Where Are Potatoes Grown?

Short answer: everywhere.

Long answer: Potatoes have become one of the most consumed vegetables in the world, and this was not an accident. Part of the reason potatoes are so successful is their ease of growing. Today, spuds are grown on every continent (minus Antarctica, sorry to get your hopes up), as well as out of this world (more on that later).

As mentioned in our history of potatoes (linked here), the first spuds were grown around the land which eventually became Peru. Members of the Incan Empire began growing potatoes in the Andes Mountain range, where they took advantage of cold weather to stomp out the liquid and freeze them to create chuño. Not only did they invent a primitive form of freeze drying, but this food product could be preserved for over ten years, helping them prevent famine.

Today, more than 359 million tons of potatoes are produced worldwide. The United States produces roughly 19 million tons of potatoes per year. The state that produces the most is unsurprisingly Idaho, which makes sense considering it’s known as the “Spud State” by some. Rather than growing potatoes in Idaho, ProHealth grows ours in Arizona, Nebraska, and the Texas panhandle. This is because of the ideal weather conditions that allow potatoes to thrive, and the central location in the US that helps us ship them across the country

China is the number one producer of potatoes, responsible for roughly a third of the world’s supply. This makes sense because, in 2015, it was estimated that China was also the number one consumer of potatoes in the world.

Despite this achievement, China doesn’t even crack the top ten of potatoes consumed per capita. That award goes to Belarus, which averages 175kg of potatoes per person, per year. China has about 1.4 billion more people than Belarus, so it’s easy to understand how they couldn’t realistically reach this number.

What were we talking about again?

So we know that potatoes are grown all over the world (and the average Belarusian eats 175kg of them a year), but what about potatoes being grown across the solar system? in 2015, potatoes became the first vegetable to be grown in space onboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. If that’s not a resilient spud, I don’t know what is.

With potatoes being grown all over the world (and beyond), there’s no doubting the importance of this hearty vegetable.