within minutes in tight enclosed areas with no ventilation. There's a story about how almost an entire family was killed by this spare their youngest daughter.

[@snozzmcberry2366]

Being a born & raised Swede and knowing how absolutely ubiquitous the potato is in Swedish cuisine today, that bit of history concerning the potato in Sweden was extremely interesting. It REALLY took root. I mean, REALLY. Just about every single hearty traditional typically Swedish dish I can think of has potatoes in it. Delightful video. Thanks, Adam.

[@YounesLayachi]

Potatoes could solve hunger worldwide if we weren't so stubborn and selfish. And there are so many different edible variations of potatoes compared to the few ones of wheat and rice. And potato farming is easier and less resources intensive

[@Mojova1]

And that is the same in Finland because you guys ruled us and the food stuck. Also Finnish and Swedish new potatoes are best in the world. :D

[@ibb1087]

Hi! This looks so great! Can you please provide the list of ingredients for the Potato Salad at 3:10. I got all the ingredients except for the last bottle you add in after the mustard! If anyone has this information we would love to try this recipe exactly as shown! Thank you so much!

[@YoungGandalf2325]

Most KZbinrs would just overlay text on top of the video. I like how Adam uses printed out research papers and a highlighter (even if it is difficult to read).

[@sabatino1977]

you"tubers"?? :)

[@YoungGandalf2325]

@@sabatino1977 good one! 😆

[@armanke13]

yea, johnny harris style, 😃

[@lettuce1626]

Its prob best to start with seed potato but the fact that grocery store potatoes sprout by accident was the reason I got into gardening

[@savagepro9060]

Meanwhile back in France, a noble character was bribing people to enter his garden and literally steal from his potato garden and consume it. This was an effort to popularize the spud!

[@Ace_of_Empires]

I like these educational videos more than the recipes

[@MrGothicruler666]

That ad integration gave me whiplash

[@aelfrice]

Didn't know Adam was so wealthy. That's an amazing house.

[@sikinsokin]

Just getting out of the densely populated areas of your country will suddenly make beautiful houses like that available to a much larger group of people. This applies to both the USA, where Adam is, and the Nordics, where I am. I do not know where you’re from but look it up for yourself.

[@Ty4ons]

He has some podcasts/talks about what it's like to suddenly gain a lot of wealth from KZbin. Unlike a lot of people he's pretty open about it and how his life has changed not having to pinch pennies.

[@ThePerfectKiosk]

I love the hilighter presentation.