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Potato “Revolution” Brings Hope to the Hungry
A trip by World Vision delegates into North Korea October 14-18 revealed that the nearly four-year “potato revolution” lead by president Kim Jong Il soon may bring improvements to the health and nutrition of ordinary North Koreans.The “revolution,” as it has been called in the state-run media, is a government-lead attempt to replace rice with potatoes as the North Korean food staple. Kim’s efforts to make that transition have included quadrupling the acreage devoted to potato farms, making official visits to potato farms, issuing cookbooks featuring potato-based foods, and launching a public relations campaign aimed at changing the potato’s reputation as an inferior food source.
Currently, potatoes are the third-highest producing crop in North Korea. Potatoes offer promise to the millions of North Koreans who have endured chronic food shortages throughout the last decade because of their high nutritional content, medicinal value and adaptability to varying altitudes. In addition, they require up to one-third less fertilizer to grow. This benefit is particularly important as North Korea has the least amount of arable land per capita in the world, and much of the available soil has been depleted by the overuse of chemical fertilizers.
In the southwestern city of Anju, World Vision runs hydroponic vegetable farms where newly trained farmers grow virus-free potato seeds as well as tomatoes and cucumbers in nutrient solutions without the use of soil.
Partnering with the Korean Academy of Agricultural Sciences, World Vision helps run five greenhouse farms, which house more than 100,000 plants, representing some 15 varieties of potato. It is estimated that these plants, once they are transplanted into the soil of traditional potato farms could yield some 10 to 15 tons of potatoes per acre of land.
"Everywhere I visited, I saw signs that things could change in North Korea," said Jonathan Sim, World Vision’s director of relational sponsorship acquisitions and a second-generation Korean-American. "I even read a newspaper article that credited these potato-farming projects as a key source of optimism that the current food crisis will be over by 2005."
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