Growing potatoes in southern China's rice fields in winter, instead of fallow, could improve the country's food security and farmers' incomes, according to a recent study.
An article published by a group of CIP (International Potato Center) scientists in the American Journal of Potato Research suggests that integrating potatoes into rice growing systems in southern China could bring many benefits.
According to Lao Yu, a researcher at the China Institute of High-Latitude Crops, the rotation of rice and potato crops in rice fields brings both economic and environmental benefits. "Rice-potato crop rotation systems play an important role in reducing poverty in China's rural areas and in promoting sustainable agriculture," the scientist notes.
About half of China's potatoes are grown in the north of the country, said Xiaoping Lu, deputy director general of the International Potato Center (CIP) of the China Center for Asia Pacific (CCCAP) and one of the study's authors. However, over the past two decades, farmers in the southern provinces have increasingly grown tubers in rice fields during the dry winter months.
Lu noted that the use of potatoes as a winter crop in rice fields began in Guangdong in the 1980s in response to growing demand for potatoes in neighboring Hong Kong. As consumption of the crop has grown in mainland China, farmers in the southern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan have followed suit and now produce about a quarter of the country's potatoes.
Rotating potatoes and rice can have less of an environmental impact than most farming systems, improving soil quality and resource efficiency. This is partly because potatoes produce more calories per unit area of land and with less irrigation water than most staple foods.
A study by Beibei Liu et al., published in the journal Nature Food last year, indicates that including the potato as a staple crop to meet rising food demand in China could potentially reduce the country's overall impact on soil and water supplies by 17– 25% by 2030.
Lu Yao noted that while rice-potato rotation is quite common in Guangdong, there is still room for significant expansion in Yunnan and other provinces. According to Philip Cyr, potato breeder at CCCAP, CIP and Chinese partners are working to help develop new, early maturing, disease-resistant potato varieties.
“We can only assume that the demand for potatoes will continue to grow,” says Kier. “Our goal is to help farmers meet this demand and increase their income while reducing their environmental impact.”