Dishing dirt on muddy spuds
AUSTRALIA was caught in the oppressive grip of a months-long spud shortage ending early last year that saw prices reach heights not seen in six decades. The chips were down. Growers were forced to let their crops rot in the ground amid soil too sodden to properly operate machinery, hoping against hope for a hot dry wind to blast out the moisture.
Savvy farmers who escaped the southern states’ widespread drenchings kept their eyes open for opportunity, and they soon hashed out an idea.
Brushed spuds were worst affected, you see.
Grown in sticky, dark soil prone to muddening upon contact with water, it became impossible to adequately brush back the dirt in preparation for supermarket shelves.
Easily washed sand-grown potatoes from South Australia dominated the market and prices shot up as high as $1700-a-tonne, about fourtimes the average.
Those dirty, delicious brushed spuds were hard to come by, so clever growers rooted out a plan.
I have it on good, fourth-hand and thoroughly unverifiable information that some growers invested in a rudi- mentary machine that would add dirt to their tubers so they could be repackaged and sold as brushed.
Aficionados of the sooty spud had what they wanted, and these farmers had access to a hungry market willing to pay for a bit of grime.
Bravo, sirs, for showing the kind of backwards ingenuity that makes this country great.
This may read like some kind of unwarranted and untimely love letter to the humble spud, and that’s because it is.
This affair has endured three decades and shows no sign of slowing down.
I got a certificate in Year 7 for a rousing speech about the spud’s econo-political impact through the ages and it stands as one of my proudest achievements.
I have only ever met one person with a greater affinity for the goldenfleshed gift from the heavens, so naturally I intend to spend my life with her.
These godly orbs are the world’s fourth largest crop, behind rice, wheat and corn, and have been filling humans’ gullets since the Incas began cultivating them at modern-day Peru 10,000 years ago.
They have sustained civilisations, and their importance was made clear during the Irish famine in the mid 19th century, when widespread crop failures contributed to the deaths of more than a million people – about two-fifths of the nation’s population.
The country has thankfully expanded its dietary and agricultural reliance over the ensuing years, but the spud remains an enormously important crop, ingredient and standalone meal.
The Irish love them so much they have dozens of different names to describe potatoes in various forms – paidrin meaning a very tiny tuber, sliomach for a very wet spud, and dradairnin for a small, useless potato.
Finally there is the delicate and succulent sweet potato, which appar- ently goes by ionam in Gaeilge.
And let’s not forget that in 1995, the potato became the first vegetable to be grown in space.
The implications of that are enormous – if the potato could pretty much support an entire population until the dreaded blight hit Ireland, imagine how long it can sustain a few astronauts on long-range missions to the outer reaches of the universe.
These are truly marvellous consequences of evolution and selective breeding, and they deserve to be treated with the utmost respect.
Imagine my disgust every time a supermarket throws a handful of potatoes into a pre-packaged plastic tomb instead of their rightful position laid out on a bed of creamy, red, brown or dirt-brushed skin.
This week there were even stacks of single sweet potatoes, individually placed on polystyrene trays, cling-wrapped and whacked with a barcode.
This kind of abuse cannot go unpunished and makes a mockery of the State Government’s impending plastic bag ban.
It debases each and every one of us mere mortals unfortunate enough to handle a pile of divine starchy miracles constricted in plastic.
THESE GODLY ORBS ARE THE WORLD’S FOURTH LARGEST CROP … AND HAVE BEEN FILLING HUMANS’ GULLETS SINCE THE INCAS BEGAN CULTIVATING THEM