There are many, many people who do not have the space it takes to
grow a garden at all -- or, for whom vandalism would be a very real
threat (these are among the reasons I do not live in a city). In addition,
many people do not consider gardening to be recreational. Even
someone making a very modest wage could buy a whole year's worth of
potatoes for a few of hours of working versus many more hours tending
a garden plot. Relatively few people have the wherewithal to store
several hundred pounds of potatoes for a year.
I suspect that a lot of people consider it an advantage that
commercially-grown potatoes are fairly uniform in size, texture, flavour,
etc. -- this is particularly true of the frozen products where consistency
is a virtue: when you are buying a product, you like to know exactly
what you are paying for each time you buy it.
I am not aware of any hard evidence that the chemicals used in raising
"commercial" potatoes are harmful to consumers. The greatest risk is to
the producers themselves, followed by the immediate farm ecosystem
(which, I'll readily admit, is pretty screwed up). Nearly all of these
modern chemicals are designed to have an extremely short lifespan in
the environment AND their breakdown products are relatively benign
(compared to the old, banned [in North America, anyway] chemicals like
DDT).
Finally, I'd like to point out that there are a lot of people of Irish descent in
North America who would not be here if it weren't for the failure of
organic potato production methods in Ireland in the late 19th century. It
makes me shudder to think of potato growers spraying fungicides on
their crop every 5 to 7 days for two whole months, but the alternative (in
certain years) may be complete loss of the crop to blight -- as happened
in Ireland. I know of several organic farmers who lost most or all of
their potato crop to blight this year. Also, many home gardeners lost
their backyard plots (and frequently their tomatoes, a close relative of the
potato, too).
Having said all that, I want to waffle: I do agree that commercial
agriculture has drifted too far from nature. I think that much of North
American agriculture is on a path of dangerous dependency on
petroleum and petro-chemicals. I do not believe the greatest danger --
at least in North America -- is from chemical residues, however.
Certainly, there are localized contamination problems. Certainly, soil loss
is a problem -- on and off the farm -- in some locations. I think the
conventional agricultural production system is not economically
sustainable because of the ultimate reality that fossil fuels (and their
derivative chemicals) are limited -- in the case of liquid petroleum, very
limited. Eventually (ten? fifteen? twenty year?), prices will start to rise
dramatically to reflect this increasing scarcity.
This may seem a long way off, but development of more sustainable
farming systems is a slow process supported more by dedicated, private
individuals than by public institutions -- and certainly not by the big
agricultural multinationals (what do they have to gain from it, after all).
There is room -- need -- for visionaries who pursue their vision with
messianic zeal. There is also need for a lot of drudgery in the fields to
winnow through the myriad of technological choices to find what works
and what doesn't work. We need to temper our enthusiasm for a more
benign agriculture with realism; evaluate these alternatives with caution
and skepticism, but NOT reject any out-of-hand because of prejudice or
irrational fear.
Sorry for the rant. Sometimes the glow from articles like Duesing's
"Consider the Potato" is too rosy for me....
Bob
rdmacgregor@gov.pe.ca